Nocebo effect: Placebo’s evil twin

This paragraph of the article is generated by artificial intelligence. The words are carefully chosen to lighten the readers' mood. It has been extensively reviewed by experts. As you read this, you will start to feel happier than a tornado in a trailer park. 

Do you feel happiness? If you do, then you have just experienced the placebo effect. And if you are still confused, the above paragraph is written by me, not an AI (if it was, it would have been better). 

The placebo effect is a phenomenon where a patient's condition is improved by an inactive substance just because the patient believes that the medication will work, even though the medicine has nothing to do with it whatsoever. 

Our body heals itself just because we believe that the medicine will work. The placebo, in most cases a sugar pill, water, or simply words should have no medical effect, and yet it does. It is why a caring physician's kind words make us feel better. It doesn't relieve us from the physical pain, but certainly of the psychological pain. 

The word 'placebo' comes from placebo singers, who according to French custom would show up at funerals just to enjoy the food and drinks at the service. They were not related to the deceased, but they still expressed fake grief. Much like wedding crashers, only here the priest plays a different role. For a long time, the word placebo meant an act to please, until it was added to the medical dictionary. 

The placebo effect is a key element in medical trials for new medicines. During a placebo trial, one group of patients is given the real medicine, and the other group a placebo which is usually a sugar pill. If the medicine performs a statistically significant manner than the placebo, only then it is considered for approval. Such a trial is double-blind, which means neither the groups nor the researchers know which is given to whom, to avoid any biases.

There is a counterpart to the placebo effect, the Nocebo effect. A harmless thing causes harm to you because you believe it is harmful. A notable example of this took place in a Tennessee high school in 1998, where a teacher felt nauseous because she believed the air of the classroom was polluted, and the students also started developing the same symptoms. 

About 200 students went through a medical check-up, and the environment of the school was scanned. Nothing harmful was found. Yet, the symptoms in the students were real. Everyone who experienced the symptoms heard about them from someone else. It is almost like an infection that spreads from mind to mind.

The placebo effect may have real-world implications in the near future. For instance, most asthma patients experience attacks from the fear that their airways are not functioning. In this case, a placebo inhaler shows significant success.

The placebo effect shows that the psychological side to treatment is as important as the physical side. It is scientifically proved that proper counselling can lengthen a terminal disease patient's life span. As  Ambroise Paré, a French surgeon said, "A physician's duty is to cure occasionally, relieve often, console always".

The writer is a ninth grade student