Embracing the Placebo Effect in Health Care: One Patient’s View

Embracing the Placebo Effect in Health Care: One Patient’s View

What’s up with placebo effect and do we embrace it? What is placebo effect? What is nocebo effect? Placebo Effect The placebo effect describes a beneficial effect, produced by a placebo drug or treatment, that cannot be attributed to the properties of the placebo itself, and must therefore be due to the patient’s belief in that treatment. Nocebo Effect In medicine, a nocebo reaction or response refers to harmful, unpleasant, or...

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Do Your Struggles Define You?

Do Your Struggles Define You?

This thought, or should I say question, crossed my mind as I was standing in the shower this morning and I spent the whole time while I was in the shower mulling over the answer. Before you proceed, what would your answer be to this question “right now”. As a plot spoiler, you may find that your thoughts change by the end of the post. We all have struggles at times in our lives. Sometimes they’re pretty insignificant and other...

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Healing Health Care | Are YOU Part of the Solution?

Healing Health Care | Are YOU Part of the Solution?

I’ve been walking around for months talking about the need for changes in the health care system and that I was taking action to do everything I could to “put the care back in health care” and to “heal the health care system”. Somebody looked me in the eye and asked me how I’d do it. Even after all these months of telling my stories and urging people to shift their beliefs away from the current paradigm of how...

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Positivity and Health | Do Your Thoughts Affect Your Health?

Positivity and Health | Do Your Thoughts Affect Your Health?

I was speaking with a colleague this week and he asked me to share my thoughts about how positivity affects health positively, so I started by asking myself a question: Is it possible that a positive attitude has a direct (positive) impact on your health? Most of us have heard about the power of positive thinking from a young age. Our parents would tell us “you can be anything that you want to be”, “don’t let anything stand...

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Can Empowered Patients Heal Healthcare?

Can Empowered Patients Heal Healthcare?

In last week’s blog, I shared my thoughts on what constitutes an empowered patient, then asked the following questions. So are you an empowered patient? Do you see how empowered patients (and health care practitioners that encourage their patients to become empowered) will heal the healthcare system? At the risk of screaming too loudly, here is my overriding thought. The empowered patient is the ONLY thing that will heal the healthcare system....

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