DRUGS AND THE PLACEBO EFFECT
We are told that we need to take certain drugs to cure our illnesses and we believe it. So we take the drugs and sometimes we get better and sometimes we don’t.
But has it ever occurred to you as odd that in every single clinical trial where a new drug is tested, there’s a control group of people who are given placebos instead of the real thing? If the medical establishment didn’t think this was a good way of testing, they wouldn’t employ this method. So why do they spend the extra time, money and effort to have this control group?
They have discovered, over many years and after testing thousands of patients, that a significant percentage of the people taking the placebos – sometimes almost as many as are taking the drugs – are experiencing a positive change in their symptoms. They want to find out whether the people who are taking the drugs are getting better because of the drug, or because of their belief that they are taking the drug.
Say, for example, that in a standard clinical trial 1000 people are tested, of which 50% are given the drug and 50% are given sugar pills. Let’s imagine that of the 500 people who are given the new drug itself, 100 of them experience a positive effect (this is a 20% success rate, which is considered excellent by most clinical standards, and would definitely lead to FDA approval). Say that of the people taking the placebos, 100 of them also experience a positive effect, just because they think they are taking the drug. This is not unheard of, by the way, this is fairly normal, to have a significant amount of people “cured” by taking placebos.
What’s going on here? The people taking the placebos are being helped by their belief that they’re being helped. It is the belief alone that is helping them. Belief comes from their subconscious mind and is entirely free!
So it’s my belief that we could all save ourselves a lot of money if we learned how to tap into this incredible power that we have inside ourselves – the power of subconscious belief.
Not to mention the benefits of not enduring potential harmful or as-yet-unknown side effects from the drugs we are taking. And what about the benefit of knowing that we are in control of our own bodies?
I’m not saying that the whole pharmaceutical industry is a scam and we should all stop taking drugs altogether. Of course, there have been many great strides in medicine and drugs which have helped millions of people – discoveries like Penicillin have saved the lives of countless thousands. But I am saying that drugs should be a last resort, or at least an adjunct therapy, which we use along with our own inner healing power.
We believe that the doctor can heal us – and perhaps he or she can. But we shouldn’t ignore also our own inner doctor. He or she may be trying to tell us something.
