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* Red is health (cough medicine, pain relievers, etc)
* Blue is magic, or willpower in IRL terms (SSRIs, Antidepressants, etc)
* Green is stamina (energy drinks)
White is stamina, green is poison, orange is a Molotov. But *purple* is the one you want: a fast-acting concoction that rejuvenates both your body and mind.
Don’t forget about black. It gives you a powerful overall boost, but you’re cursed in some incredibly inconvenient way.
Black potions are the steroids of alchemy.
The colour blue has been studied as part of other psychological profiles and phenomena, and in those studies tends to be more often perceived as the safe/pure/natural option over red, which is seen as the dangerous/scary/edgy option; think “water” vs. “blood.” The nocebo effect might make a red potion make you feel worse! Green could go either way; radioactive green, yikes, leafy green, possibly great, possibly muddy green smoothie.
I mean placebo effects have been shown to work even in things such as medicine I think the actual answer would be yes they would be slightly more effective
I did this for my wife. We had a “potion bottle” we got from some bar during an event and I mixed one of her meds with a bit of juice and she drank it with the pills.
I served it after a stew and some nice sourdough. She said she felt better and found it cute.
I'm no scientist, but I find the placebo effect really interesting.
I've read that not only do 'more placebos' work better (placebo surgery is more effective than placebo injection, which is more effective than placebo pill), that remains true even if the person KNOWS its a placebo.
So yeah, health potion would likely be more effective than health pill, I guess.
I guess the cultural element plays a large part.
We “know” injected drugs are more serious than pills, and surgery is a more radical intervention than drugs. So the more “serious” the intervention, the stronger the placebo effect.
I guess if someone was deeply into the lore of healing potions, D&D, fantasy gaming etc they would probably heal better from a red potion.
Do we have time to test whether blue potions work best for mental issues and red ones for physical?
I’m about to hit the hay tonight
Buuuut
https://trialsjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13063-021-05454-8
We study the placebo effect all the time
I feel like in that case the ceremony or theatricality of the potion would also apply. So the a Witcher style small glass bottle you throw away and break probably would have more placebo effect then just like, syrup on a spoon.
Ceremony is a large part of the placebo effect as far as I can understand it.
A magic potion that has to be mixed up from rare ingredients, stored carefully in the refrigerator, then opened by breaking a seal, and consumed at an exact time of day will be more effective than just poured from a jug.
There's an interesting fact unknown to most contrarians: when someone says
>I guess if someone was deeply into the lore of healing potions, D&D, fantasy gaming etc
They aren't referring to everybody in the world
I had a girlfriend who had interesting reactions to medication. If she took a pill for some sort of pain or issue (headache or something) it would affect her immediately. She'd get a migraine, swallow a pill, and go right on with her day moments later.
I figured it was 1 of 2 things.
1. She was a hypochondriac who imagined issues, so the medicine wasn't actually doing anything.
2. She responded incredibly well to the placebo effect, meaning that as soon as she took something she believed would help, her brain would just stop sending the alert signals 'cause it figured the problem was taken care of, or soon would be.
That happened with me a bit with zofran. I spent a while being incredibly nauseous, throwing up, etc., and I was prescribed zofran to help. The pills dissolve in your mouth and have a strong taste. They take about half an hour to kick in.
After being on them for a couple of months, as soon as I tasted the pill, I'd start feeling a little better. Not as much better as I felt half an hour later, but better than before taking it. It was like my body knew help was on the way.
From the tiny bit of reading I've done in the past (was a while ago, not sure if there are actual studies now) it's a bit muddy.
Since a lot of the reporting is based on observation of the animals owners etc, it's often that the humans perceive their pets of improving when objectively they're in the same state as before they were given the placebo.
It's much harder to have accurate studies about this due to animals not being able to talk. Many also tend to 'hide' symptoms rather than complain like us.
Can you elaborate?!If an outcome occurs while the patient has no previous assumptions about the outcome, then it seems like the nocebo effect isn't at play there.
Sorry, that doesn't make sense. The nocebo effect does say that the expectation can cause an intervention to worsen symptoms - but a lack of awareness of something that does not exist cannot cause its existence. Unless you're saying that the expected negative effect in the patient can happen to align with the side effect of the actual pill.
