Jedi mind trick turns a muscle relaxant drug into a stimulant

How much does the effect of a medication depend on what you are told about it? Quite a bit, apparently!

This strange and fascinating study in Psychosomatic Medicine showed that a muscle relaxant actually increases tension when the patient is told (lied to) that it is actually a stimulant. The false information is so potent — or the drug is so weak — that its intended effect is actually reversed.

It’s like a Jedi mind trick. These aren’t the drugs you’re looking for.

But the reverse was not true: even when told that they were taking a muscle relaxant (and they were), subjects did not actually relax any more than people taking a placebo … and in some cases less!

And there’s more. This study contains many odd gems, such as the bizarre fact that quite a lot more muscle relaxant was found in the blood of people who had been told that the muscle relaxant was a muscle relaxant. It appears that they literally soaked up more of the stuff from the GI tract when they believed that it was a relaxant! And yet it still didn’t actually relax them any more than a placebo.

Weeeeeird …