Homeopathy, crystal healing, reiki and chakras

[tater]

Any homeopathic things that work are by accident, not intent. Read the quote above from the founder of said insanity. It's hokum (as is chiropractic).

[AngelLestat]

homeopathic was already disprove scientifically.

In the final homeopathic dose there is not 1 single atom of the initial "medicine".

Is like drop a spoonful of penicillin in the atlantic, then wait 5 years and drink from the pacific.

[vger]

Huh. Well this is a discussion I never expected to come up.

I've wondered on and off whether or not certain ways of thinking (won't mention any specific names) actually have relevance regardless of whether or not those ways of thinking have any bearing on reality. What if it doesn't even MATTER if it's real? What if the only thing that matters is that it accomplishes something?

Is truth more important than relief/happiness/contentment? That's a loaded question. So here's a question. Is truth so important that it's worth going into hospitals full of terminally-ill children and saying, "Cheer up, kid. There's no afterlife. All you get is what you have right now with your innards turning to liquid, and then you become worm food. Have a nice day."

At what point does the fight against delusion become over-the-top?

There is no such thing as "alternative" medicine. There are therapies that have been demonstrated in controlled studies to be effective, and those that have not are hokum.

I would say that alternative medicine is ANY kind of treatment that isn't "mainstream." In the case of "take two and call me in the morning" medicine, that's the unpatentable natural solutions to problems that we currently solve with complex bio/chemical formulas. I have no doubt that there are much simpler answers to some of those problems. But if it can't be patented, it's not worth developing/manufacturing/marketing. But it IS worth being panned as 'hokum.' This isn't to say that voodoo will cure anything, but there's a lot of gray between Big Pharma and con artists. And it's very easy now to say, "I'm a scientist, so my cure works, and that other cure is just a psychic trying to sell you something." Very easy to do in an age where it takes a PhD to understand freaking bar soap. Health is WAY too commercialized to assume that there aren't just as many lies coming from the so-called "science side" of things, and that includes mudslinging for the sake of creating doubt about alternatives. The modern secular movement has simply made creating that doubt all too disgustingly easy.

Probably not quite the kind of thing you were expecting, but this just came up on my feed earlier.

https://www.yahoo.com/health/1-000-year-old-medical-remedy-shows-promise-115121260667.html?bcmt=comments-postbox

If further testing of this proves to be successful, dang that's pretty impressive. To think that something 1000 years old might be more efficient than everything being tried now... that's freaking incredible. Just because people from the long past were into a lot of superstitious nonsense, doesn't mean they weren't doing science. I think we've thrown the baby out with the bathwater here. That's great news for Big Pharma though. As much as they like to claim otherwise, Capitalists HATE competition.

Edited April 1, 2015 by vger

[Major999]

Homeopathy doesn't work, a recent review of the literature in Australia confirmed it (Along with simple maths, and statistics).

The whole chakra, crystal and Reiki thing is just new age mumbo jumbo that uses a word salad to sound sciency.

[Drunken Hobo]

About 10 years ago we had the case of Sylvia Millekamp in the Netherlands. She was a quite famous actor who got breast cancer.

In stead of getting the appropriate treatment she got 'advice' from alternative healer Jomanda who gave her alternative medications and kept advising not to get a radiation treatment.

sylvia died painfully, Jomanda got sued but won the case.

Steve Jobs met a similar fate. He had the astounding good fortune to catch his pancreatic cancer early, which gave him a decent chance of long-term survival (pancreatic cancer is usually a death sentence). However instead of trusting doctors with decades of experience, he put his faith in quack healers who told him to change his diet and try acupuncture, as this would magically get rid of the cancer. After a year and no progress, he decided to do what the real doctors told him to and get surgery, but by then it was too late. He later expressed regret at not going to the real doctors sooner. He probably would still be alive if he'd trusted them first, but now he's a corpse lying in a hole.

