Choose your placebo wisely

I’m giving the Smashwords.com version y1 a light dusting while I wait to get d4 back from my editor, and I came across the article from Newsweek science writer Sharon Begley that inspired a fair amount of my plot. Begley took a hard look at multiple studies and concluded that for those with mild to moderate depression, anitdepressants were just expensive candy. In fairness her full report is considerably more nuanced, and well worth reading. It raised her to hero status in my mind. Those who make a living writing for publications that rely on advertising will seldom be found telling uncomfortable truths about products sold in the same pages.

As I reread her work today, a whole different aspect of her article struck me as odd. Placebos. What an odd concept. If you were doing a clinical study on the effectiveness of any medication, why not simply give half the people in the trial the medicine and tell the other half that they are not getting it. We all know why. People who think they are getting medicine sometimes get better based on belief alone. Real measurable illnesses can be cured by the power of belief, albeit not predictably or reliably. Of course that outcome needs to be removed from any study.

Doesn’t this strike anyone else as incredibly strange? The entire medical community and bulk of society accepts that a placebo can cure a physical illness. You’d think somebody out there might be working to develop better and more effective placebos.

As this line of reasoning wound its way through my brain, I realized that I already use  a lot of placebos to stay healthy. I just don’t call them that. I call them vitamins, which I continue to take in spite of reading that they are a waste of money and the average person gets all the vitamins they need from their diet. I call them immunity boosters, the things I take to fight off a cold even though evidence of their effectiveness is dubious as well.

Now that I think of it, my favorite placebo is a nice glass of red wine. Some might refer to this as self-medicating, but as far as I am concerned the wine is taken each evening to stave off heart problems. There is also the green tea I drink every day to ward off cancer (and because I like it) and the bit of dark chocolate I allow myself and oh yes the Greek yogurt that I love that does something, I forget what.  Maybe calcium for my bones? I think I need to be taking something to improve my memory. Does anything involving caramel and salt improve brain function?

Seriously, none of these things in moderation are hurting me a bit and I’m willing to bet they are helping my general health a little, just maybe not to the degree I think they are. It doesn’t matter. I’m healthy as can be and have been so for decades, and my firm belief that my indulgences and choices make me stronger is no doubt playing a part. The placebo effect is everywhere, not just in clinical trials. If used right, it’s a very good thing.

Lately I’ve found myself thirsty at night and I’ve started keeping a glass of water on my nightstand. I’m also not sleeping as well as I used to (getting older does that) and I’ve convinced myself that better hydration is the solution. Wake up at 3 a.m.? Don’t think about the project at work or trying to sell the house or worry about the kids. Take a big drink of water and go back to sleep. Water does put you to sleep, you know. At least I think it does. Apparently, that is what matters.

How things change: the eye of the beholder

Visit psychsearch.net

When I graduated from high school, apparently  homosexuality was listed as a mental disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual used by psychiatrists to diagnose mental conditions. I didn’t know it at the time, of course, because to the best of my knowledge there weren’t any homosexuals in my home town and there possibly weren’t even any in the whole state of Kansas.  It was a rare condition, my mother assured me.

Unbeknownst to me, there were also gay activists in 1974, and they pushed the American Psychiatric Association to remove it from the DSM. It was removed, and since then a lot a of new illnesses have been added. As edition five came out this spring, psychiatrists took a lot of grief for classing so many types of behavior as “illnesses.” For example, disruptive mood dysregulation disorder threatens to turn children with too many temper tantrums into those with a mental disorder and binge eating (defined as excessive eating 12 times in 3 months and I wonder if my ice cream habit puts me over the top here) is now an official mental illness.

On the one hand, classification as an illness does allow those who want help to get their insurance to pay for it, if they have insurance 🙂 . On the other hand, having your idiosyncrasies or your own areas for personal growth classed as a mental disorder could be life altering in negative ways as well.

So what of homosexuality as a form of mental illness? Well, a few months ago Saul Levin, an openly gay man, was named the  new American Psychiatric Association chief executive officer and medical director.

Things do change with time. In the case of Dr. Levin, I’m glad that they have and I wish him the best. In the case of the new mental illness referred to as “hoarding disorder” …… well, I prefer to still consider it one my more charming little eccentricities.

For more on how things change with time, visit my z2 blog here for thoughts on human trafficking and Broadway musicals. Also visit my x0 blog here for thoughts on veggie burgers, humor and empathy.

Depressed Toddlers? Really?

One of the villains in y1 is the zealous CFO of a pharmaceutical company who is anxious to reap the profits from over-medicating his new target demographic, children.  I did a fair amount of research on this subject because I wanted to make sure his tactics were believable, and also because I wanted to be careful not to malign the use of medicine when it was genuinely needed and beneficial.

It is true that by the time I finished writing y1, I personally found the vastly increased use of medication to control behavior and emotional issues in children to be disturbing. Every once in awhile, I still run across an article that makes me shudder. A friend recently sent me this article from Science Daily published in 2010. In a nutshell it discusses the idea that even toddlers can be depressed and it talks about the difficulty of the diagnosis because depressed preschoolers often act normal and may not even appear particularly sad.  However, researchers assure us, methods are being developed to ferret out those difficult to locate symptoms. Are you shuddering yet?