EAST LANSING, Mich. - The story is a common one: An ill person takes a pill they believe to be medication, when in reality it's nothing more than a sugar pill. The person gets better. How does this happen?
In his new book, Michigan State University physician Howard Brody explains that when someone takes a placebo, it helps to stimulate what he calls the "inner pharmacy" - that intricate interaction of mind and body that can heal when it appears no healing can be found.
In The Placebo Response: How You Can Release the Body's Inner Pharmacy for Better Health, Brody explains how this mind-body connection works, and also offers some practical advice on how people can harness this power.
The inner pharmacy is more than just taking a pill and feeling better, Brody said. Obviously it's not the chemical content of the pill that changes things, so what exactly is?
"Presumably, it's the entire context in which the treatment is being administered," said Brody, a practicing physician who also is an MSU professor of family practice. "We have inside ourselves the chemical substances that are healing chemical substances, and if the right buttons get pushed by our environment or by signals coming in from our environment, these chemical pathways get activated."
These signals can come in many forms, ranging from the way in which the patient and physician interact, to the control that a person feels he or she has over their illness and, ultimately, their life.
The second part of Brody's book focuses on these signals and how patients can learn to send them to themselves.
"The idea is the patient can actually take some control of this," he said. "You don't have to sit there and be a passive puppet while the physician pulls the strings. You actually have the power to do something about it."
And it's when you feel you have more control of the situation that it translates into better health, Brody said.
"Anything one can do to take more charge and feel less like a victim is going to help to kick in the inner pharmacy," he said.
One technique for "taking charge," a technique Brody uses in his private practice, is for the patient to do a personal inventory. That is, ask yourself what percentage of your life do you feel you're in charge of, and what percent of your life does the disease control?
If a patient makes a conscientious effort to increase control, the result is almost always going to be better health.
"The key is determining what one did to increase these feelings of control," Brody said. "If one week someone feels 30 percent in control of his or her life, and then the next week 35 percent, the person has to ask what was it that increased that percentage?"
To assist in this assessment, The Placebo Response, and an accompanying Web site, provide a diary that patients can use to keep track of what has worked and what hasn't.
Written with the general consumer in mind, The Placebo Response also presents a number of documented cases in which the healing of a patient, and sometimes the harming of a patient, all took place within that person. For example:
- A group of asthmatic children in Venezuela were exposed to the smell of vanilla whenever their medication was administered. After 15 days, most showed remarkable improvement in their lung function when exposed only to the vanilla aroma.
- A study showed that soldiers in World War II had significantly lower levels of pain then did civilians with the same injuries. The difference: For the soldier, the injury usually meant he was headed home; for the civilian, it was a catastrophic event.
- A group of high school students in Japan were brushed with the leaves of a harmless chestnut tree, but were told it was the leaves of the poison ivy-like lacquer tree. More than half of the students suffered a severe allergic reaction to the leaves.
Brody also is director of the MSU Center for Ethics and Humanities in the Life Sciences. He is the author of three other books on medical ethics, including The Healer's Power.