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Abstract

Health care providers are expected both to relieve pain and to provide anticipatory guidance regarding how much a procedure is going to hurt. Fulfilling those expectations is complicated by the cognitive modulation of pain perception. Warning people to expect pain or setting expectations for pain relief not only influences their subjective experience, but it also alters how nociceptive stimuli are processed throughout the sensory and discriminative pathways in the brain. In light of this, I reconsider the characterization of placebo analgesia as pharmacologically inert and the use of it as deceptive. I show that placebo analgesia exploits the same physical mechanisms as proven analgesics and argue that it should be utilized to relieve pain. Additionally, I describe factors to help identify situations in which clinicians have the obligation to disclose the potential for pain coupled with ways of mitigating the risk of high-intensity pain by setting positive expectations.

Forthcoming events

The epidemiology of periportal fibrosis in the context of intestinal schistosomiasis

Monday, 09 October 2023, 1pm to 2pm @ BDI/OxPop Building seminar rooms

Defeating Meningitis by 2023 Global Roadmap

Monday, 16 October 2023, 1pm to 2pm @ BDI/OxPop Building seminar room 1

OxPop Festival of Global Health - The Cancer Conflict

Thursday, 19 October 2023, 5pm to 8pm @ Richard Doll Lecture Theatre, Richard Doll Building, Roosevelt Drive, Oxford, OX3 7LF

Cancer Treatments: trust and information

Chronic infections and risk of NCDs in Chinese adults

Monday, 30 October 2023, 1pm to 2pm @ BBDI/OxPop Building seminar rooms

Metabolomics and diabetes in CKB and UKB

Thursday, 02 November 2023, 12pm to 1pm @ BDI/OxPop Building LG seminar room 0