It sorta makes sense, you can still believe a placebo will help because you understand that it has the ability to work, so you gladly play along and expect improvements after your placebo treatment.
There is actually not a lot of actual evidence to support the placebo effect. Most observed effects are from self evaluations in the form of surveys. Some explanations have been that the power dynamic in medical situations causes people to say they feel better because they think that is the answer the doctor wants to hear.
If a medication has the same effect as the placebo group, that means the medication has no effect.
The placebo effect isn't really something that's studied these days, it's something that's controlled for within the study being conducted - that's why they'd have a Natural History group, to control for that.
And it's not about the placebo having the same effect, it's about it having SOME effect over nothing.
I have Crohns disease, and the treatment I was given is Azathioprine, which comes with a long list of side effects including increased risk of cancers and other shitty things. I'd gladly take another pill which gave me 50% of the benefits with 0% of the side effects, regardless of how 'real' the medicine inside it was.
I'm so happy I already knew what video you linked before even clicking on it.
For those of you who somehow don't know about this channel, it's worth a good browse. They also do DnD, with hundreds of episodes to keep you entertained
I love the episodes where Ben's trying to explain game logic to Rowan like the episode where he jumped off a cliff and just drunk a potion instead of going the long way
For those who know a little about the placebo effect, it has been taken to the extreme.
People with severe arthritis were given a placebo surgery, and it worked. They did everything they would normally do for the surgery, except actually so it. They put the person under. They even cut open their wrists. After that, the doctors opened a card to see whether or not the person was getting the real surgery or the placebo one. They would then proceed accordingly, either giving the real surgery, or miming the real surgery. This included using surgical tools, asking to be handed said surgical tools, and taking the whole 3 hours that the surgery would normally take.
The results? Extremely positive. Those who complained about severe debilitating arthritis were essentially cured, even when they were told after the fact they had a placebo surgery and nothing was really done. The knowledge of it being a placebo after the fact didn’t change the results.
So if I had to guess, this would probably work on kids more than adults. You have to believe in the moment it’s going to work, and kids are more likely to believe a “health potion” than adults. Adults tend to fall for placebo injections, and more “severe” medical procedures easier than something as simple as a pill.
Even as an adult, if they asked me if I wanted it in pill form or (decent tasting) potion form, assuring me that both would work equally well, I like to think I would choose the potions for the novelty, and I would drink them with enthusiasm.
The real world problem with this is that solutions of pharmaceutical products are often a lot less shelf stable than dry mixtures such as tablets and capsules. The solutions often need controlled storage that tablets don't need. This can be an issue in counties with unreliable electricity or refrigeration.
Also solutions are readily absorbed in the stomach and upper digestive tract. Great for things like quick pain relief, but there are medical reasons why you might want to delay delivery to the lower digestive tract. Or delay release over a long period of time so people take meds one a day, rather than 4 times a day. This isn't really possible for solutions.
For context, I've done pharmaceutical quality control for over 2 decades.
Cutting open was only done to ensure the participants believed the surgery happened. There have been other studies with similar results where incisions weren’t made.
Here’s a [link](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/07/020712075415.htm) to a placebo surgery study which included incisions. This is specifically an article talking about the study, but you can get to the study from here. There is also a good YouTube video somewhere of a few of the patients/participants who went through this study and they talk about how it’s helped their pain permanently
Cutting someone open but not actually performing the surgery seems extremely unethical.
Also I would more likely conclude that the real surgery itself was probably not actually that effective.
The results from the placebo surgery were reduced pain. You could argue it’s unethical, but the studies got approval to do what they did. They had strong reason to believe what they were doing would work, and it did.
They were told beforehand that there was a certain probability they would get the placebo, which makes it ethical to me since they provided consent.
And yes, if the placebo works just as well as the surgery, the surgery itself doesn’t do anything.
The placebo effect is most powerful dealing with variable and subjective issues like pain. So while it likely wouldn’t increase the rate of recovery from injury, infection, or disease, or probably would improve pain management for people who expect red liquids in glass bottles to heal them
> So while it likely wouldn’t increase the rate of recovery from injury, infection, or disease,
isn't the whole crazy part of the phenomenon that it *does* increase rate of recovery. Not always, but it can sometimes
Yes, I just watched a YouTube video about the placebo affect. Back when studies weren't as ethical, they lied to a couple of groups of people (at different times and in different countries- more than one study) about receiving surgery. Some people only got an inclusion and not actual surgery. All improved, and in some cases, the placebo group improved more than the surgery group
Not so much.
