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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 ecology and evolution of microbial communities

Monday, 13 January 2025, 1pm to 2pm @ BDI/OxPop Building LG seminar rooms

Health and economic impacts of Lassa vaccination campaigns in West Africa

Monday, 20 January 2025, 1pm to 2pm @ BDI/OxPop Building LG seminar room

Host-parasite interactions

Monday, 27 January 2025, 1pm to 2pm @ BDI/OxPop Building LG seminar rooms

Marburg vaccine trial

Monday, 03 February 2025, 1pm to 2pm @ BDI/OxPop Building LG seminar rooms

Tuberculosis vaccine R&D and human challenge models

Monday, 10 February 2025, 1pm to 2pm @ BDI/OxPop Building LG seminar rooms

Shingles vaccine and dementia, and other links between infectious diseases and brain health

Monday, 24 February 2025, 1pm to 2pm @ BDI/OxPop Building LG seminar rooms