Nir Eyal

So this explains the placebo effect.

It also explains the nocebo effect about how we can have subjective symptoms, pain, insomnia, anxiety, depression, IBS, so many of these maladies

turns out are highly affected by placebos here's a crazy new revelation that placebo effects we've known placebo effects are very effective at subjective perception what placebo effects can't do placebo effects can't fix a broken bone placebo effects can't cure cancer they're terrible at that but placebos are very good at subjective feelings so what we like to say is the difference between sickness is in the body illness is in the mind

Because all suffering is in the mind.

My interpretation of those signals that we talked about earlier, that 11 million bits of information, how I interpret those 50 bits of information, that's all up here.

Pain is not here or here.

All pain perception is up here.

And so what we found is that the placebo effect, believe it or not, two amazing things.

One is effective even if you know it's a placebo.

This is new.

This is the work of Ted Kaczek at Harvard.

And just a few years ago, he ran a study with people who were suffering from irritable bowel syndrome, and he gave them a bottle of pills.

And he said, this is a placebo.

It is a completely inert substance.

However, and here's the important part, it has been shown to alleviate symptoms of IBS in some people.

Now, just that anticipation, just that hint that this might be helpful, it turns out, produced an effect that was as effective as the leading IBS medication.

And after the study, people called Dr. Kaptchuk and told him, hey, Dr. Kaptchuk, I would love some of those placebo pills.

Can I get some more of them?

They were so effective.

And in fact, since that study, if you go on Amazon right now and you search for placebo pills, you will find them for sale.