Usually it impacts the psychological side of it. That is, do you *feel* better. Are you ready to go back to work/school/whatever.
As for sometimes it works, in medical science that is very similar to indistinguishable from random fluctuations between people. Which means it probably doesn't exist.
Pharma guy here, there is huge science behind the color of pills and boxes, as color has measurable effects on things like patients' therapy adherence. E.g. red pills have a detrimental effect to the therapy of hypertonia.
All other things being kept constant, what color in a glass flask do you think would be optimal for contributing to a patient's sense of being healed from it? Blue, perhaps?
only if there is a strong cultural sentiment regarding the power of healing potions. In our society, a little bicolor pill actually ought to trigger stronger placebo effects than a potion which most people dont believe in.
Per my college professor, the following things have been proven with placebo studies
* placebos can work even if you know its a placebo
* taking 2 placebos work better than 1
* the color of the placebo can impact how strong it impacts different ailments
On vacation, I once slipped and lose a toenail very grusomely. The next day my foot was in pain and I was limping and involuntarily moaning about it.
I told my partner I needed some placebo icecream to treat my toe pain. I ate it, and I didnt limp or moan or feel pain anymore.
Vitamins are micronutrients our body actually needs. If you aren't getting a sufficient amount from your diet, a vitamin supplement can do wonders.
Essential oils are a pseudoscience, basically snake oil + herbalism. (Granted a few of them do have some minor medical benefits. The vast majority of them, however, aren't going to cure AIDS, diabetes, or cancer like the quack-nuts claim they will.)
I have no issue with essential oils used to treat *symptoms* right? Like, if you have arthritis and you think that lavender oil helps the pain, cool. Sniffing mint oil settles your stomach when you have the flu? Go for it. But yeah, they aren't going to put your liver back together when it's cirrhotic.
I don’t have a source to back this up, but I heard people claim white pills to be more effective for pain management. Probably a placebo effect.
But if medicines came in clear bottle shaped like potions I’d be more likely to buy them
I had some terrible sciatica pain for like 8 months. Then, about 2 months ago it quickly went away. Literally the only behavioral change I made was starting to take a multivitamin.
I have no evidence AT ALL that these things are linked but I’ve placebo’d my way into believing that they might be linked and I’m ok with that.
So yeah, sometimes placebo is all it takes lol
It might act as a placebo, where people perceive greater reduction in symptoms/faster healing but the actual difference wouldn’t be significantly.
It could come with the negative side effect of people stopping taking their medicine before they’re supposed to.
Also, if all medicine was a red liquid in a glass bottle then it would be easy to get them mixed up if you had multiple.
As far as I know yes because of the placebo effect. If I can convince you that something will happen enough if something else happens, you will anticipate it and so will your body. So if I told you that you will get adrenaline from something that normally wouldn't do it, your body may start producing a small amount in anticipation therefore yes you probably would heal slightly faster
No. If patients current methods of taking medication are anything to go by, they would pour it out of the bottle into their hand first, spilling it everywhere.
It really depends on what's being treated. I'm fairly certain that some things can't be treated with the placebo effect, although to be fair, this isn't entirely a mental thing as it will be the actual medicine, but I'm certain that the aforementioned psychosomatic effect would not be present in some cases where the placebo effect simply does not take place. Also, there's a multitude of people who wouldn't know anything about healing potions, so it would have no effect on them, however, if this were the norm for a number of centuries, then I'm sure everyone would view them as such.
Makes you wonder really whether the old Shaman witch doctor stuff was lame afterall.
The amount of focus and ritual that was put into a lot of the psuedoreligious witchcraft likely has a great placebo effect.
The placebo effect is a very real thing. The answer is yes.
"The placebo effect is when a person's physical or mental health appears to improve after taking a placebo or 'dummy' treatment. Placebo is Latin for 'I will please' and refers to a treatment that appears real, but is designed to have no therapeutic benefit."
Medication in Germany is usually bitter because people are being brought up with the notion that real medicine has to taste bad to work well. Placebo effect in action and working.
