How to Use the Placebo Effect to Your Advantage

In studies about the placebo effect, researchers often give one group the actual medication and the other group a sugar pill. The subjects don't know which pill that they're getting. In many studies, people taking the sugar pill reported it was just as effective or almost as effective as the people who received the actual medicine. But in one study that looked at fatigue in cancer survivors, the researchers decided to tell them whether they were getting the actual treatment or the placebo. Even the people who knew they were taking a placebo still reported that they had more energy three weeks after taking it.