Despite a recent report questioning whether an inactive medical treatment can cause improvement in patients' symptoms, new research from Canada suggests that the "placebo effect" is real.
The study found that Parkinson's disease patients who took an inactive placebo pill experienced a substantial increase in the release of a brain chemical called dopamine. The release of dopamine is impaired in people with Parkinson's.
The researchers measured dopamine levels under two different conditions. During one part of the study, patients did not know whether they were taking the Parkinson's drug apomorphine or a placebo. Dopamine was also measured under normal conditions when patients knew they were not taking a placebo.
When patients were unknowingly taking a placebo, they experienced an increase in dopamine levels similar to that caused by Parkinson's drugs.
Science August 10, 2001;293:1164-1166
This is powerful evidence of the incredible essentially untapped healing resource that we have in our brain and can clearly be used quite effectively as demonstrated in the article above and the link below. It is especially interesting considering the fact that "Science" is one of the top scientific journals is the world.
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