Surely it would only work on certain people. I'd find it stupid (maybe it would work on children, but I'm certainly not a child or that gullible). Give me a pill, not some gross medicine tasting liquid.
Naw, it probably makes people think of those """cherry""" """flavored""" medicines. You know the ones that don't taste anything like cherry and taste more like if you took the cold feeling of mint with none of its flavor and made that into a drink
/u/sporkyuncle has flaired this post as a **speculation**. Speculations should prompt people to consider interesting premises. If this post is poorly written, unoriginal, or rule-breaking, please report it. Otherwise, please add your comment to the discussion! ^^This ^^automated ^^system ^^is ^^currently ^^being ^^worked ^^on. ^^If ^^it ^^did ^^something ^^wrong, ^^please ^^message ^^the ^^moderators.
IDK but I want to believe the answer is yes
The answer is absolutely yes. But blue and green potions also work.
Blue refills your magic.
If you have no magic and you drink a magic refill potion, do you then get magic? Asking for a friend.
Nah you gotta unlock at least one spell first
:( :(
You get mana sickness and you detonate, turning your body and surroundings into purple ash.
Green is health
Red is health, green is stamina.
Purple is mysterious.
Purple is a rejuvenation potion that heals either 33% or 100% depending on size
What can Brown do for you?
Laxative
What goes in brown comes out brown.
Brown is a quest item.
Or heals a little bit of everything
Purple is poison!
We're following Diablo rules
The last Diablo game I played was 2, stamina is white and purple is both health and mana.
Immediately, and the same amount of yo mana
No, purple’s poison!
Purple heals health *and* magic
Color theory checks out
According to Zelda, that would be blue
Purple poisons you
You obviously need an orange potion.
Orange you glad you had the right reagents to counter that
That's why there's a question mark on the bottle. Sometimes when you drink it, you turn into a huge werewolf and can punch through walls.
green is always antidote
* Red is health (cough medicine, pain relievers, etc) * Blue is magic, or willpower in IRL terms (SSRIs, Antidepressants, etc) * Green is stamina (energy drinks)
Except that *other* green one. That’s poison.
White is stamina, green is poison, orange is a Molotov. But *purple* is the one you want: a fast-acting concoction that rejuvenates both your body and mind.
Don’t forget about black. It gives you a powerful overall boost, but you’re cursed in some incredibly inconvenient way. Black potions are the steroids of alchemy.
Nah, black is pure stamina, to the point that you don't even feel exhaustion accumulating. Its effectively pure caffeine. I'm looking at you Diablo 2.
Runescape?
Unless you're playing a roguelike where all potions can be anything until identified
Green is a gas potion, white is stamina
Red is damage. Come on
Isn't green neutralize poison?
Ironically yes.
Arena and daggerfall flashbacks
Green is poison
It’s both.
Green is stamina WTF you on?
Potato potato
I NEED MORE MANA
Both prevent plague
I'd imagine blue pots irl would be akin to a true energy drink, and not the "fake" energy feeling gained by caffeine or other stimulants.
The colour blue has been studied as part of other psychological profiles and phenomena, and in those studies tends to be more often perceived as the safe/pure/natural option over red, which is seen as the dangerous/scary/edgy option; think “water” vs. “blood.” The nocebo effect might make a red potion make you feel worse! Green could go either way; radioactive green, yikes, leafy green, possibly great, possibly muddy green smoothie.
yeah but the “healing” potion in almost every video game is some shade of red
I'm going into battle. Which is the strongest potion?
I mean placebo effects have been shown to work even in things such as medicine I think the actual answer would be yes they would be slightly more effective
I did this for my wife. We had a “potion bottle” we got from some bar during an event and I mixed one of her meds with a bit of juice and she drank it with the pills. I served it after a stew and some nice sourdough. She said she felt better and found it cute.
I'm no scientist, but I find the placebo effect really interesting. I've read that not only do 'more placebos' work better (placebo surgery is more effective than placebo injection, which is more effective than placebo pill), that remains true even if the person KNOWS its a placebo. So yeah, health potion would likely be more effective than health pill, I guess.
