The Clinical Proof of the Power of Suggestion
The Clinical Proof of the Power of Suggestion
A placebo is a fake or sham treatment given in clinical trials to test the efficacy of studied therapies against the power of merely suggesting that a patient will get better.
Nearly every drug and medical devices on the market are tested against the power of your mind to heal your body. However, this was not always the case. Before 1963, drugs that were sold in the United States had to be proven safe, but they did not have to be proven effective. It was common to find many drugs on the market that claimed to be effective for a wide variety of health conditions without any proof that they actually worked. Then, in 1963 Congress enacted an amendment to the Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act, which required drug manufacturers to actually prove that their products were both safe and effective.
It was common knowledge even then that the power of suggestion could heal a wide array of health disorders, so placebo-controlled clinical trials became the standard proof of effectiveness. This type of clinical trial intentionally obscures or "blinds" both the patient and the researcher to the nature of actual treatment. In other words, some patients receive the studied drug, some receive a dummy drug (the placebo) and some receive no treatment at all, and the doctor administering the treatment does not know which patient is in what group.
I was astounded to find out how strong this effect was, often as high as 50% of the efficacy of many drug and device therapies. The power of suggestion, the placebo, has been studied copiously over the last hundred years: scientists measure it, document it, compare it to "real" therapies and no therapy, and unequivocally acknowledge its effectiveness. What is most astonishing, however, is that this great power to influence disease recovery is then fully discarded when it comes to helping the patient in clinical practice! And even worse, a doctor's well-intentioned prognosis can easily form an extremely effective negative suggestion, called a nocebo, which can make matters worse.
Of course you cannot patent or license someone's own healing capacity, so there is no economic incentive for the medical system to promote the power of suggestion and self-healing.
Even so, I became enamored with understanding the mechanism of the placebo effect and how this might actually be used intentionally to empower the patient with his or her own healing. After all, the clinician may have fooled the patient with his sham treatment, but it was the patient herself that actually, unconsciously performed the healing, whether it was from ulcers, asthma, cancer or depression. To be sure, the success was not merely "in the head" either: physical and measurable effects are always documented.
I found that the secret to using this powerful mechanism, the power of suggestion, lied in the poorly understood realms of consciousness, as it applies to human wellness and performance. I became a Clinical Hypnotist in the late 1980s as this seemed to be the most practical and direct application of this self-healing modality. In studying and applying various mind-body techniques that initiate the body's own creative energies, which often lie dormant in the subconscious, I found I could teach someone how to activate this powerful mechanism on their own. This forms the basis of much of my work, whether it is helping individuals master stress, recover from illness, enhance performance, succeed in a venture, or discover their life meaning through alchemical hypnosis.
The Clinical Proof of the Power of Suggestion - To learn more about this author, visit Joseph Giove's Website.
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Early in my career as a biomedical engineer, designing and building medical diagnostic and therapeutic instruments, I came across this amazing thing called the placebo effect.
A placebo is a fake or sham treatment given in clinical trials to test the efficacy of studied therapies against the power of merely suggesting that a patient will get better.
Nearly every drug and medical devices on the market are tested against the power of your mind to heal your body. However, this was not always the case. Before 1963, drugs that were sold in the United States had to be proven safe, but they did not have to be proven effective. It was common to find many drugs on the market that claimed to be effective for a wide variety of health conditions without any proof that they actually worked. Then, in 1963 Congress enacted an amendment to the Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act, which required drug manufacturers to actually prove that their products were both safe and effective.
It was common knowledge even then that the power of suggestion could heal a wide array of health disorders, so placebo-controlled clinical trials became the standard proof of effectiveness. This type of clinical trial intentionally obscures or "blinds" both the patient and the researcher to the nature of actual treatment. In other words, some patients receive the studied drug, some receive a dummy drug (the placebo) and some receive no treatment at all, and the doctor administering the treatment does not know which patient is in what group.
I was astounded to find out how strong this effect was, often as high as 50% of the efficacy of many drug and device therapies. The power of suggestion, the placebo, has been studied copiously over the last hundred years: scientists measure it, document it, compare it to "real" therapies and no therapy, and unequivocally acknowledge its effectiveness. What is most astonishing, however, is that this great power to influence disease recovery is then fully discarded when it comes to helping the patient in clinical practice! And even worse, a doctor's well-intentioned prognosis can easily form an extremely effective negative suggestion, called a nocebo, which can make matters worse.
Of course you cannot patent or license someone's own healing capacity, so there is no economic incentive for the medical system to promote the power of suggestion and self-healing.
Even so, I became enamored with understanding the mechanism of the placebo effect and how this might actually be used intentionally to empower the patient with his or her own healing. After all, the clinician may have fooled the patient with his sham treatment, but it was the patient herself that actually, unconsciously performed the healing, whether it was from ulcers, asthma, cancer or depression. To be sure, the success was not merely "in the head" either: physical and measurable effects are always documented.
I found that the secret to using this powerful mechanism, the power of suggestion, lied in the poorly understood realms of consciousness, as it applies to human wellness and performance. I became a Clinical Hypnotist in the late 1980s as this seemed to be the most practical and direct application of this self-healing modality. In studying and applying various mind-body techniques that initiate the body's own creative energies, which often lie dormant in the subconscious, I found I could teach someone how to activate this powerful mechanism on their own. This forms the basis of much of my work, whether it is helping individuals master stress, recover from illness, enhance performance, succeed in a venture, or discover their life meaning through alchemical hypnosis.
The Clinical Proof of the Power of Suggestion - To learn more about this author, visit Joseph Giove's Website.
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Dave KurlanDave Kurlan is the founder and CEO of Objective Management Group, Inc., the industry leader in sales assessments and sales force evaluations, and the CEO of David Kurlan & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in sales force development. Dave has been a top rated speaker at Inc. Magazine's Conference on Growing the Company, the Sales & Marketing Management Conference and the Gazelles Sales & Marketing Summit. He has been featured on radio and TV, including World Business Review with General Norman Schwarzkopf, in Inc. Magazine, Selling Power Magazine, Sales & Marketing Management Magazine and Incentive Magazine. He is the author of Mindless Selling and Baseline Selling – How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball. He created and wrote STAR, a proprietary recruiting process for hiring great salespeople, and he writes Understanding the Sales Force, a popular business Blog and is a contributing author to The Death of 20th Century Selling and 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life, Volume 2. - Visit Dave Kurlan's Website |
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