Boost treatment efficacy and amplify the “doctor as a placebo” phenomenon with tips from placebo expert (and ex-cartoonist), Mark W. Green, MD, Director of Headache/Pain Medicine and Professor of Neurology, Anesthesiology, and Rehabilitation Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Topics include: What’s that pesky sugar pill actually doing to us? Why do we get a boost from taking medicines that have no active compounds within them? How does placebo work? How can it be leveraged? What does it mean for study design/blinding? And what’s with its pesky dark twin--the nocebo effect? “Enjoy this, our only placebo-controlled episode”  (Thanks, Stuart!). Written and produced by: Molly Heublein, MD and Nora Taranto MS3; Edited by: Matthew Watto, MD Full show notes available at http://thecurbsiders.com/podcast Join our mailing list and receive a PDF copy of our show notes every Monday. Rate us on iTunes, recommend a guest or topic and give feedback at thecurbsiders@gmail.com.  Time Stamps 00:00 Disclaimer 00:37 Intro banter 01:30 Picks of the week 08:02 Getting to know our guest 14:00 Clinical case of pain 15:08 Placebo hierarchy 17:19 Non-inferiority studies 18:20 Clinical trials, placebo, eligibility creep and regression to the mean 22:04 Nocebo response 27:05 Physiologic response to placebo 29:13 Placebo amplification 30:18 Caffeine experient Dr Green reports no relevant financial disclosures 32:47 How to counsel patients interested in alternative or ineffective therapy 34:22 Surgery and placebo; sham surgery 37:15 Open-label placebo and genetic response to placebo 42:04 Blinding in placebo controlled trials may be ineffective 43:53 Script for counseling patients on alternative therapy 45:51 Take home points 47:56 The Curbsiders recap and lessons learned 52:52 Outro  Tags: placebo, nocebo, study design, dopamine, opioids, COMT, pain relief, therapeutic relationship, research protocol, randomized controlled study, non-inferiority, assistant, care, doctor, education, family, foam, foamed, health, hospitalist, hospital, internal, internist, meded, medical, medicine, nurse, practitioner, professional, primary, physician, resident, student