“Does the placebo effect really work? » We've all been there, sitting in the waiting room surrounded by people coughing and spluttering all over you, probably making you worse rather than better. Then, half an hour after your appointment time, your name is called and you reach the safe (sanitary) shelter of the doctor's office. After a nudge and a nudge, and an “Aaaaahh!” » rather uncomfortable. with a popsicle stick halfway down your throat and a light illuminating the dark cavern of your esophagus, finally! A diagnosis! A prescription is written with the promise of better health in a week; so you go to the pharmacy to pick up the antibiotic that someone concocted in a lab, or at least that's what you're led to believe. What if this magic cure wasn't actually magic, nor really a medicine, but made from something as simple as sugar? it doesn’t matter what you are treated with; a real medicine or a sugar pill; the results should be the same. This is called the “placebo effect”. It is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as "a medicine or procedure prescribed for the psychological benefit of the patient rather than for physiological effect" and is frequently described as the power of the mind over the body. Besides sugar pills, studies have shown that salt water injections and even fake surgeries give results like a placebo effect. A placebo is most often explained using it as a medical example, but it explains many other phenomena such as hypnosis and pseudocyesis (phantom pregnancy) and even weight loss. Doctors and psychologists are not one hundred percent sure what is real... ... middle of paper ...... toms from their IBS. Automatically, the patients all agreed that it wouldn't work because it wasn't a real drug. The results were different, however, as 60% of participants reported that all or most of their IBS symptoms had disappeared. So even though we were told the pills might not have any effect, they still worked. (David Gorski. (2014))After the experiment was over, the patients were no longer given sugar pills and many reported that their symptoms had returned. They asked the experiment coordinators for more, but they could not provide them because they are not considered an official drug. (Kawotsatutlaka144000. (2014)) It has been argued in recent years that pills and placebo treatments should be available as medications, although many disagree claiming that doctors are abusing their authority by handing out drugs. fake drugs. However, is it really a fake medicine if it works?