Method

Sometime around 2010, I struggled a lot with my allergy, which sometimes made my nose so stuffy that I could breathe only through my mouth. My deviated nasal septum narrowed the airway to begin with.

As symptomatic treatment, I was given a corticosteroid nasal spray, which I was supposed to use for the rest of my life. It worked as a short-term solution, but it did not address the cause, and I was afraid of long-term side effects. I was not offered much prospect of recovery.

While listening to Father Feri Pál's lectures, I noticed a rat experiment in one of them [1]. The animals were conditioned similarly to Pavlov's dog. (In case someone has not yet come across Pavlov's experiment: Ivan Pavlov, the Nobel Prize-winning physiologist, regularly rang a bell before giving the dog food. (He rang it to start timing, but the dog did not know that.) After a few occasions, the dog's saliva production started simply on hearing the bell, meaning that the animal gave a physiological response to an external stimulus.)

In the lecture mentioned, however, instead of bell-food-salivation, the subjects were sick rats that received the medication with sugar water, so the reflex developed between the sugar water and the effect triggered by the medication. Put simply, the rats survived even when, after conditioning, they were given only sugar water. (I think I found the original research that Father Feri Pál was talking about.[2])

I am grateful to God for the idea of trying medication conditioning on myself as well. My symptoms were much more unpleasant than dangerous, so I felt confident enough to give it a try. “If it does not work, the nasal spray is still at hand; at most, my nose will clear five minutes later,” I thought.

As the conditioned stimulus, I chose Pink's song “Just Give Me a Reason” and linked it to using the nasal spray. After roughly two weeks of simultaneous “use,” I tested the effect: in case of nasal congestion, I started humming the melody and voilà: even without medication, decongestion of the nasal mucosa occurred, opening the way for air.

This effect was still present two or three years later just as it had been at the beginning, and during that time I did not have to use the nasal spray even once. (Later, I had septoplasty for my deviated nasal septum, and with that the nasal congestion also disappeared. Since then, I have not been able to test whether it would still work.)

Today I know that this method has been examined in many studies, and COLP (Conditioned Open-Label Placebo) is its official name. It could still be tested in many areas, and implementation in practice is moving only slowly, despite the promising research findings. You can read about a few examples on the next page.

[1] https://www.palferi.hu/hanganyagok/2001-2002/2001-12-18/4

[2] Ader R, Cohen N. Behaviorally conditioned immunosuppression. Psychosom Med. 1975 Jul-Aug;37(4):333-40. doi: 10.1097/00006842-197507000-00007. PMID: 1162023. link: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1162023/

How can I reduce my pain or, together with my treating physician, the medications I take for my symptoms? How can I return to a sense of safety? How can I replace the cigarette or support my weight loss…?

• By listening to music…
• With a simple ritual…
• With Túró Rudi… (I do not recommend this for weight loss)
• or with disco lights and a Dead Sea mud wrap in the evening breeze.

Probably all of these. Do not worry, not all at once; any one of them can work. And since a mud wrap is not easy to carry out on a packed bus, at work, or during a university practical, it may be better to choose something as simple as possible, preferably something that can be at hand at any time, perhaps even when you are splashing around in a swimming pool in your underwear. A particular melody worked for me. One of my teachers took four deep breaths for a migraine headache before taking a pain reliever. In essence, you can come up with anything that you can link to your medication, but the condition is that you do not use that stimulus at other times. (So the latest hit song is not ideal, because if you hear it everywhere, including when you should not, that can weaken the effect.) It may be an essential oil that you use in the safe therapy room. You can take it with you in a small bottle and inhale it when you feel the need. If you want to give up cigarettes, then the cigarette is the “medication” we were just talking about. When you light a cigarette, listen to your music or apply whatever you chose. (I think you already understand the point; if not, write to me and we will talk it through.) You can try several different things at the same time, but please choose a different melody or other stimulus for falling asleep and for replacing coffee!

Step 1

Talk to your treating physician about what you are planning, and show them this page. If they say absolutely not, then DO NOT START UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. You probably have a medication that is not only for treating symptoms, and you could get into trouble if you try to replace it with a placebo. If they say it will not do harm, even though they do not believe it will help you, then everything is okay.

Step 2

Choose a stimulus as described above. (or anything else that seems good)

Step 3

Wait for the symptoms for which you use the medication. (Or until you light a cigarette. Or when you are in that safe environment to which you later want to fly back in your thoughts.)

Step 4

Use the medication as usual together with the chosen stimulus. (e.g., listen to that music while you use the nasal spray, or do a handstand while you apply cream to the itchy area…, do arm circles forward and backward… whatever you chose)

Step 5

The symptom - medication - stimulus trio needs to be repeated about 10 times. (For rats, apparently 4-5 times was enough, but better safe than sorry; we are larger mammals. The more often, probably the stronger the connection in our brain will become.)

Step 6

If you feel ready, and your treating physician has agreed: the next time your symptoms come, first try only the conditioned stimulus: hum the melody, circle your arm, dance a csárdás. Try it until it takes effect. (I am not saying that if the pain reliever took 20 minutes to work, you should circle your arm continuously for twenty minutes, but during that time try to do a few arm circles.)

Step 7

I hope you also get the desired effect.

Step 8

Please complete the questionnaire here. (When you start conditioning, when you start quitting, and later at any time; this may show how long the effect lasts.) Providing the data requested in the questionnaire is not mandatory; whatever you provide, you do so voluntarily, and I promise that I will use it only for research purposes and will not pass your personal data on to any third party.

Step 9

Please accept my grateful thanks for your trust and for taking the trouble to complete the questionnaire.

Step 10

Request a gift copy of the little book containing my fifty-word stories, which were born from my experiences in ambulance service; this has nothing to do with placebo.

Step 11

Please share my website in as many places as possible so that others can learn about and try the method. If you know someone for whom this method could bring improvement, please personally recommend my website to them.

Step 12

If you think that, with your treating physician's agreement, this can help you save on your medication costs, or if you can simply afford to, please support me so I can finish medical school. You can do this in several ways here. You can help a lot even without money.You can do this in several ways here. You can help a lot even without money.