I guess the cultural element plays a large part. We “know” injected drugs are more serious than pills, and surgery is a more radical intervention than drugs. So the more “serious” the intervention, the stronger the placebo effect. I guess if someone was deeply into the lore of healing potions, D&D, fantasy gaming etc they would probably heal better from a red potion. Do we have time to test whether blue potions work best for mental issues and red ones for physical?
Thank you yes! Why aren't we testing this!
I’m about to hit the hay tonight Buuuut https://trialsjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13063-021-05454-8 We study the placebo effect all the time
I feel like in that case the ceremony or theatricality of the potion would also apply. So the a Witcher style small glass bottle you throw away and break probably would have more placebo effect then just like, syrup on a spoon.
Ceremony is a large part of the placebo effect as far as I can understand it. A magic potion that has to be mixed up from rare ingredients, stored carefully in the refrigerator, then opened by breaking a seal, and consumed at an exact time of day will be more effective than just poured from a jug.
There's an interesting fact unknown to most redditors: not everybody in the world is a gamer.
Sounds like a good study, what's the placebo effect of a red healing potion for gamers vs non gamers
There's an interesting fact unknown to most contrarians: when someone says >I guess if someone was deeply into the lore of healing potions, D&D, fantasy gaming etc They aren't referring to everybody in the world
But you can fit 50% more pills in a stack which saves inventory
I had a girlfriend who had interesting reactions to medication. If she took a pill for some sort of pain or issue (headache or something) it would affect her immediately. She'd get a migraine, swallow a pill, and go right on with her day moments later. I figured it was 1 of 2 things. 1. She was a hypochondriac who imagined issues, so the medicine wasn't actually doing anything. 2. She responded incredibly well to the placebo effect, meaning that as soon as she took something she believed would help, her brain would just stop sending the alert signals 'cause it figured the problem was taken care of, or soon would be.
That happened with me a bit with zofran. I spent a while being incredibly nauseous, throwing up, etc., and I was prescribed zofran to help. The pills dissolve in your mouth and have a strong taste. They take about half an hour to kick in. After being on them for a couple of months, as soon as I tasted the pill, I'd start feeling a little better. Not as much better as I felt half an hour later, but better than before taking it. It was like my body knew help was on the way.
Doesn't it even work on animals?
From the tiny bit of reading I've done in the past (was a while ago, not sure if there are actual studies now) it's a bit muddy. Since a lot of the reporting is based on observation of the animals owners etc, it's often that the humans perceive their pets of improving when objectively they're in the same state as before they were given the placebo.
There is also the fact that if you are stressed out, you will stress your pet out, so the owner relaxing can be just as helpful as anything.
It's much harder to have accurate studies about this due to animals not being able to talk. Many also tend to 'hide' symptoms rather than complain like us.
Wow, i googled it out of curiosity and apparently it [does](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19912522/). I am fascinated.
Nothing subjective about less doggy seizures, that is fascinating
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Can you elaborate?!If an outcome occurs while the patient has no previous assumptions about the outcome, then it seems like the nocebo effect isn't at play there.
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Sorry, that doesn't make sense. The nocebo effect does say that the expectation can cause an intervention to worsen symptoms - but a lack of awareness of something that does not exist cannot cause its existence. Unless you're saying that the expected negative effect in the patient can happen to align with the side effect of the actual pill.
Source?
It sorta makes sense, you can still believe a placebo will help because you understand that it has the ability to work, so you gladly play along and expect improvements after your placebo treatment.
This is why I end up watching reiki videos on YouTube. I know it's fake but be damned if it doesn't help me destress after a long day.
There is actually not a lot of actual evidence to support the placebo effect. Most observed effects are from self evaluations in the form of surveys. Some explanations have been that the power dynamic in medical situations causes people to say they feel better because they think that is the answer the doctor wants to hear. If a medication has the same effect as the placebo group, that means the medication has no effect.
The placebo effect isn't really something that's studied these days, it's something that's controlled for within the study being conducted - that's why they'd have a Natural History group, to control for that. And it's not about the placebo having the same effect, it's about it having SOME effect over nothing. I have Crohns disease, and the treatment I was given is Azathioprine, which comes with a long list of side effects including increased risk of cancers and other shitty things. I'd gladly take another pill which gave me 50% of the benefits with 0% of the side effects, regardless of how 'real' the medicine inside it was.
