The Placebo Effect On
Your Blood Pressure...

And how to avoid being duped by it!

Lower blood pressure… we all want it, sometimes desperately. But how much can our needs and expectations influence the results of our treatment?

Blood pressure is a hard, physical fact, reported in precise numbers. Surely it’s not subject to forces of “mind over matter” like the placebo effect? (the tendency of any medication or treatment, even an inert or ineffective one, to exhibit results simply because the recipient believes that it will work – definition from Wiktionary.com)

The placebo effect is a surprisingly powerful mechanism. As just one small example, researchers have shown that people taking a placebo that they thought was a pain reliever caused the body to release endorphins as it would in response to a real pain killer. Similar findings are abundant.

So the placebo effect is more than capable of influencing not only our blood pressure but every aspect of our health and well-being. And to avoid being disappointed by it, or even worse, it’s important to know how and where it works.

When it comes to blood pressure the placebo effect can work in both positive and negative ways. Most of us are unable to simply “will” our blood pressure to go down. But a similar thing happens when our pressure drops in response to taking or doing something that we believe will have this effect.

We can see this classic placebo effect in action with popular blood pressure remedies. Most of us who struggle with high blood pressure have found ourselves excited by the results of a natural remedy at one time or another… only to be let down a month later when the effects inevitably wear off. But hey, natural remedies are like the proverbial bus; there’s always another one coming along any moment!

The placebo effect can also be negative. The frustrating “white-coat syndrome” is a good example of this. Blood pressure readings taken at the doctor’s are often much higher than your normal readings because of the stress and expectations of the medical setting. Some people become so sensitive to this white-coat syndrome that their negative expectations push readings to alarming extremes. This is the placebo effect in reverse.

Is there any problem with the placebo effect, at least when positive? Surely any reduction in blood pressure is for the better, even if it’s “only” driven by the mind?

Of course there is no obvious health risk from the placebo effect. The biggest problem is that its effects are only temporary and blood pressure that regularly rises and drops in response to random “remedies” is no effective treatment. In fact, erratic blood pressure can be even more dangerous than high but stabile pressure.

But the placebo effect can pose a more concrete risk and it’s to your pocketbook. Our natural tendency to attribute positive effects to useless remedies (and, let’s not forget, drugs too!) makes the health field a goldmine for unscrupulous marketers!

So how can you tell the difference between something potentially effective and that which is nothing but placebo effect inflated by marketers’ hot air? The final decision will always come down to personal judgment but here are a couple of things to look for…

Let’s look first at the technical side. Any health treatment or remedy with serious scientific merit will usually be subjected to “double-blind” testing. We know that the placebo effect allows your expectations to influence your results. But the effect is so powerful that even your subliminal responses to someone else’s behavior and expectations can influence your results.

The way to prevent this is through double-blind testing, whereby neither the subject nor the researcher knows who is getting the real thing or the substitute (often called the placebo). No study is ever conclusive on its own but double-blind testing shows that the matter has at least been tested scientifically. And it’s significant enough that most promoters will include it in their publicity so it’s something you should look out for.

Along with any scientific credentials, user feedback is also commonly used to promote health treatments and remedies. While customer comments were once commonly faked, their use is now strictly regulated by law and today they are by and large authentic. Nevertheless, marketers can still gain the upper hand by taking advantage of the placebo effect.

That’s because people are most likely to offer glowing reports of treatments or products in the early days of use when the placebo effect is at its peak. If you could check with the same people weeks or months later you would often get a much different story!

This makes long-term, follow-up reports from users extremely useful. Ideally, they would even include dates. For obvious reasons, such reports are rare, but where you find them they offer far better prospects for a treatment or product than the usual placebo-deluded cheerleading section they call “testimonials”.

A final way you can get conned by the placebo effect is in the guarantee. The duration of a guarantee should be long enough to outlast any possible placebo effect. How long is that? It can vary from a couple weeks to a couple months or more. But one thing is clear: the only guarantee in the standard 30-day term is that a lot of people will be left out-of-pocket with health remedies they can no longer return after the placebo effect wears off!

By the way, you should never expect (in fact, always suspect) any guarantee of your personal results. Look at it this way: in the entire history of health care nothing, not even the most successful medicine ever, has been 100% effective.

So whenever you see a guarantee of your individual results or claims like “works for everyone” or “99% effective” you can be sure that the only interest this promoter has is in making the next sale!

Of course there are many remedies to lower blood pressure that don’t involve special purchases at all. In fact, the best methods to lower blood pressure are completely free and available to all: healthy lifestyle changes.

Whatever methods, treatments or remedies you use to control your blood pressure, be aware that the placebo effect is always at work. Remedies without genuine and independent effectiveness (often proved by double-blind testing) are usually all placebo effect and are bound to disappoint you. But even the most rigorously proven treatments enjoy an extra boost from this powerful force of the mind.

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