Placebos are Getting Better

I wonder just how far this goes – the placebo effect that is, the idea that I think I’m doing something to get better and I actually do, even if it’s just taking a sugar pill.

Faith. Belief. Health.

Obviously it can’t be taken too far. We all hear of tragic consequences of people just believing an illness will go away, or trusting in God to fix this or that major ailment. Stuff, things, people, and medicine do work. But, as Colbert reports below, perhaps our faith in them has exceeded the reality of what they (in this case pills) can actually do.

Just as people often oscillate between a fetishistic trust in ‘experts’ and a rabid disdain for all things learned and intellectual, we can range from faith in all modern medicine to complete distrust.

A middle way, of course, should be the course we try to steer. We have a self-directed duty of understanding what we put in our bodies, even in this age of complexity. A big part of that is learning who to trust – but even then being open to dissenting views. We must accept our own fallibility and know that our knowledge of today may be superseded by the data of tomorrow.

Meditate. Somehow, calm your busy mind. So far all of the studies I’ve seen show this to be good for your health, especially mental/emotional health.

Laugh. This too is pretty universally lauded as a health-producing or enhancing activity. So, for a laugh or two, here’s our friend, Steven Colbert: