Along the same lines, I have asthma, and sometimes funky smells trigger my asthma. I've often wondered how much of that was psychological. It would be really freaking awesome to suppress the psychological portion of my asthma and boost the effects of my inhalers.
You can train your body into thinking it’s had medicine
41–50 of 81 posts
Re: You can train your body into thinking it’s had medicine
#42My bullshit detectors are leaping off the charts. There are so many completely uncontrolled experiments described there, and the article just jumps to the conclusion that they demonstrate an effect. Add on top that the theory makes not a fleck of sense, and you have no credibility left.
I agree it's not rigorous, but it's not necessarily bullshit. We know the placebo effect is quite strong (stronger than we can fully account for, in fact.) Postulating that it is possible to engage the placebo effect voluntarily is an interesting claim, but given that the placebo effect does exist it is not, on the face of it, impossible. I'm definitely interested in more rigorous research in this area.
Has anyone reproduced (or tried to reproduce) the rat studies by Robert Ader or Manfred Schedlowski?
Re: You can train your body into thinking it’s had medicine
#43Quote: "By the end of the year, she had received just six doses of the drug instead of the usual twelve. Marette responded just as her doctors would have hoped from the full drug amount." I'm sorry, at this point I stopped reading. The Doctors don't know how she would have responded to the full drug, because it didn't happen! The word 'hoped' is not testable! Where was the control (Quasi-experiment)? There is just no…
Hmm I'm pretty sure that 'hoped' in this case means something like: "Well, in a normal case we would have recommended 12 doses of the medicine in order to get a full recovery." This is not like testing stuff with a computer program, you can not reset the human to a known state and replicate the experiment all over again. Following your logic, even all vaccines are a lie, how can we know that the vaccines that we take…
>Following your logic, even all vaccines are a lie, how can we know that the vaccines that we take every year are doing anything?
peer reviewed double blinded placebo controlled trials, this is an anecdote.
Re: You can train your body into thinking it’s had medicine
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree it's not rigorous, but it's not necessarily bullshit. We know the placebo effect is quite strong (stronger than we can fully account for, in fact.) Postulating that it is possible to engage the placebo effect voluntarily is an interesting claim, but given that the placebo effect does exist it is not, on the face of it, impossible. I'm definitely interested in more rigorous research in this area.
Has anyone reproduced (or tried to reproduce) the rat studies by Robert Ader or Manfred Schedlowski?
This is the only reasonable question to ask regarding the veracity of the result. Tripling/halving the post-injection/implantation/course lifespan of a sample of thirty-ish rats is nowhere near bullshit, so the next question is whether we've replicated that result.
Re: You can train your body into thinking it’s had medicine
#45Quote: "By the end of the year, she had received just six doses of the drug instead of the usual twelve. Marette responded just as her doctors would have hoped from the full drug amount." I'm sorry, at this point I stopped reading. The Doctors don't know how she would have responded to the full drug, because it didn't happen! The word 'hoped' is not testable! Where was the control (Quasi-experiment)? There is just no…
Hmm I'm pretty sure that 'hoped' in this case means something like: "Well, in a normal case we would have recommended 12 doses of the medicine in order to get a full recovery." This is not like testing stuff with a computer program, you can not reset the human to a known state and replicate the experiment all over again. Following your logic, even all vaccines are a lie, how can we know that the vaccines that we take…
> Following your logic, even all vaccines are a lie, how can we know that the vaccines that we take every year are doing anything?
By having a basic understanding of the scientific method and control groups.
Re: You can train your body into thinking it’s had medicine
#46You can do a lot just by deciding that's what's happening. Spent years with a mystery vomiting illness. Wallowed in my misery. One day, decided "I'm better now" - and lo and fucking behold I've been fine for a year. Anecdotal, sure, but either the illness or the cure was in my head. Also... Rasputin and the Romanovs - he could stop Alexei's bleeding (haemophilia) with a phone call , when physicians had had no joy - t…
Instead of thinking about the illness being in your head, why not think of the decision being in your body?
Re: You can train your body into thinking it’s had medicine
#47You can do a lot just by deciding that's what's happening. Spent years with a mystery vomiting illness. Wallowed in my misery. One day, decided "I'm better now" - and lo and fucking behold I've been fine for a year. Anecdotal, sure, but either the illness or the cure was in my head. Also... Rasputin and the Romanovs - he could stop Alexei's bleeding (haemophilia) with a phone call , when physicians had had no joy - t…
Instead of thinking about the illness being in your head, why not think of the decision being in your body?
If there's even a difference!
Re: You can train your body into thinking it’s had medicine
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Instead of thinking about the illness being in your head, why not think of the decision being in your body?
If there's even a difference!
Like it or not, 90% of the body's serotonin is produced by gut microbes... Dopamine, GABA and other lovely chemicals are also contributed by the endless sea of creatures within.
:)
Re: You can train your body into thinking it’s had medicine
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
If there's even a difference!
Like it or not, 90% of the body's serotonin is produced by gut microbes... Dopamine, GABA and other lovely chemicals are also contributed by the endless sea of creatures within. :)
Yup - which may have been where my problems started, as I inadvertently radically modified my intestinal flora with a brutal and strict diet - for a long time put it down to having fundamentally screwed up my digestion, but towards the point when I decided to think of it differently, I had been wondering if I'd screwed up neurotransmitter levels via microbiota genocide, and was trapped in a vicious cycle - hence the decision to go "no, you don't feel nauseous, you're hungry".
Re: You can train your body into thinking it’s had medicine
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Like it or not, 90% of the body's serotonin is produced by gut microbes... Dopamine, GABA and other lovely chemicals are also contributed by the endless sea of creatures within. :)
Yup - which may have been where my problems started, as I inadvertently radically modified my intestinal flora with a brutal and strict diet - for a long time put it down to having fundamentally screwed up my digestion, but towards the point when I decided to think of it differently, I had been wondering if I'd screwed up neurotransmitter levels via microbiota genocide, and was trapped in a vicious cycle - hence the…
Something similar happened to me when I was fighting some (likely chronic) yeast and staph infections last year. I got pretty strict with my diet and was underweight by about 10 pounds. Even though I was eating very healthy, I wasn't letting myself eat stuff I was hungry for. Eventually I decided I couldn't restrict myself anymore, and started eating regular again. I bounced back pretty well after that.
Sounds like you decided to reinterpret a bodily cue that you'd been interpreting as nausea to mean hunger. That's awesome. Reminds me of hearing that many people misinterpret thirst for hunger, and are dehydrated because of that. Also reminds me of my grandpa, who never took pain medication, even at the dentist. He said that it didn't hurt, it just felt intensely warm.