Placebo and Real Change

[uniquemand]

My view is that "placebo" is a way of downgrading results from changes in a person's belief system that they will get well or not. I'm convinced that such changes are much more important than medical interventions (though those are necessary, as well, when there is a physical threat preventing recovery). In fact, studies definitely show this. Please read the following article and respond!

http://www.golocalprov.com/lifestyle...ebos-a-chance/

[Royal Prince Xenu]

My view is that "placebo" is a way of downgrading results from changes in a person's belief system that they will get well or not. I'm convinced that such changes are much more important than medical interventions (though those are necessary, as well, when there is a physical threat preventing recovery). In fact, studies definitely show this. Please read the following article and respond!

http://www.golocalprov.com/lifestyle...ebos-a-chance/

I don't think anyone is going to deny the truth of what you have said. However, the Placebo Effect has never grown a lost limb, restored eyesight, nor replaced Viagara jokes. Definitely, a person's state of mind will affect how well he/she heels from an injury but it doesn't matter how many Gloppett eggs you have, they'll never stitch up a severed artery.

My Father didn't want anything to do with $cientology but, he would regularly come and ask me for "that Touch Therapy". (Feel my finger. Oops, that wasn't my finger.)

Just at the time that Muthur was about to tell us that she was to undergo Radio~ and Chemo-torture for breast cancer, my Father died, so she went through it on her own. In the end she had to have the breast removed and given her age, she elected to have them both taken. To date, there has been no successful identification of her "tumor"--this is consistent with my family failing to conform with normality.

She did have family support during the surgery, and having met several of her friends at that time, it was clear that she had not endured the other treatments entirely alone. While I was visiting she was sent a survey about "Depression and Cancer". The questions were totally inappropriate to the point that after answering them all for her, I felt depressed. If someone who has no cancer is adversely affected by the survey, how in blazes is it expected to help people who do have the disease? I wrote a letter to this effect and received a very apologetic reply.

Are you anxious about your Cancer?
Are you concerned about Chemotherapy?
"Listen mate. I've had my tits hacked off and am now cancer-free. I am not anxious about what's been. I'm concerned about right now while I am in severe post-surgical pain along with the burns inflicted on my muscles by the radiotherapy, none of which is addressed in your bloody survey."

Muthur has now adjusted to a flat-chested life and is progressing steadily, and there have certainly been times when, without family intervention, she would not have made it through so far.

What you believe can help or hinder, but when all the warning you get is "Mind that bus." "What bus?" SPLAT, what you believe at that moment ain't gonna make much of a difference.

[uniquemand]

True. Placebo seems to help a person believe they might do better, which changes their expectancy, improves their immune system, and perhaps gets them to stop sabotaging their own health through stress and negative belief systems. It is a mental intervention, and therefore has no direct effect on the physical environment. So, of course, it won't help you if you are struck by a bus.

[Terril park]

True. Placebo seems to help a person believe they might do better, which changes their expectancy, improves their immune system, and perhaps gets them to stop sabotaging their own health through stress and negative belief systems. It is a mental intervention, and therefore has no direct effect on the physical environment. So, of course, it won't help you if you are struck by a bus.

Really good topic!!

I currently circulate in Skeptic circles. I'll suggest someone gives a talk in this area.

If one is a scientologist, or involved with many other belief systems
one will consider that theta, elan vital, lifeforce, whatever is senior to
many other areas. The placebo effect would seem to confirm this.

Of course a broken leg needs medical attention. Assists appear to
speed up healing.

My only personal experience of this was in my beginning days as a scientologist. Someone fell and hurt their back, and I gave a touch assist
just for a short time. They said I handled a broken back. Pretty sure I didn't. However I did a real damn slap up job of relieving the trauma.

[Claire Swazey]

I think that when you're dealing with emotional wellbeing, that the subjective can become objective.

What I mean is that if a person thinks he feels better, then he does. That's not the case with, say, cancer.

So I think a different benchmark could be used with that. Comments by skeptics like, it's placebo, you only thought etc etc, just don't really work for someone getting a therapy or doing some practice of some sort to address an emotional or spiritual issue.

So what would be a good criterion?

IMO, lasting change.

Did the person doing the meditation, getting the auditing only feel better for a few hours or a day or did he feel better for a good long time? If he had an insight, did it stay with him? Did he notice changes in his life?

[uniquemand]

In my own case, all of my problems were of my own creation, whether psychogenic or caused by inconsistency of actions, betrayals, etc. Getting sessions on the topics which were "charged" for me was of inordinate help, though habits still actually had to be CHANGED, rather than expecting miracles because I had an insight. That's the part that most people don't do, for a long time. No therapeutic intervention can do that for you. You have to do that part yourself, and change often includes upsets, pain, isolation, self-doubt. Many people that start down that road double back when the going gets tough, or TRY to. Then things get really complicated.

[Claire Swazey]

Been getting into Buddhism. I do like to read the stories about various masters and monks and so on but they tend to all end "and then he achieved enlightenment". They make it sound sorta like being a virgin, you either are or you aren't.

However, my experience is that enlightnment (and mental health, too, for that matter) are a matter of degree.