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ORIGINAL: juliaoceania

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Spirituality is a very different thing than sitting still and relaxing.

The placebo effect says that sometimes a person perceives they are feeling better when they believe they should feel better. Placebo effect has never been shown to actually heal disease or injury.

So you are saying that my meditation as a spiritual experience has no value and is a waste of time. You have not proven this to be so. You have not shown that it is a waste of time to feel connected to something larger than yourself through prayer.... even when I showed that medical doctors have connected it with lowering blood pressure.

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ORIGINAL: DomKen

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ORIGINAL: juliaoceania

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Spirituality is a very different thing than sitting still and relaxing.

The placebo effect says that sometimes a person perceives they are feeling better when they believe they should feel better. Placebo effect has never been shown to actually heal disease or injury.

So you are saying that my meditation as a spiritual experience has no value and is a waste of time. You have not proven this to be so. You have not shown that it is a waste of time to feel connected to something larger than yourself through prayer.... even when I showed that medical doctors have connected it with lowering blood pressure.

I'm telling you that sitting still and relaxing is the cause. prayer or chanting some mnemonic is just sideshow.

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ORIGINAL: Kirata

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ORIGINAL: DomKen

The placebo effect says that sometimes a person perceives they are feeling better when they believe they should feel better. Placebo effect has never been shown to actually heal disease or injury.

More bullshit.

Placebo effects are defined as “positive physiological or psychological changes associated with the use of inert medications, sham procedures, or therapeutic symbols within a healthcare encounter” [Kleinman A, Guess HA, Wilentz JS. In: An overview. Guess HA, Kleinman A, Kusek JW, Engel LW, editors. London: British Medical Journal; 2002. pp. 1–32].

In fact, actual physiological changes resulting from placebo have been observed for a long time (link follows)...

A man whom his doctors referred to as “Mr. Wright” was dying from cancer of the lymph nodes. Orange-size tumors had invaded his neck, groin, chest and abdomen, and his doctors had exhausted all available treatments. Nevertheless, Mr. Wright was confident that a new anticancer drug called Krebiozen [Krebiozen has no therapeutic value] would cure him, according to a 1957 report by psychologist Bruno Klopfer of the University of California, Los Angeles, entitled “Psychological Variables in Human Cancer.”

Mr. Wright was bedridden and fighting for each breath when he received his first injection. But three days later he was cheerfully ambling around the unit, joking with the nurses. Mr. Wright’s tumors had shrunk by half, and after 10 more days of treatment he was discharged from the hospital. And yet the other patients in the hospital who had received Krebiozen showed no improvement.

Scientific American, February 2009

K.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Kirata

quote:

ORIGINAL: DomKen

The placebo effect says that sometimes a person perceives they are feeling better when they believe they should feel better. Placebo effect has never been shown to actually heal disease or injury.

More bullshit.

Placebo effects are defined as “positive physiological or psychological changes associated with the use of inert medications, sham procedures, or therapeutic symbols within a healthcare encounter” [Kleinman A, Guess HA, Wilentz JS. In: An overview. Guess HA, Kleinman A, Kusek JW, Engel LW, editors. London: British Medical Journal; 2002. pp. 1–32].

In fact, actual physiological changes resulting from placebo have been observed for a long time (link follows)...

A man whom his doctors referred to as “Mr. Wright” was dying from cancer of the lymph nodes. Orange-size tumors had invaded his neck, groin, chest and abdomen, and his doctors had exhausted all available treatments. Nevertheless, Mr. Wright was confident that a new anticancer drug called Krebiozen [Krebiozen has no therapeutic value] would cure him, according to a 1957 report by psychologist Bruno Klopfer of the University of California, Los Angeles, entitled “Psychological Variables in Human Cancer.”

Mr. Wright was bedridden and fighting for each breath when he received his first injection. But three days later he was cheerfully ambling around the unit, joking with the nurses. Mr. Wright’s tumors had shrunk by half, and after 10 more days of treatment he was discharged from the hospital. And yet the other patients in the hospital who had received Krebiozen showed no improvement.

Scientific American, February 2009

K.

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ORIGINAL: juliaoceania

quote:

ORIGINAL: Kirata

quote:

ORIGINAL: DomKen

The placebo effect says that sometimes a person perceives they are feeling better when they believe they should feel better. Placebo effect has never been shown to actually heal disease or injury.

More bullshit.

Placebo effects are defined as “positive physiological or psychological changes associated with the use of inert medications, sham procedures, or therapeutic symbols within a healthcare encounter” [Kleinman A, Guess HA, Wilentz JS. In: An overview. Guess HA, Kleinman A, Kusek JW, Engel LW, editors. London: British Medical Journal; 2002. pp. 1–32].

In fact, actual physiological changes resulting from placebo have been observed for a long time (link follows)...

A man whom his doctors referred to as “Mr. Wright” was dying from cancer of the lymph nodes. Orange-size tumors had invaded his neck, groin, chest and abdomen, and his doctors had exhausted all available treatments. Nevertheless, Mr. Wright was confident that a new anticancer drug called Krebiozen [Krebiozen has no therapeutic value] would cure him, according to a 1957 report by psychologist Bruno Klopfer of the University of California, Los Angeles, entitled “Psychological Variables in Human Cancer.”

Mr. Wright was bedridden and fighting for each breath when he received his first injection. But three days later he was cheerfully ambling around the unit, joking with the nurses. Mr. Wright’s tumors had shrunk by half, and after 10 more days of treatment he was discharged from the hospital. And yet the other patients in the hospital who had received Krebiozen showed no improvement.

Scientific American, February 2009

K.

Yeah, deriding the placebo effect as proof that what we believe to be true is extremely powerful is rather ignorant. I do not ever believe I have heard a doctor claim that the placebo effect wasn't real or powerful.

