This Is MS Multiple Sclerosis Community: Knowledge & Support

This is true of course....

I'm going to Poland for the procedure but sometimes there's a nagging voice in my head which asks:

Could all the positive results of the people who have been stented be due to a placebo effect?

I hope not

Excuse the mistakes in my English. I'm from Holland.

Sesj... Your English is much better than my Dutch !!! Your placebo idea is a very good point. Faith and trust are strong motivators... probably at the root of all the world's religions and the medical placebo effect. I have been injecting Copaxone for two years now and keep feeling worse all the time. I'm told that I should have faith in and trust this drug. It just doesn't make me feel better no matter how much I wish it did.

Everyone (we don't know much about all the Italians that have had the balloon stents) who has reported improvements in their symptoms may have some placebo effect due to the impact of hope. But I think Dr. Zamboni has many patients who have had ballooning for at least a year if not longer. I hope that we will soon learn from Zamboni how his patients are faring.

If there were some placebo that would give me back my life... I would take it.

IF there is placebo effect and result is curing, I WILL take it!.

I do not care where or why that works if it works, so what if there is some placebo in it.

In fact there is some research where they studied mind and body own capasity to heal them self if people have strong faith on it, Many researcher believe that there are almost incredible capasity of healing power just inside all of us, if we just have faith on it...

Yes, I guess there might be either a certain placebo effect or a progress made by one's will and mind to get a better health.

But reading all the facts about CCSVI i doubt that there is only placebo. E.g. the people Zamboni operated during relapses and the relapses went away within hours or a few days without taking any drugs. I doubt that this could be obtained by a placebo effect.

Nevertheless I agree with the others: if there is any placebo to get rid of this nightmare I would take it!

I agree that many treatments may have a powerful placebo effect and that our psychological status may have a strong influence on the body's ability to heal.

I believe that all MS patients put all their faith and hopes in the drugs they have been administered for years: only when improvements in their condition failed to materialise the placebo effect revealed itself as non-existent.

Opening of the veins in the neck has resulted in noticeable improvement in my condition, placebo or not placebo effect.
GiCi

Right on Gici!

There is also a placebo effect on some doctors--my doctor seemed blinded to my progression he was so distracted by how great my MRI looked to him, I have no atrophy, a lovely full corpus callosum, no new lesions no enhancement--I was doing wonderfully well!!

...except I had gone from jogging to using a cane over those years.

It is too soon for me personally to say with certainty things are very different with my stents, I have had so many complications that it is hard to see what is what, but I do SEEM better. I'll be glad when they have defined and outlined a way via MRI, SWI MRI, or perhaps even looking at the CSF to check for OCB to show improvement that is objective from every perspective.

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I'm not offering medical advice, I am just a patient too! Talk to your doctor about what is best for you...
http://www.thisisms.com/ftopic-7318-0.html This is my regimen thread
http://www.ccsvibook.com Read my book published by McFarland Health topics

Thanks, GiCi and Marie-
like the idea of doctors suffering from placebo affect!
Personal reflection from Jeff- He had MS two years. The fatigue during that time was crippling. He tried supplements, provigil....nothing allowed him to get thru the day without a 2 hour nap in the afternoon. He couldn't get out of bed in the morning. He couldn't drive during the day, fell asleep at the wheel once. He HOPED with each new addition that it would change his energy. As a man of faith, surely the placebo affect should have helped him. But nothing abated that horrific fatigue.

It's six months since the stenting, and the fatigue is gone (has been since the surgery). He wakes up alert, ready to go. He drives our son to school every morning, works all day, goes for walks, out to dinner at night. Drives into town for meetings during the once "forbidden" hours. Is he "healed"? We're not sure yet....he still has leg pain or spasms, but nothing like before. He sleeps soundly at night, no more apnea. I don't know...could placebo affect do this? Could it change how someone sleeps, how they wake? More likely it is the oxygenation change in his brain. The research will document this eventually. But Jeff is living right now, today.
cheer

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Husband dx RRMS 3/07
dx dual jugular vein stenosis (CCSVI) 4/09
dual stents placed 5/09
CCSVI in MS

Cheer wrote

ENJOY! ---(need I say more?)

Sharon