Trigger placebo response for short-term relief and long-term learning
PLACEBOS
work, even if you know they’re placebos. Groundbreaking research by Ted Kaptchuk and others at the Harvard Medical School Program in Placebo Studies has shown that while placebos do not cure—they cannot shrink tumors, destroy infection, or stitch up wounds—they can heal, in the sense of relieving the suffering caused by trauma and disease. As science gains insight into the neural and biochemical basis of placebo effects, the practical power of placebos to help people in pain has found new legitimacy and provided wide interest.
OPEN
placebos are pills that declare themselves to be without pharmacological effect. Evidence that placebos work even in the absence of deception is a profound discovery, because it permits much more widespread experimentation with placebo effects. While blinded placebos require a third party to stage the deception, and the deception may in many circumstances be unethical, open placebos present no such issues. The benefits of trying an open placebo as a pain treatment go beyond immediate relief. Placebo trials also can teach us about our own propensity to experience placebo effects, and thus enhance our ability to judge the effectiveness of active medicine, and improve our awareness of pain patterns.
ZEEBO
is the world’s first branded placebo meant to help patients and clinicians become more aware of placebo versus other treatment effects. Through practice, pain sufferers and their health care providers using Zeebo will learn to produce placebo effects more skillfully. Firsthand experience of placebo effects can also change our understanding of
our own perception of pain by making the role of the brain a matter of everyday experience, rather than merely cognitive knowledge. And Zeebo comes with an elegant and easy-to-use tracking app designed to visualize and resonate placebo response triggered by taking a Zeebo pill for short-term symptom relief.
