16th June
Good morning!
Most of us have heard of the Placebo effect, haven’t we?
The term Placebo is derived from Latin. Placēbō, means “I shall please”, which originates from placeō, which means “I please”.
We come across this Placebo effect very often in medicine. Placebo effect is a remarkable phenomenon in which a placebo — an inactive substance like sugar, distilled water, or saline solution — can sometimes improve a patient’s condition simply because the person has the expectation, the belief or the trust that it will be helpful. Expectation to heal plays a potent role in the placebo effect. The more a person believes they are going to benefit from a treatment, the more likely it is that they will experience a benefit.
As a doctor, I have seen this Placebo effect very often, especially in seemingly incurable diseases like Cancer. I know of numerous examples of patients , who were written off by doctors, but survived by taking some obscure treatments like wheatgrass or Amla or just trusting their spiritual gurus. I honestly believe that this cure is the result of this Trust.

Placebo is known pretty well by non medicos , but have you heard about the Nocebo effect ?
The term nocebo (Latin nocēbō, “I shall harm”, from noceō, “I harm”) was coined by Walter Kennedy in 1961 to denote the counterpart to the use of placebo.
Nocebo is the exact opposite of Placebo. Here , the person believes that a particular treatment is going to harm him/ her and if this belief is very strong, then this person experiences all sorts of side effects from the treatment, simply because he / she expects that to happen.

In short, the outcome of any treatment depends greatly on the patient’s attitude towards the treatment. If the attitude is positive, we get positive results ; but if there is negative expectation , it’s very likely that the outcome would be negative.

Don’t you think this is true with everything in Life ? If we believe and Trust that things will turn out well, they do ! On the other hand, if we are anxious and fearful and pessimistic ; if we strongly believe that everything is going to go wrong, then of course, things deteriorate.

In the present scenario, what is your attitude ? I do hope you choose to believe and Trust that everything will be alright in the end.