Alternative medicine is booming business. It is largely unregulated and therefor it is hard to offer reliable statistics. Edzard Ernst, professor of complementary medicine, has pioneered the study of everything from acupuncture and crystal healing to Reiki channeling and herbal remedies. He has run clinical trials and published over 160 meta-analyses of other studies. He has found that almost all of the treatments in all alternative fields are statistically indistinguishable from placebo treatment. Ernst believes that a regular doctor can learn that the therapeutic value of the placebo effect can be valuable. A pretend painkiller can reduce the amount of pain! The expectation influences the potency of the effect. It appears that practitioners of alternative medicine often are very good at harnessing the placebo effect.
http://www.economist.com/node/18710090 Think yourself better
I believe that a person can have some effect on his or her own health. Try waking up feeling a bit ill and keep telling yourself that you are really, really ill. What will happen? You actually will become ill. This also works the other way around. The way practitioners of alternative medicine take time to listen to you and try to work out who you are as a person as a whole, not just the physical part, is very attractive to me. I would be careful though, not to stretch it. If you are sure that you have a serious illness, then go to the hospital and bring that positive thinking along.
Alternative medicine is often dismissed as bogus, witchcraft or loose talk. People seem to forget that in the old days people used herbs to treat serious illnesses and cured many an ill person. Just because you cannot prove something, it does not mean that it is not effective. I often noticed that alternative medicine were effective, and not because of the placebo effect. My clients, special needs people, do not understand medicine and many do not know the difference between a drug or a candy. Still, the results are often remarkable. So, do not dismiss alternative medicine too quickly, but be sure never to shut out your GP, because some things cannot be cured with herbs alone.
BeantwoordenVerwijderenNice to hear people like you are open to the alternative medicine. Drugs companies do anything and everything to encourage people to buy their products. Personally I believe that most of our illnesses come from stress and not taking good care of ourselves. We push and push until we cannot do anything any more and grab a pill to forget and get rid of the pain and misery. The first step to health is, a healthy mind and a daily intake of healthy natural products. Medical pills or treatment should be a second choice, not a first.
BeantwoordenVerwijderenThe strangest thing to see is when someone is ill but does not know and does not look very ill. Until the point when the doctor tells the person he/she is ill, they directly start to look ill. I do not know why it happens that way.
BeantwoordenVerwijderenIt is still hard to believe you can actually make yourself sick by telling it to yourself. I have seen it with my little sister who got sick every time before a big happening. Now she doesn't get sick anymore. But I was surprised about the influence of your mind.