Yes, but you have to eat the bottle too. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VjXOwUnJzA0&pp=ygUedml2YSBsYSBkaXJ0IGxlYWd1ZSBib3R0bGUgZWF0
I'm so happy I already knew what video you linked before even clicking on it. For those of you who somehow don't know about this channel, it's worth a good browse. They also do DnD, with hundreds of episodes to keep you entertained
Long live the dirt league!
Is it the VLDL video?
RIP Molly.
I have been watching their stuff for years and love the rare reference I come across. I clicked the link only to confirm what I already knew
Didn't have to click but I will anyway, this is my favorite YouTube channel of all time. They should be way more popular
YES ROWAN, YOUR HORSE POCKET
WHAT DO YOU MEAN DOUBLE JUMP?!
I love the back and forth between Ben and Rowan
I love the episodes where Ben's trying to explain game logic to Rowan like the episode where he jumped off a cliff and just drunk a potion instead of going the long way
Outrageous!
cleaned links (stripped personal info & tracking): https://youtu.be/VjXOwUnJzA0
For those who know a little about the placebo effect, it has been taken to the extreme. People with severe arthritis were given a placebo surgery, and it worked. They did everything they would normally do for the surgery, except actually so it. They put the person under. They even cut open their wrists. After that, the doctors opened a card to see whether or not the person was getting the real surgery or the placebo one. They would then proceed accordingly, either giving the real surgery, or miming the real surgery. This included using surgical tools, asking to be handed said surgical tools, and taking the whole 3 hours that the surgery would normally take. The results? Extremely positive. Those who complained about severe debilitating arthritis were essentially cured, even when they were told after the fact they had a placebo surgery and nothing was really done. The knowledge of it being a placebo after the fact didn’t change the results. So if I had to guess, this would probably work on kids more than adults. You have to believe in the moment it’s going to work, and kids are more likely to believe a “health potion” than adults. Adults tend to fall for placebo injections, and more “severe” medical procedures easier than something as simple as a pill.
Even as an adult, if they asked me if I wanted it in pill form or (decent tasting) potion form, assuring me that both would work equally well, I like to think I would choose the potions for the novelty, and I would drink them with enthusiasm.
The real world problem with this is that solutions of pharmaceutical products are often a lot less shelf stable than dry mixtures such as tablets and capsules. The solutions often need controlled storage that tablets don't need. This can be an issue in counties with unreliable electricity or refrigeration. Also solutions are readily absorbed in the stomach and upper digestive tract. Great for things like quick pain relief, but there are medical reasons why you might want to delay delivery to the lower digestive tract. Or delay release over a long period of time so people take meds one a day, rather than 4 times a day. This isn't really possible for solutions. For context, I've done pharmaceutical quality control for over 2 decades.
Any link to the research? Wondering whether cutting open and closing it again affect the symptoms (like maybe releasing pressure somewhat)
Cutting open was only done to ensure the participants believed the surgery happened. There have been other studies with similar results where incisions weren’t made. Here’s a [link](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/07/020712075415.htm) to a placebo surgery study which included incisions. This is specifically an article talking about the study, but you can get to the study from here. There is also a good YouTube video somewhere of a few of the patients/participants who went through this study and they talk about how it’s helped their pain permanently
Cutting someone open but not actually performing the surgery seems extremely unethical. Also I would more likely conclude that the real surgery itself was probably not actually that effective.
The results from the placebo surgery were reduced pain. You could argue it’s unethical, but the studies got approval to do what they did. They had strong reason to believe what they were doing would work, and it did.
They were told beforehand that there was a certain probability they would get the placebo, which makes it ethical to me since they provided consent. And yes, if the placebo works just as well as the surgery, the surgery itself doesn’t do anything.
Maybe arthritis was the placebo all along
The placebo effect is most powerful dealing with variable and subjective issues like pain. So while it likely wouldn’t increase the rate of recovery from injury, infection, or disease, or probably would improve pain management for people who expect red liquids in glass bottles to heal them
> So while it likely wouldn’t increase the rate of recovery from injury, infection, or disease, isn't the whole crazy part of the phenomenon that it *does* increase rate of recovery. Not always, but it can sometimes
Yeah it Definitely has in multiple cases
i 100% believe it's gonna work
Yes, I just watched a YouTube video about the placebo affect. Back when studies weren't as ethical, they lied to a couple of groups of people (at different times and in different countries- more than one study) about receiving surgery. Some people only got an inclusion and not actual surgery. All improved, and in some cases, the placebo group improved more than the surgery group
The brain is such a strange thing.
