A Bitter Placebo to Swallow

Here we go. Science confirms what many people already knew. If you believe something enough, it can heal you. This is from Scientific American.

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Studies in recent decades have confirmed the efficacy of placebos—inactive drugs that patients believe are medicinal—in everything from depression to cancer.

But going beyond an inactive drug alleviating an active disease, it turns out the extraneous items involved in ingesting a sham pill can have just as much success as the placebo drug. Think the white coat on a doctor, the kind of liquid one uses to swallow the pill, the needle used to inject a drug. In a 2008 study at the University of Essen in Germany, 30 subjects, who were allergic to dust, washed down allergy pills for five days, with a strange-tasting drink. (The allergy pill inhibited the annoying histamine reaction.) Later, 11 subjects received the strange drink but with an inactive placebo pill. The others received just water and either the active drug or placebo.

Those subjects who got the strange drink with placebo, had nearly the same reduction in allergy symptoms as those who received the active pill! Those who drank water with the placebo had no such response.

Researchers have narrowed down the neurological basis for conditioning like this. The three critical brain areas involved are: the insular cortex, the amygdala and the hypothalamus. More remarkable still, through various studies at the University of Turin Medical School, researchers confirmed that conditioning has a stronger effect on our involuntary physiology processes, like an allergic reaction, than our conscious belief in a placebo pill does.

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http://www.sciam.com/podcast/episode.cf ... w-08-11-10

CaterpillarWoman, have you read 'The Holographic Universe' by Michael Talbot? If you haven't you'd really, really enjoy it.

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Originally Posted by silverchord12

CaterpillarWoman, have you read 'The Holographic Universe' by Michael Talbot? If you haven't you'd really, really enjoy it.

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I second that recommendation. And also The Biology of Belief by Bruce Lipton.

Both of those are on my list to read, actually.

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Originally Posted by Yamabushi

And also The Biology of Belief by Bruce Lipton.

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Here is a presentation by Bruce Lipton on just that - I enjoyed it a lot.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...8136396723343#

i'm going to a conference in October, to hear Bruce Lipton., among others, speak.
looking forward to that! 8)
http://2012-kongress.de/referenten.html

I also read Bruce Lipton's "B. of B." a while ago and can recommend it.

Btw, there is an interesting new one by him I just finished reading recently called "Spontaneous Evolution", written together with a ... beware ... :!: comedian :!: :shock:

Anyway, it is good. Maybe because of that, it has some funny touch to it. Some stuff, of course can already be read in B of B.