Beautiful coverage of Zeebo by Laura Sanders in Science News today, edition 207. Laura is comparing Zeebo Pure Honest Placebo to placebos with side effects.
And in fact, many of us may have a similar placebo, of sorts, sitting in our medicine cabinets. It’s phenylephrine, and it’s been on the market for decades. This decongestant is in over-the-counter cold medications sold by brands such as Sudafed PE and DayQuil.
Zeebo is receiving a good amount positive direct feedback from consumers. On Amazon, however, our competitors seem to try to give us sinking ratings. I think giants like Boiron, a $1/2 billon revenue, worldwide leader in homeopathic medicine, is starting to feel the heat from Zeebo Placebo. Ever since Zeebo got traction in 2018, Boiron sales decreased, see chart. For a while you could find Boiron advertising on Amazon as a placebo pill. Try it out, search for Zeebo Placebo Pills on Amazon USA. You might be surprised to find out who else wants to get into the pure placebo market.
Some empowering themselves with health tracking support, such as the apps Mindful Eating Tracker, the IBS Tracker Bowel Mover Pro that I started to produce back in the pioneer days of Digital Health before I launched Zeebo. We are entering a new phase of patient empowerment. AI maybe overhyped, but the tools are at another level now. I’m intrigued by how smart patients will use the tools at their disposal. Next to Zeebo, which used to have its own placebo effect tracking app, we now have some smart tools at our disposal. Over the next months I am going to try several of them out. One of my goals is to pioneer how insight and skill can maximize the placebo effect. On a broader scale I am just interested in how far medical care will shift into self-care. There are several areas now where consumers will have more powerful tools available, especially with the focus on continuity and personalization, than the fragmented care delivery system can offer.
In 2003 I developed a self tracking prototype and software, six years before the advent of the iPhone. I get the same exciting feeling again with the upcoming care revolution. And this time, it’ll happen much faster. Exponential acceleration is unfolding. What needed is exploration by pioneers, ethical and practical guidance, followed by broadening community involvement.