people relief from subjective symptoms, such as pain, nausea, anxiety and fatigue.

But there’s a reason your doctor isn’t giving you a sugar pill and telling you it’s a new wonder drug. The thinking has been that you need to actually believe that you’re taking a real drug in order to see any benefits. And a doctor intentionally deceiving a patient is an ethical no-no.

So placebos have pretty much been tossed in the “garbage pail” of clinical practice, says Ted Kaptchuk, director of the Program for Placebo Studies and the Therapeutic Encounter at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. In an attempt to make them more useful, he has been studying whether people might see a benefit from a placebo even if they knew it was a placebo, with no active ingredients. An earlier study found that so-called “open-label” or “honest” placebos improved symptoms among people with irritable bowel syndrome. To read more from KATHERINE HOBSON, click here.