It seems that following even a placebo treatment can do wonders for asthma patients

"Landep News"

It seems that following even a placebo treatment can do wonders for asthma patients

Asthma is a common chronic inflammatory disease and it is characterized by coughing, wheezing and shortness of breath. The main cause for which people become asthmatic is represented by a combination of genetic and environmental factors.
According to a new study, asthma can be treated with placebo pills. The study funded by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine was made by researchers at the Harvard Medical School in order to see whether asthma may be improved by the placebo effect.
What the researchers did was to recruit 39 patients who accused problems at the respiratory level, being diagnosed with asthma. The patients were requires to follow a treatment which lasted for 12 weeks and they were given either inhalers with albuterol (a common asthma treatment) or an inhaler which contained no medicine. The patients did not know which inhaler was which. Sometimes, they were also given sham acupuncture treatment, but they were told it was real, so they had no idea that they were actually following a placebo treatment.
The researchers found that when the patients stopped taking the treatment, they reported feeling much better than at the beginning, even though they had followed a placebo treatment. According to the results, it seems that their lung function improved by 20% after following treatment with albuterol, and by 7.5 percent in all three other cases. Still, the results demonstrate that the placebo effect is extremely powerful among people who suffer from asthma.
Given that the patients assessed their state of well-being in all cases, the difference reported between the times they were under treatment with the albuterol inhaler and the times they received the placebo inhaler were minimal. This means that they reported feeling better even if they had not taken any type of treatment for their asthma. According to the researchers, the patients involved in the study could not accurately predict whether they were on a placebo treatment or on a real one and this points towards the fact that the placebo effect is really important in improving the health of people who suffer from asthma.

Thank's for link:

Tweet