But if it can't be patented, it's not worth developing/manufacturing/marketing.

Demonstrably false. In my local supermarket, you can buy 16 store-brand paracetamol for 30p. Or you can buy 14 GSK-brand paracetamol for £3.05. People will pay extra for trusted brands. A lot of pharmaceutical adverts on TV are for drugs with expired patents (Anadin Extra for example includes caffeine, aspirin and paracetamol). You can buy similar store-brand pills for 1/4 the price, yet it's still worth their while for pharmaceutical companies to manufacture & market these drugs.

[Silver_Swift]

Is truth more important than relief/happiness/contentment? That's a loaded question. So here's a question. Is truth so important that it's worth going into hospitals full of terminally-ill children and saying, "Cheer up, kid. There's no afterlife. All you get is what you have right now with your innards turning to liquid, and then you become worm food. Have a nice day."

At what point does the fight against delusion become over-the-top?

That is a very difficult question. Yes, in most situations truth has mostly instrumental value and all that matters in the end is if certain belief sets are more useful than others (though note that believing a lie often has unexpected disadvantages), but:

1) If you are making the decision for your self, you can't first investigate both options and then make an informed choice about taking on a false belief, that is just not how human minds work. ("I am now going to believe that this sugar pill is real medicine because then it will help with my symptoms.")

2) If you are making the decision for someone else you are taking away their choice as to whether they value truth more than pain relief. I would not be ok with people making this decision for me and I assume that I am not alone in this sentiment.

This is oversimplifying it, of course, and there might indeed be belief sets that are so valuable to believe in (even if they are false) that it is better to not investigate them to carefully, it is just that this is an area where humans are very prone to making dangerous mistakes.

As to your example: There is a difference between convincing someone of a falsehood and deliberately pointing out a very painful truth, but yes, if you do not believe in an afterlife I would argue that it is immoral to go around telling terminally-ill people that they are going to be living forever when, in fact, you believe they will literally seize to exist soon.

[AcidSludge]

I see stuff like that on a daily basis, and since the line between utter bullcrap and stuff that might be plausible is really blurry, especially in elderly/geriatric care, it's a struggle to balance questions like "Is it ethically reasonable", "does it get along with scientific proven cures and therapy", "does is make my patients happy" and many, many more.

I would be negligent if I weren't opend minded to new therapies or therapy approaches, but I would never ever say something like "Stop taking your pills, ma'am, and let me dance around your bed, singing umshakalakalaka while hurling a dreamcatcher over my head instead!". Don't laugh here, I've seen a niece of a patient of mine doing that.

When, and only when stuff like that isn't contrary to or sabotaging my therapy approaches I'm okay with it - that dancing was funny, at least.

[vger]

1) If you are making the decision for your self, you can't first investigate both options and then make an informed choice about taking on a false belief, that is just not how human minds work. ("I am now going to believe that this sugar pill is real medicine because then it will help with my symptoms.")

This is oversimplifying it, of course, and there might indeed be belief sets that are so valuable to believe in (even if they are false) that it is better to not investigate them to carefully, it is just that this is an area where humans are very prone to making dangerous mistakes.

Yep, this is the kind of conflict this conjured up in my head. I've been wondering for a while if there might be a value to belief systems regardless of how accurate they are. I hadn't even thought of the medical implications.

This doesn't just apply to placebo meds either. It can impact natural healing. If someone's odds of survival aren't good, informing of that can make those odds even worse, just by eroding away at hope. Mind-over-matter is real, at least to a degree, especially when it comes to how the brain interacts with the body. In cases like this, opening the box can almost literally kill the cat.

"Never tell me the odds." - Han Solo

[Albert VDS]

Isn't the placebo effect a way of removing a mental factor which causes the problems?

Like someone having severe stomach aches and thinks he going to die(note: this person hasn't been told he/she is going to die),

they are given a "magic" pill with the message that it will safe them. All his/her stress is gone and thus his/her severe stomach aches too.

