Placebo Effect May Help Treat Pain

Researchers applied heat to 15 healthy men's arms in order to gauge their pain threshold. Next, they treated the men's arms with two identical, inactive creams. But the researchers told the men that one of the creams was "an extremely effective painkiller" and that the other cream was a "control cream." Finally, the researchers applied heat to the treated areas of the arms to stimulate the sense of pain. When the men's arms were treated with the fake painkiller cream before being subjected to heat, they reported less pain than when their arms were treated with the control cream. In short, they were experiencing the placebo effect, just as the researchers had planned.

Falk Eippert - Germany's University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf. - WebMD