Tinnitus And The Placebo Effect

09:47

Tinnitus And The Placebo Effect

by Peter Vernezze

Type

talks

Activity

Meditation

Suitable for

Everyone

In this talk I look at the placebo effect and what it might have to do with living with tinnitus. I describe several well-known studies showing how beliefs and expectations can shape how we feel physically, including one involving an injection that turned out to be salt water. I then sketch one way to put this idea to use: keeping simple notes on what seems to make your tinnitus better or worse, and noticing the story you tell yourself about it. I invite you to try it as an experiment and see what happens. This content is educational and is not a substitute for one to one professional care.

Thought Record Practice Tinnitus Mind Body Connection Self Healing Beliefs Biofeedback Education

Meet your Teacher

Tucson, AZ, USA

Meet your Teacher

Tucson, AZ, USA

Transcript

So the placebo effect is probably known to most folks. It's this capacity of essentially inert medications or procedures to bring about results equal to those of placebo. Real medications and real procedures. It's. . . Been known for thousands of years actually. Research for much less than that, But a very substantial research base. And it's established beyond all hope. Reasonable doubt that it is a real thing. And what it testifies to is the capacity of the mind, The power of the mind. Too. Bring about little physical changes. So it's quite an interesting phenomenon to speculate about. Her latest book, The Mindful Body, Kind of reviews her history of researching the placebo effect. And I want to talk a little bit today about that. In general but specifically about what all this has to do with. Tinnitus. So in her book, Ellen Langer, Who's a psychologist at Harvard, Review some of her more famous studies. One of the more famous ones, Perhaps the most famous one, Is a study where they put a number of, I think they were all over 70 or 75 year olds, Um. . . I think it was just men in a house. And they had that house with. . . Old television shows and furniture and everything of two decades earlier. And they told the men that they should converse as if they were actually in that previous time frame and after I think it was a week You can check this out by yourself. After a week, All these physical signs improved. Better health, Better hearing. Not just psychological health, Which improved as well, But physical symptoms improved in a way that could not be explained by anything other than the capacity of the mind to influence the body. Another study, One I liked, Was a study where They told maids at hotels, They took two groups of maids, Told one of them that the exercise, I mean the work they were doing essentially was aerobic exercise in that they were getting, They didn't need to do any more exercise, So they were getting the equivalent of an hour and a half exercise a day. They sat them down and gave them psychoeducation about this, And another group they just didn't tell anything to, The control group. And after, Again, A certain period of time, Many of the markers of health improved among those who were told that their work was exercised as compared to those who weren't told this. No difference in their physical activity levels, Anything, Except what they believe. The power of what you believe is astounding. Know I can't even scratch the surface here but I will talk about this with respect to tinnitus because there is some interesting research along this lines in the 80s there was a paper and that there was some research working with lidocaine and it's shown to be effective in reducing tinnitus. And so they had a group of people who had gotten a lidocaine and told them they were going to get another injection. And gave him the injection, But in fact it was just a water or saline solution. Nonetheless, 40% of the people who got that salient solution reported Feeling significantly better, Reduced tinnitus sound. Based only on getting a. . . Salient solution. So the only thing that could explain it was their beliefs. About what was happening to them. The placebo effect is tremendously powerful and many medications and trials have a hard time beating placebos which is why one of the standards that they have to do is beat a placebo and a lot of them can't do that. There was, At last year's Tinnitus Conference, A presenter, I think it was Martin Jensen, Who went after one of the types of biofeedback that was shown to be very promising in reducing tinnitus and tinnitus distress. It had people being hooked up to all this equipment and having them work with their brainwaves and they could look on the screen and see what was happening. And this was showing real promise in reducing tinnitus distress. But what he did was hook up people, Did the exact same mechanism. But. . . Worked with brain waves that had nothing to do with knowing No one believed it had anything to do with tinnitus and had people work with these brain waves. And they got essentially the same results. As the people who were working with the brainwaves that influenced our perception of tinnitus. He speculated that it was all this expensive equipment and the feeling that you were getting some new technology that resulted in the reduction in perceived tinnitus and tinnitus distress. So this is something to be aware of in whatever treatment you're going. And what I want to kind of highlight here is not beware of the placebo effect. But actually how to utilize the placebo effect. It's such a powerful tool. We want to bring it to our condition. And this is something, This is essentially from Ellen Langer's book, The Mindful Body. She wants to have a tool where we could use the power of the placebo. In our own lives, In our own condition. I mean, One of the catches it's seen with placebos is that you had to be deceived in order for them to work, And there's a real big ethical issue in that, Right, Being deceived. If you tell people it seems the placebo doesn't work, But she points to some research where people knew they were getting a placebo and it was still effective. As the basis for a strategy to suggest if you're working with a any chronic condition to try this strategy. And I'm going to sketch it out here, But you might want to look in her book, The Mindful Body, To get the the full. . . Details of this method. It essentially involves kind of charting your symptoms over a period of time, Say a week or a couple weeks. Noticing what causes differences in the symptoms. You might notice a an activity causes an uptick in tinnitus or another activity causes it to Reduce or maybe some food or drink works either way. What we're really looking for is what reduces the tinnitus. We really don't want to increase tinnitus. If we can associate in our mind certain activities that reduce the tinnitus distress or seem to reduce the sound of the tinnitus. And it's really unimportant. Whether the activity does or does not reduce the distress. There's probably very little reason to believe what we do. Has much impact on the tinnitus. If we can tell ourselves the story that. . . Oh, This going for a walk almost reduces my tinnitus. And come to believe that, That's a very powerful tool in working with your tinnitus. So she sketches this as a way to bring the placebo effect into whatever condition you're working with. She doesn't mention tinnitus, But there's no reason why it wouldn't work with tinnitus too. Look for symptom variability. Try to determine the cause. And then use that information going forward. And what you're essentially doing in this case is creating your own placebo effect by telling yourself, Regardless of the evidence, You're not doing a scientific blind study on whether this has a positive impact on your tinnitus. You're just noticing, Oh, This impacts my tinnitus and running with it and seeing if doing on a regular basis can have an impact. Now what we know about the placebo effect and the power of the mind is that the story we tell of ourselves is incredibly important. If I can tell myself over time that an act or an activity or something decreases my tinnitus and come to believe that, This may have a very powerful effect on my perception of the tinnitus. And when it comes to tinnitus, What else is there except my perception of the tinnitus? So, That's kind of a sketch of the idea. Maybe that's enough for you to implement it. You might want to go to Ellen Langer's book, The Mindful Body, To get a little more clarity and specificity about how to work this. You know, Try it out. What do you got to lose?