The brain can recall and reawaken past immune responses
quantamagazine.org
The brain can recall and reawaken past immune responses
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Re: The brain can recall and reawaken past immune responses
#2At first glance, it seems to support the idea that biofeedback can be effective, at least to some degree and for some things.
Re: The brain can recall and reawaken past immune responses
#3At first glance, it seems to support the idea that biofeedback can be effective, at least to some degree and for some things.
yes and perhaps some placebo effects activate stored immunological responses.
Re: The brain can recall and reawaken past immune responses
#4At first glance, it seems to support the idea that biofeedback can be effective, at least to some degree and for some things.
yes and perhaps some placebo effects activate stored immunological responses.
My understanding is sugar pills are commonly used as a placebo. Sugar helps take the edge off pain, though it doesn't work the same as a pain killer.
People going through withdrawal tend to be sugar fiends.
So I'm a bit skeptical of the assumption that "placebos do absolutely nothing, medically speaking" to begin with.
(Not dismissing your suggestion here.)
Re: The brain can recall and reawaken past immune responses
#5At first glance, it seems to support the idea that biofeedback can be effective, at least to some degree and for some things.
yes and perhaps some placebo effects activate stored immunological responses.
I think more technically it is nocebo effects which cause the (bad) immune response, whereas the placebo effect cancels or at least ameliorates it.
Paul Garner has described how worry about covid helped to maintain his long-covid / ME/CFS symptoms, and he was finally able to recover after addressing those fears:
https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/01/25/paul-garner-on-his-reco...
I managed to fully recover from ME/CFS myself 20 years ago with a similar route (with no symptoms since). In my case I don't think there was any significant worry about the illness itself, it was more pre-existing life stressors that I had to deal with, with the viral infection being the final straw for my body.
Re: The brain can recall and reawaken past immune responses
#6Preprint fulltext: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.03.409813v2.... "Remembering immunity: Neuronal ensembles in the insular cortex encode and retrieve specific immune responses", Koren et al 2020
Re: The brain can recall and reawaken past immune responses
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
yes and perhaps some placebo effects activate stored immunological responses.
My understanding is sugar pills are commonly used as a placebo. Sugar helps take the edge off pain, though it doesn't work the same as a pain killer. People going through withdrawal tend to be sugar fiends. So I'm a bit skeptical of the assumption that "placebos do absolutely nothing, medically speaking" to begin with. (Not dismissing your suggestion here.)
Placebos generally aren't sugar pills, unless there is sugar in the medication itself (which I don't think is generally the case). They are designed to be impossible to tell apart from the active medication.
The pain-killing effect has nothing to do with sugar.
Re: The brain can recall and reawaken past immune responses
#8It'll be interesting to see if this validates the bizarre claims of the Wim Hof method. I'm skeptical, but the evidence _seems_ to suggest a lot of conscious control over some autonomic functions.
Re: The brain can recall and reawaken past immune responses
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
My understanding is sugar pills are commonly used as a placebo. Sugar helps take the edge off pain, though it doesn't work the same as a pain killer. People going through withdrawal tend to be sugar fiends. So I'm a bit skeptical of the assumption that "placebos do absolutely nothing, medically speaking" to begin with. (Not dismissing your suggestion here.)
Placebos generally aren't sugar pills, unless there is sugar in the medication itself (which I don't think is generally the case). They are designed to be impossible to tell apart from the active medication. The pain-killing effect has nothing to do with sugar.
A placebo is a substance or treatment which is designed to have no therapeutic value. Common placebos include inert tablets (like sugar pills)...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo
Not to say Wikipedia is infallible. I'm sure it's not. Just checking how clueless I am and the internet suggests my understanding is "common knowledge."
Perhaps you can share more of your knowledge about what placebo pills typically contain and enlighten us? (Citations welcome should you choose to share.)
Re: The brain can recall and reawaken past immune responses
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
yes and perhaps some placebo effects activate stored immunological responses.
My understanding is sugar pills are commonly used as a placebo. Sugar helps take the edge off pain, though it doesn't work the same as a pain killer. People going through withdrawal tend to be sugar fiends. So I'm a bit skeptical of the assumption that "placebos do absolutely nothing, medically speaking" to begin with. (Not dismissing your suggestion here.)
A few hundred milligrams bound in a pill is probably different than a bowl of ice cream or bar of chocolate.