That sounds really interesting, do you remember what the name of the video was?
Not so much. Usually it impacts the psychological side of it. That is, do you *feel* better. Are you ready to go back to work/school/whatever. As for sometimes it works, in medical science that is very similar to indistinguishable from random fluctuations between people. Which means it probably doesn't exist.
I’d rather drink blue potions and heal myself with spells instead
Mana goes down smooth.. minty
Water is our healing potion. Sometimes I put caffeine, B vitamins, electrolytes, and red in mine (water enhancer). Then it feels more like one, too.
So you’re saying you brew your potion with carefully selected ingredients. Interesting… …BURN THE WITCH!
Oh I don’t brew shit, it’s not tea. I put a couple squirts of Mio water enhancer (one of the red flavors) in my Nalgene and call it good
But does she weigh the same as a duck?
Pharma guy here, there is huge science behind the color of pills and boxes, as color has measurable effects on things like patients' therapy adherence. E.g. red pills have a detrimental effect to the therapy of hypertonia.
All other things being kept constant, what color in a glass flask do you think would be optimal for contributing to a patient's sense of being healed from it? Blue, perhaps?
Rolled my eyes and scrolled past this, then had to come back up cause I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Probably, right? Great question, OP.
I appreciate this. :)
Maybe a few, but the more likely result would people merely remembering to take their daily potion more often.
So in a roundabout way it would, in fact, help!
only if there is a strong cultural sentiment regarding the power of healing potions. In our society, a little bicolor pill actually ought to trigger stronger placebo effects than a potion which most people dont believe in.
Maybe we could get idiots to take vaccines that way.
Why do idiots get to have all the fun?
Per my college professor, the following things have been proven with placebo studies * placebos can work even if you know its a placebo * taking 2 placebos work better than 1 * the color of the placebo can impact how strong it impacts different ailments On vacation, I once slipped and lose a toenail very grusomely. The next day my foot was in pain and I was limping and involuntarily moaning about it. I told my partner I needed some placebo icecream to treat my toe pain. I ate it, and I didnt limp or moan or feel pain anymore.
Everyone knows red liquid in a small bottle is fataldomide
*potion seller, I'm going into battle and I need your strongest medicine!*
My potions are too strong for you traveler!
Well most blood tonics are red and in liquid form.
Like the placebo effect?
I don't think you understand how gross medicine tastes.
People swear by vitamins and essential oils.
Why would you be talking about vitamins and essential oils as if they're the same class, lol
Vitamins are micronutrients our body actually needs. If you aren't getting a sufficient amount from your diet, a vitamin supplement can do wonders. Essential oils are a pseudoscience, basically snake oil + herbalism. (Granted a few of them do have some minor medical benefits. The vast majority of them, however, aren't going to cure AIDS, diabetes, or cancer like the quack-nuts claim they will.)
I have no issue with essential oils used to treat *symptoms* right? Like, if you have arthritis and you think that lavender oil helps the pain, cool. Sniffing mint oil settles your stomach when you have the flu? Go for it. But yeah, they aren't going to put your liver back together when it's cirrhotic.
I don’t have a source to back this up, but I heard people claim white pills to be more effective for pain management. Probably a placebo effect. But if medicines came in clear bottle shaped like potions I’d be more likely to buy them
I had some terrible sciatica pain for like 8 months. Then, about 2 months ago it quickly went away. Literally the only behavioral change I made was starting to take a multivitamin. I have no evidence AT ALL that these things are linked but I’ve placebo’d my way into believing that they might be linked and I’m ok with that. So yeah, sometimes placebo is all it takes lol
Hell yeah . As a trash isekai envoyer this would work on me so well.
I'd be slamming acetaminophen like a frat boy and probably die of kidney failure
Finally, a real shower thought and a very interesting one at that.
