You know all those thousands of clinical trials conducted over the last few decades comparing pharmaceuticals to placebo pills? Well, it turns out all those studies must now be completely thrown out as utterly non-scientific. And why? Because the placebos used in the studies weren't really placebos at all, rendering the studies scientifically invalid.
This is the conclusion from researchers at the University of California who published their findings in the October issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine. They reviewed 167 placebo-controlled trials published in peer-reviewed medical journals in 2008 and 2009 and found that 92 percent of those trials never even described the ingredients of their placebo pills.
Why is this important? Because placebo pills are supposed to be inert. But nothing is inert, it turns out. Even so-called "sugar pills" contain sugar, obviously. And sugar isn't inert. If you're running a clinical trial on diabetics, testing the effectiveness of a diabetes drug versus a placebo then obviously your clinical trial is going to make the diabetes drug look better than placebo if you use sugar pills as your placebo.
Some placebo pills use olive oil which may actually improve heart health. Other placebo pills use partially-hydrogenated oils which harm heart health. Yet only 8 percent of clinical trials bothered to list the placebo ingredients at all!
Stay with me on this placebo issue... because it gets even more bizarre...
Fresh food that lasts from eFoods Direct (Ad)
Live Superfoods
Print this page
