sugar pill

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sugar pill

Medspeak
A colloquial term most commonly used by mainstream health professionals for a placebo (which often contains lactose), regardless of whether or not it contains sugar.

Popular health
A lay term for any oral agent used to control diabetes.

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References in periodicals archive ?

They need to compare drug products against other drugs that treat the same indication rather than comparing a drug against a sugar pill.

The FDA exposed: an interview with Dr. David Graham, the Vioxx[R] whistleblower: reprinted with permission

Actually, that useless sugar pill wasn't so useless; it demonstrated, and we are enthusiastic believers in, the power of the mind and spirit to transform lives and improve health.

The science of placebo effect

If something makes me feel better I don't mind if it's a sugar pill or medicine as long as it works and doesn't harm me.

The power of PLACEBO; Why your doc may have given you 'pretend'' medicine to trick you back to good health..

Some compared one statin to another, while others compared a statin to an inactive placebo, which is often called a sugar pill or dummy pill.

Statins' benefits outweigh side effects

In the study, the researchers randomly divided patients into two groups - one received the antibiotic and the other was given a placebo, an inert treatment in the form of a sugar pill, three times a day for seven days.

Antibiotics 'ineffective for treating coughs'

But only because the human mind is considerably more powerful than a sugar pill.

The medicine that contains nothing at all

It may be a sugar pill or a medication that hasn't been adequately proven to be effective.

When "nothing" works better than "something"

The team from the University of Copenhagen analyzed data using information from trials sponsored by Sanofi on more than 4,000 patients receiving either a sugar pill or a 20-milligram-a-day dose of the medicine.

Sanofi-Aventis SA's Acomplia obesity pill puts patients at risk of severe psychiatric side effects, according to a report in the UK medical journal The Lancet

Placebo: a pill or substance with no effect on the body, such as a sugar pill.

Definitions

Some physicians wonder, though, whether the benefits result from a placebo effect--faith in the remedy confers healing power to it even though it has no more physical effect than a sugar pill.

Ask the doctors

The response mechanism is not well understood, but the patient's belief that the sugar pill or sham surgery is going to help him somehow triggers an inborn healing response.

Placebos: accept no substitutes: work better, and less dangerous than pharmaceuticals

But isoflavones from red clover failed to cut the frequency of hot flashes any more than a sugar pill in a study of 246 menopausal women who were experiencing at least 35 hot flashes a week.