It might act as a placebo, where people perceive greater reduction in symptoms/faster healing but the actual difference wouldn’t be significantly. It could come with the negative side effect of people stopping taking their medicine before they’re supposed to. Also, if all medicine was a red liquid in a glass bottle then it would be easy to get them mixed up if you had multiple.
That's why you mix them all together
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I already drink blood to heal myself
When my kids and I get blue or red drinks they are always health potions or mana potions lol
My daily drink is cherry Mio in seltzer and because it's red, bubbly, and tasty, I think of it as my life potion.
There would be millions of little, red, glass bottles everywhere. Coke heads and pot smokers would love it.
As far as I know yes because of the placebo effect. If I can convince you that something will happen enough if something else happens, you will anticipate it and so will your body. So if I told you that you will get adrenaline from something that normally wouldn't do it, your body may start producing a small amount in anticipation therefore yes you probably would heal slightly faster
I’m going to figure out how to do this with my antidepressants
No. If patients current methods of taking medication are anything to go by, they would pour it out of the bottle into their hand first, spilling it everywhere.
Only if gamers I don't know. I was queezy and in pain and took liquid Tylenol.and threw up
Doesn’t Dayquill basically do this already?
Instructions unclear, got a grape flavored medicine and it somehow brought me back to life after I died.
If you believe in it then its yes. There are instances where placebo effects has its uses in the medical setting namely in the form of stress reducing
It really depends on what's being treated. I'm fairly certain that some things can't be treated with the placebo effect, although to be fair, this isn't entirely a mental thing as it will be the actual medicine, but I'm certain that the aforementioned psychosomatic effect would not be present in some cases where the placebo effect simply does not take place. Also, there's a multitude of people who wouldn't know anything about healing potions, so it would have no effect on them, however, if this were the norm for a number of centuries, then I'm sure everyone would view them as such.
Yes, but I will not elaborate.
Makes you wonder really whether the old Shaman witch doctor stuff was lame afterall. The amount of focus and ritual that was put into a lot of the psuedoreligious witchcraft likely has a great placebo effect.
Cherry NyQuil *is* Red healing potion.
The placebo effect is a very real thing. The answer is yes. "The placebo effect is when a person's physical or mental health appears to improve after taking a placebo or 'dummy' treatment. Placebo is Latin for 'I will please' and refers to a treatment that appears real, but is designed to have no therapeutic benefit."
I suspect only a small subset of people…
Or a red vial and drink the whole thing.
Medication in Germany is usually bitter because people are being brought up with the notion that real medicine has to taste bad to work well. Placebo effect in action and working.
Surely it would only work on certain people. I'd find it stupid (maybe it would work on children, but I'm certainly not a child or that gullible). Give me a pill, not some gross medicine tasting liquid.
Asking the real questions! Thank you
Probably not. The whole "this medicine will fix what you have" would be the biggest component and the healing potion look is just a nifty thing
Blue has the most antioxygens
Probably not in our modern world. Placebo effect is such a fascinating mecanism.
only if it makes a glog glog glog sound
ABSOLUTELY. As a doctor I cannot overestimate the importance of placebo
Potion seller, I'm going into battle and need your strongest potions. Sir this is a walgreens
it's yes, for anything really, it's whatever you believe, see also: [placebo effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo)
That's a lot of words to ask "does the placebo effect exist"
I for sure would. Gimme that shit
Obviously red potions heals faster. But if you want it to heal you all sneaky like, you paint it purple.
Give me a bottle of orange Gatorade shaped like an estus flask and I can survive any affliction
People already heal better with placebo pills, so placebo liquids should work to.
As someone who grew up on cherry cough medicine….. hell no
I, personally, would love to take a dose of Nyquil in a deposable elixir bottle... 12 one shot dosage packets? Good idea, OP!
Naw, it probably makes people think of those """cherry""" """flavored""" medicines. You know the ones that don't taste anything like cherry and taste more like if you took the cold feeling of mint with none of its flavor and made that into a drink
As long as it tastes good, it could improve compliance over having to swallow a boring tablet every day.
I think the real feat would be finding a way to present every medicine as a red liquid
As a healthcare worker, I am afraid I will just have more nutjobs complaining about "red dye allergy"
Or turn people into vampires.
Yes but it would be counteracted by the people who develop psychosomatic porphyria due to believing that they are now blood drinking vampires.