The Era of Mind Control Opens Wide

 If I tell you I'm lying to you, does that make it no longer a lie? 

Open-label placebo appears to reduce premenstrual symptoms

Mar 2025, phys.org

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-03-placebo-premenstrual-symptoms.html#google_vignette

Open-label placebos (OLPs)—placebos that are provided with full transparency—have been shown to have positive effects on various complaints, including irritable bowel syndrome, chronic low back pain, and menopausal hot flashes.

Researchers in Switzerland set out to examine whether these OLPs could have a positive impact on premenstrual syndrome (PMS) symptoms.

150 women aged 18 to 45 years old who had PMS or premenstrual dysphoric disorder, between August 2018 and December 2020, were randomly allocated into three groups to 1. receive treatment as usual, 2. receive OLPs with no further explanation than that they were receiving placebos, or 3. receive OLPs in pill form with an explanation of what they were and why OLPs could potentially ease PMS symptoms.

• Treatment as usual reported a 33% reduction symptom intensity
• Placebo with no explanation reported a 50.4% reduction 
• Placebos provided twice a day for six weeks with an explanation resulted in a 79.3% reduction
• (Limitations: they advertised the trial as a study for a side-effect-free intervention for PMS, so they might have attracted participants who were more open to unconventional treatments; also the results were reliant on self-reporting)

via University of Basel, University Hospital Basel, Program in Placebo Studies at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center at Harvard, Boston Children’s Hospital: Efficacy of open-label placebos for premenstrual syndrome: a randomised controlled trial, BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine (2025). DOI: 10.1136/bmjebm-2024-112875

https://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjebm-2024-112875

Follow up:

"Only recently have researchers redefined it as the key to understanding the healing that arises from medical ritual, the context of treatment, the patient-provider relationship and the power of imagination, hope and expectation."

--Program in Placebo Studies at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center at Harvard Medical School

https://www.bidmc.org/research/research-by-department/medicine/general-medicine-research/program-in-placebo-studies

Also this, full-meta-, one of their research categories:

"Investigating the neurobiology of physicians while they treat patients." (This ascends to the meta-level of Nicolas Langlitz' Chimpanzee Culture Wars 2020 [link]

Read further: Beyond Belief: Exploring the connection between personal beliefs and physical health, 2013 [pdf]

Image credit: AI Art - Hypnotized Man Staring - 2024