Now try the same thing with a broken leg.

[peadar1987]

Isn't the placebo effect a way of removing a mental factor which causes the problems?

Like someone having severe stomach aches and thinks he going to die(note: this person hasn't been told he/she is going to die),

they are given a "magic" pill with the message that it will safe them. All his/her stress is gone and thus his/her severe stomach aches too.

Now try the same thing with a broken leg.

Yeah, the placebo effect won't fix a broken leg, but to somebody suffering from certain mental illnesses, or chronic pain, giving them something they believe will help them can actually bring them huge relief, sometimes comparable to actual medication, with none of the side-effects.

I think the best argument against this is that even tacitly supporting the idea that these treatments might work provides fertile ground for all sorts of harmful ideas to take root. If using homeopathy to relieve psychosomatic pain makes even one person believe that it can cure their cancer, and they die as a result, that's one person too many (just my personal view).

[Albert VDS]

I think the best argument against this is that even tacitly supporting the idea that these treatments might work provides fertile ground for all sorts of harmful ideas to take root. If using homeopathy to relieve psychosomatic pain makes even one person believe that it can cure their cancer, and they die as a result, that's one person too many (just my personal view).

Exactly, and to add to that, people tend to go "It worked for me, so it'll work for you!".

[lajoswinkler]

I'm tired of people saying "it's placebo". It is not placebo.

Placebo is an inactive substance given to an ill person to alleviate things like normal fear, low levels of pain, discomfort, etc. and gives a temporary relief.

Placebo is not:

1) "it will make your mind cure your body"

2) working indefinitively

3) expensive lying stuff connected to religion

4) reason to avoid treatment that has proven efficacy

5) able to treat anything more than the stuff listed earlier

If any country is funding the stuff from the thread title using taxpayers' money, it's a crime and should be stopped.

[peadar1987]

I'm tired of people saying "it's placebo". It is not placebo.

Placebo is an inactive substance given to an ill person to alleviate things like normal fear, low levels of pain, discomfort, etc. and gives a temporary relief.

Placebo is not:

1) "it will make your mind cure your body"

2) working indefinitively

3) expensive lying stuff connected to religion

4) reason to avoid treatment that has proven efficacy

5) able to treat anything more than the stuff listed earlier

If any country is funding the stuff from the thread title using taxpayers' money, it's a crime and should be stopped.

What is homeopathic medicine if not an "inactive substance"?

[Kryten]

What is homeopathic medicine if not an "inactive substance"?

Some homoeopathic medications have been found to contain real medicine, sold under false pretences, and other have very low dilution (1/10 in some cases) and so are potentially dangerous.

[vger]

Now try the same thing with a broken leg.

You still might see that leg heal itself faster with a placebo. It won't magically happen overnight, but the difference would be sufficient enough that it could be recordable.

I think the best argument against this is that even tacitly supporting the idea that these treatments might work provides fertile ground for all sorts of harmful ideas to take root.

Yes, let's just assume that this kind of thing is limited to crystal ball readers and give carte blanche to pharmaceutical companies. The marketing of "science drugs" should be getting even MORE scrutiny. Those are the guys who have spent millions of man-hours in psychological research to determine the best ways to invade the brains of the public, and this is only going to continue getting worse, the more they learn about how the mind works.

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Edited April 3, 2015 by vger

[sal_vager]

This is just a reminder to everyone that homeopathy, crystal healing, reiki and chakras are not supported by any scientific body or falsifiable evidence, all such evidence for homeopathy, crystal healing, reiki and chakras is purely anecdotal.

Normally pseudo-science discussion is dissuaded on these forums as it causes contention, it has been allowed so far in this case but if this thread turns to argument it will have to be closed.

Thank you for your time

Update:

This thread has had to be closed due to repeated attempts by online retailers to post advertisements for alternative treatments.

Edited May 9, 2015 by sal_vager