What is a “placebo”? (.. besides being a funny sounding word!). A placebo is a pill intended to appear like an actual medication. A placebo can be a pill, a shot, or a procedure. A placebo pill might contain sugar, and a placebo shot would contain a saline solution. Researchers give a placebo to a test subject to compare the effects of a fake medicine against the effects of the real medicine. Using a placebo provides a study with what is called a “control.” Research uses a placebo control to provide a baseline that can be subtracted from the actual medication effect.
People have the remarkable ability to improve their condition if they believe they have received medication. Science describes this capability as an expression of the “Mind-Body Connection." People can be especially likely to respond when an authority figure conducts the test, such as someone wearing a white lab coat.
Indeed, a test subject may discern what they are getting from the behavior of the researcher conducting the study. Thus, the project manager may number the placebo to look the same as the actual medication, and have the researcher also be ignorant as to which pill is which. When both the researcher and the test subject don’t know what they are getting, this is called a “Double-Blind” study.
In the case of cannabis, the psychoactive effect of THC may be readily noticed by a test subject. Thus, the subject perceives psychoactivity and knows that they have received THC. Researchers have sought to evaluate terpenes, the aromatic scent molecules in cannabis. However, once a subject smells a terpene, they may generate the response they think researcher is looking for. Thus, it has been very difficult to obtain findings about how terpenes affect internal sensation. The terpene linalool is said to be calming, and the linalool from lavender is believed to generate a soothing effect. However, is the effect from the linalool itself, or does the scent trigger positive memories that are soothing? Is the effect working on the brain, or only in the nose?
After 1996, California cannabis law enabled people who wanted cannabis to go to a doctor to get a “Recommendation”. The recommendation enabled people to possess cannabis legally.
A doctor in West Los Angeles had a friend who was developing a THC tincture using glycerin. The doctor would ask his patients if they would like to try it and would then put drop a few drops under their tongue.
After some time, the doctor contacted a chemist who could measure the THC content of the drops. The chemist analyzed the tincture and found that while traces of THC were present, the THC content was far too low to yield a psychoactive effect. When the chemist provided the result to the doctor, the doctor became furious. He had listened to hundreds of his clients claim that they felt ‘high’ shortly after getting the drops. He could not accept that all these accounts came entirely from the placebo effect. Yet, nothing else could explain it.
Many scientists regard Homeopathic remedies as phony because the ‘active’ agents have been diluted to a level that should not provide a physiological effect. One study of placebos indicated that for that test, the subjects getting the placebo got half the benefit compared to people getting the real medication!
Other drugs can run afoul of the placebo effect. A lot of people swear by Resveratrol, Turmeric and HGH that they take. Yet, per Wikipedia: “Although commonly used as a dietary supplement and studied in laboratory models of human diseases, there is no high-quality evidence that resveratrol improves lifespan or has a substantial effect on any human disease. Also: “Turmeric and curcumin have been studied in numerous clinical trials for various human diseases and conditions, with no high-quality evidence of any anti-disease effect or health benefit. Per Google: “There is no scientific evidence that curcumin reduces inflammation, as of 2020.” Also, “HGH (Human Growth Hormone) is only effective if administered as an injection. There's no pill form of human growth hormone available. Some dietary supplements that claim to boost levels of HGH come in pill form, but research doesn't show a benefit.”
One curiosity about drugs and the brain relates to how certain drugs exert potent effects at very low doses. A recently discovered cannabinoid, THCP, binds as much as 33 times more strongly to cannabinoid receptors (CB1R) than does THC. However, cannabis contains THCP in very low concentrations, meaning its contribution to psychoactivity is normally much less than that of THC despite it being so potent.
All this means that the researcher seeking to investigate THC in cannabis research can discover that extra effort may be needed to design a test protocol. That can drive up costs to do the research and make it harder to obtain reliable findings. ///