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magilum wrote:I think a lot

Submitted by QuasarX on April 6, 2008 - 10:30am.

magilum wrote:

I think a lot of aches and pains can be relieved by sitting still and relaxing, or being distracted by something long enough that the tension in that part of your body subsides and stops overcompensating for the injury. Do you ever have a headache, or some other kind of pain, and you get engaged in a task, and "forget" that you're in pain?

Actually, one of my college professors said that there was research to show that the brain has a mechanism for blocking pain, and that people could actually choose to stop feeling pain.  Intrigued, I practiced at it for a while, and now I've gotten pretty good at blocking any pain I'm feeling.  Just one example: After having my wisdom teeth removed, I didn't take any pain killers and didn't feel any pain.

However, the specific help that I was referring to in my post was not dealing with pain, but rather an actual physical problem with observable physical symptoms.

magilum wrote:

There's also the placebo effect. If you believe something will help you, it will, to some extent.

Actually, this is in dispute:

http://www.slate.com/id/2176465/fr/rss/

Personally, I don't see believing you're getting help as a plausible cause of actually improving.  I find it much more likely that people improve for other reasons and then attribute the results to the placebo.  Granted, if people feel more relaxed and less stressed as a result of expecting their problem to go away, that's a physical difference in the body that could very well make it easier for the body to heal itself in situations where the body is naturally able to do so.  However, I would say that the actual cause of getting better is the body's natural ability to heal itself, and that the placebo effect is, at best, an indirect cause of removing an obstacle from that natural process thereby allowing it to happen faster, where the direct cause is feeling more relaxed and less stressed (which could be accomplished by other means).

magilum wrote:

I allow for a third option, which is that they're actually helping by some mechanism. If this is so, I'd say this mystery mechanism is also unknown to the practitioners, as they've yet to substantiate their claims about how it works, or even develop a consistent story.

A very interesting point.  I think that if alternative medicine practices arise from trial and error, the underlying mechanisms would, by necessity, be unknown.  However, I would expect that at least in some cases, whatever explanation is derived could still be useful for the practice in the same way that it's useful for me to think of a brick as a hard solid object when it's actually just a bunch of subatomic particles and forces.

magilum wrote:

I long for the "mature science of the mind" eluded to by Sam Harris: a field in which we could, for instance, take advantage of a thinglike the placebo effect, and turn it into a consistent and reliable remedy for minor pains. Or we could figure out a deliberate and non-oogie-boogie way to inspire euphoria through mental practices, or any number of things where the direct manipulation of mental states might be desired.

Also very intriguing.  However, this seems unlikely to happen in our current money-driven society.  What company is going to offer research grants to help people learn how to treat themselves without having to buy any product or service?

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