Dr. Alia Crum

What's real is in the capsule.

If anything else happened because you believed you were getting a real pill or you were just

taking a pill, the act of taking a pill or the feeling of being cared for, like that's not real medicine.

So let's just subtract that out.

Okay.

Now what's interesting and people have caught on with is that in almost all of these trials, the placebo tends to work to some degree.

So let me, let me just translate this.

Yeah.

So it's really interesting and it's lots of different things.

So like a placebo, simply believing that you're taking a pain reliever relieves your pain.

Simply believing you're taking a sleep aid helps you fall asleep.

Placebos can calm your asthma, reduce your immune response.

lower your blood pressure, right?

And it's not just that these placebos make people say they feel better, but they're actually real neurobiological correlates.

So believing you're taking a real pain medication can release endogenous opioids in the brain.

Placebo Parkinson medications activate dopaminergic systems in the brain.

You can condition placebo immune responses, right?

So it begs the question, as you just asked, what is actually happening?

So obviously it's not the fake pill.

There's no magic in the sugar pill.