The placebo effect can be good medicine, for pain and other problems

In 2013, she signed up for a clinical trial, “expecting they had some magical drug that would take my pain away,” and was disappointed — and skeptical — to learn that the research would be studying the effects of a medically inert placebo, which looks like a real drug, and is taken like one, but lacks active ingredients. “I didn’t believe it was going to work but gave it a try,” she recalls. “It couldn’t be any worse than my actual situation at that point.”