If you have irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) you want relief, not a placebo… right?

One Harvard study done at the end of 2010 and published in December brings into question the curative difference between “real” treatment and the placebo.

Many, if not all, assumed that in order for a placebo to have an effect it must maintain its status as a doppelganger. However, when Professor Ted Kaptchuck of Harvard divided a group of 80 patients suffering from IBS into two groups, giving one a placebo labeled “placebo” (further explaining that it is nothing more than a sugar pill) and the other 40 nothing, the placebo group felt some unexpected results.

According to the study, after 21 days, 59 percent of the study group (those receiving what they knew to be “dummy pills”) felt improved symptoms.

“These findings suggest that rather than mere positive thinking, there may be significant benefit to the very performance of medical ritual,” Kaptchuck said in an interview with The Guardian. “I’m excited about studying this further. Placebo may work even if patients know it is a placebo.”

Yet, there needs to be skepticism for two reasons. One, this is only one study of a small sample population. The doctors called their results a “proof-of-concept,” and is thus far away from scientific fact. Two, the doctors told the patients that the placebo effect is particularly high when treating IBS.

In normal trials, testing “real” IBS drugs against placebos that remain unknown to the patients, there is a high incidence of improvement in the control (the placebo) group.

By telling the patients this, the patients may have been expecting improvement, which might very well have caused an easement of their symptoms.

More research must be done. But, in this limited study, we can say at the very least that ritual and mind play significant roles in symptom relief.