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Your mind can be a powerful healing tool when given the chance. The idea that your brain can convince your body a fake treatment is the real thing — the so-called placebo effect — and thus stimulate healing has been around for millennia. Now science has found that under the right circumstances, a placebo can be just as effective as traditional treatments.

Research on the placebo effect has the potential to revitalize the art of medicine and discuss ethical issues relating to the use of placebo interventions in clinical practice and in research on the placebo effect. We hope that this preface to developing a theory of the placebo effect will provoke debate and alternative conceptualizations and theoretical hypotheses in service of promoting a deeper and more fruitful understanding of this elusive phenomenon.

This study tested whether placebo-induced expectancies can be harnessed to improve individuals’ internal emotion regulation attempts.

Pharmacological studies indicate that placebos mimic the action of active treatments and promote the endogenous release of opioids and nonopioids in both humans and animals.

Recent research on the placebo effect only confirms how powerful it can be — and that the benefits of a placebo treatment aren't just "all in your head." Measurable physiological changes can be observed in those taking a placebo, similar to those observed among people taking effective medications. In particular, blood pressure, heart rate, and various blood test results have been shown to change among subsets of research subjects who responded to a placebo.

Although substantial progress has been made in understanding placebo effects, considerable scientific work remains to be done in both laboratory experiments and translational clinical trial research, with the ultimate aim of harnessing placebo effects to improve patient care.