There's a common misconception about placebos that they are merely a "reporting/statistical effect", but this is inaccurate. The placebo effect can have measurable effects on things that are not subjective. Wiki cites (in response to a controversial study claiming to have found the placebo effect is not "real") : "...the existence of placebo effects seems undeniable. For example, recent research has linked placebo interventions to improved motor functions in patients with Parkinson's disease. Other objective outcomes affected by placebos include immune and endocrine parameters, end-organ functions regulated by the autonomic nervous system, and sport performance." [1] And that should not be taken as an exhaustive list of examples - placebos can show objectively measurable improvements in a vast array of domains. It's certainly real.
The evil twin of the placebo, the nocebo, has even more dramatic proof of its realness: "there is a small group of patients in whom the realization of impending death is a blow so terrible that they are quite unable to adjust to it, and they die rapidly before the malignancy seems to have developed enough to cause death. This problem of self-willed death is in some ways analogous to the death produced in primitive peoples by witchcraft ('pointing the bone')". [2] This could also largely explain why elderly married couples tend to follow each other into the grave in short order - dying of heartbreak, perhaps not being an entirely rhetorical expression.
The evil twin of the placebo, the nocebo, has even more dramatic proof of its realness: "there is a small group of patients in whom the realization of impending death is a blow so terrible that they are quite unable to adjust to it, and they die rapidly before the malignancy seems to have developed enough to cause death. This problem of self-willed death is in some ways analogous to the death produced in primitive peoples by witchcraft ('pointing the bone')". [2] This could also largely explain why elderly married couples tend to follow each other into the grave in short order - dying of heartbreak, perhaps not being an entirely rhetorical expression.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo#Effects
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nocebo#Ambiguity_of_anthropolo...