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Conventional medicine has some powerful weapons against hay fever but many people still turn to other forms of treatment. You will, no doubt, meet people who have "found the cure" for hay fever.

For example, in a trial of dust-proof mattress covers used for asthma, the control group of patients, who were given mattress covers that let through the dust-mite allergen, showed a small improvement in their symptoms. This is why scientific trials always include a control group—a set of patients who are given a similar but ineffective treatment. To separate the placebo effect from the real effect, the results observed in these patients can be deducted from the benefit seen with the real treatment.

Body's Potential for Self-Healing

The placebo effect works for everyone, not just the gullible or dim-witted, and it seems to work by harnessing the body's own potential for self-healing. We all have far more control over our bodies than we are aware of, and a placebo (originally the name for ineffective sugar pills dispensed by baffled doctors) somehow taps into that inner power and makes it work in our favor.

Placebo effects are part of any medical treatment—they give a boost to the benefits available from medicinal drugs, for example, and to the good effects of desensitization. But with these conventional treatments, scientific trials have been carried out to verify that there is also a real effect from the treatment itself. With unconventional treatments, such as herbs, this is generally not the case: they have not been tested and compared with a control group to see if they are any more effective than a placebo. Thus, the claim that such remedies "relieve hay fever symptoms" may be quite honestly made, yet the apparent benefits could be nothing more than a placebo effect.

If the placebo effect works, then why worry? This is a valid argument, but the placebo effect from a new treatment lasts only a short while. Once a person's initial enthusiasm about the treatment wears off, the placebo effect ebbs. Furthermore, the effect of a placebo will rarely match that of a genuinely effective drug or treatment. You may as well spend your money on something that really works.

Negative Placebo Effects

Before leaving this subject, we should briefly mention negative placebo effects. These are seen, for example, when patients in the control group of a scientific trial—those taking a harmless placebo—report side effects. Here it seems that some people are far more susceptible than others. Those who have had bad reactions to a drug in the past may suffer negative placebo effects from a new drug, particularly if they are worried about side effects.