Here's What Placebos Can Heal—And What They Can't

Is PD psychogenic?

Animals don't get PD naturally. Substances given to lab animals often cure the brain lesions and symptoms resembling PD deliberately caused by experimenters. When given to human subjects, though, they are no better than a placebo.

Unlike Alzheimer's there is no proven pathology that shows up in diagnostic tests as a cause of idiopathic PD. Alzheimer's does not respond well to the placebo effect.

Every individual with PD differs from others in their symptoms.

If PD can be thwarted by the mind, perhaps it can be caused by it.

The Parkinson's Recovery Project – Information about the cause and treatment of Parkinson's disease project claims it has healed people by changing their beliefs. "They made a significant mental adjustment: deciding that they are indeed safe from clear and present danger even if they let their guard down."

I have speculated that fatal illnesses are sometimes a respectable form of suicide for those with religious or moral opposition to suicide. PD is not as rapidly fatal so perhaps it is less drastic and more of a way to quit engaging with life. Movement, smell, swallowing, defecating, ED, and other affected bodily functions all represent a withdrawal from interfacing with the physical world.

Depression, common in PD, is a clue that the PWP is psychologically ready to withdraw from life. Hallucinations represent a disdain for sensory reality.

Perhaps trying to treat PD with drugs is too downstream from the source of the condition to truly cure it.