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Sometimes things happen with no clear explanation. If it makes you feel better to believe a positive attitude shrunk some tumors fine but don't try and claim it is what really happened.

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ORIGINAL: juliaoceania

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Sometimes things happen with no clear explanation. If it makes you feel better to believe a positive attitude shrunk some tumors fine but don't try and claim it is what really happened.

I wonder why you find it to be so threatening that people can make miraculous changes within their own body by using their mind, belief, etc... Yogis have been doing this for eons!

I remember when I was doing my undergrad work and I learned about how people in other cultures believed that the evil eye was so powerful that some of them literally dropped dead from it. What would you call that?

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They're very aware of the placebo effect. That's not quite the same thing as claiming that it's just as effective on malignant tumours as radiotherapy, though?

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ORIGINAL: DomKen

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ORIGINAL: juliaoceania

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Sometimes things happen with no clear explanation. If it makes you feel better to believe a positive attitude shrunk some tumors fine but don't try and claim it is what really happened.

I wonder why you find it to be so threatening that people can make miraculous changes within their own body by using their mind, belief, etc... Yogis have been doing this for eons!

I remember when I was doing my undergrad work and I learned about how people in other cultures believed that the evil eye was so powerful that some of them literally dropped dead from it. What would you call that?

fear, adrenaline and a weak/bad heart?

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ORIGINAL: juliaoceania

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They're very aware of the placebo effect. That's not quite the same thing as claiming that it's just as effective on malignant tumours as radiotherapy, though?

I know the power of it is so great that they have to control for it whenever they do a study, because it is so powerful that many people will spontaneously heal from believing they are getting the real treatment.

Of course, there are some treatments that are even more powerful than belief, otherwise, we wouldn't have medicine at all. There is the alternative way of looking at it, though, why is it that a group of people will all get the same treatment and some of them die anyway with all things being equal, they should all recover, right? Something separates the survivor from the one who didn't. I do not know what that something is, but in some cases it seems to be the will to live.

One cannot underestimate the will to live. It cannot be measured scientifically, either. It is one of those airy fairie sort of concepts like faith, spirituality, and belief.

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ORIGINAL: juliaoceania

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They're very aware of the placebo effect. That's not quite the same thing as claiming that it's just as effective on malignant tumours as radiotherapy, though?

I know the power of it is so great that they have to control for it whenever they do a study, because it is so powerful that many people will spontaneously heal from believing they are getting the real treatment.

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Right, so people die of cancer because they want. It's their own fault for failing to think positive enough.
I fear we may have to agree to disagree on that one.

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On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero." ... Fight Club

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ORIGINAL: DomKen

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ORIGINAL: juliaoceania

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They're very aware of the placebo effect. That's not quite the same thing as claiming that it's just as effective on malignant tumours as radiotherapy, though?

I know the power of it is so great that they have to control for it whenever they do a study, because it is so powerful that many people will spontaneously heal from believing they are getting the real treatment.

Actually they never correct for placebo effect when the treatment is expected to fully cure/correct a condition. They only correct for placebo under conditions where the treatment is to relieve symptoms or the result will otherwise be a mostly patient reported factor. You won't ever find double blind studies on organ transplants for instance.

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ORIGINAL: Kirata

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ORIGINAL: DomKen

Spontaneous remission does not equal placebo effect. A single anecdotal occurence is not evidence of anything.

Sometimes things happen with no clear explanation. If it makes you feel better to believe a positive attitude shrunk some tumors fine but don't try and claim it is what really happened.

That's a nice dance step, but the example was clearly not a case of "spontaneous remission". Here's another:

They were the "no option"' patients, people with advanced heart disease who had used up all their bypass surgeries and who were running out of ways to stay alive. But when they joined a study testing laser surgery and a heart drug that grows new blood vessels, remarkable things happened.

Their crippling chest pain improved. They had fewer angina attacks. They were able to exercise longer during a stress test on a treadmill. Sophisticated nuclear perfusion scans showed an improvement in blood flow to their hearts and heart function. And they didn't improve for just a week, or two weeks or six months. They were still better two years later a result all the more incredible considering they received no active treatment.

Yes, a catheter was inserted into an artery and slowly pushed up to the heart. Investigators then went through all the motions of making the patients believe they were using a satellite-guided laser to drill holes into their heart muscle. But the laser was never actually switched on. Another group of patients got "sham" injections of salt water, instead of a growth factor protein.

"We gave these patients big headphones, we played loud music and the only person who knew whether they were receiving X treatment or placebo was the operator who was not involved in their followup,"' says lead author Dr. Roger Laham, an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston.

The surprising study, published in this month's issue of the American Journal of Cardiology, adds to growing evidence the placebo effect not only triggers true physiological changes in the body, it lasts longer than thought.

"The traditional thinking was, 'Well, the patient improves for a couple of weeks after you give them "treatment" because they have a better outlook on life, and then they kind of go back and regress to what they were,''' says Laham, an interventional cardiologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre. "What this study shows is, in fact, that is not the case. What does happen instead is that these patients improve, and their improvement is as sustained as the ones given active treatment."

RNAO-CTNIG

I hope you will contact the American Journal of Cardiology at your earliest opportunity to advise them that nothing really happened.

K.

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Persistence of effect cannot be used as evidence of efficacy, and double-blinded trials are essential in this patient population.

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ORIGINAL: Kirata

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ORIGINAL: DomKen

If you think only 40 water crystals formed from 50 samples of water being frozen you have too large a lack of knowledge for me to continue trying to discuss this with you.

You haven't even begun to discuss it, with anybody. All you've done is make pronouncements about fraud and heresy like some crazed village priest confronted with an outbreak of "witchcraft".

K.