A Look at The Placebo Effect

Perhaps you've heard of the placebo effect. This is an improvement in perceived health that cannot be attributed to actual medication. This theory has always been that people take pills that they believe are effective medications but are actually made of sugar. After they take the pills they feel better even though there was no real medication that was there. Now a new study out of Harvard finds that even when people are told that the placebo pill is made of sugar they still feel better than those who take no medication at all. This study was performed on 80 female patients who suffer from irritable bowel syndrome. Critics of the study say there is a problem because the researchers did not pollute a group of people who took a placebo and did not know it was made of sugar. Nevertheless it provides insight into how the placebo effect works