Can we make sense of it?

[vivamis123]

Back in July 2006 Travis posted this beautiful post on "13 Things in Science That Don't Make Sense" I thought it would be interesting to start a thread on brainstroming these "findings" and see if we can't make sense of them:

Michael Brooks

1 The placebo effect

DON'T try this at home. Several times a day, for several days, you induce pain in someone. You control the pain with morphine until the final day of the experiment, when you replace the morphine with saline solution. Guess what? The saline takes the pain away.

This is the placebo effect: somehow, sometimes, a whole lot of nothing can be very powerful. Except it's not quite nothing. When Fabrizio Benedetti of the University of Turin in Italy carried out the above experiment, he added a final twist by adding naloxone, a drug that blocks the effects of morphine, to the saline. The shocking result? The pain-relieving power of saline solution disappeared.

So what is going on? Doctors have known about the placebo effect for decades, and the naloxone result seems to show that the placebo effect is somehow biochemical. But apart from that, we simply don't know.

Benedetti has since shown that a saline placebo can also reduce tremors and muscle stiffness in people with Parkinson's disease (Nature Neuroscience, vol 7, p 587). He and his team measured the activity of neurons in the patients' brains as they administered the saline. They found that individual neurons in the subthalamic nucleus (a common target for surgical attempts to relieve Parkinson's symptoms) began to fire less often when the saline was given, and with fewer "bursts" of firing - another feature associated with Parkinson's. The neuron activity decreased at the same time as the symptoms improved: the saline was definitely doing something.

We have a lot to learn about what is happening here, Benedetti says, but one thing is clear: the mind can affect the body's biochemistry. "The relationship between expectation and therapeutic outcome is a wonderful model to understand mind-body interaction," he says. Researchers now need to identify when and where placebo works. There may be diseases in which it has no effect. There may be a common mechanism in different illnesses. As yet, we just don't know.

Do you know?

[metis]

Actually it does make sense-- even in our everyday lives. Essentially it's mind over matter. How many times in the mornings did you get up feeling ill, thought about not going to work, but you went anyway, and you found out you were just fine and dandy.

In Buddhism and Hinduism, meditators have been able to very significantly slow their metabolism, lower their body temperature, and take a breath only once ever several minutes. Sports figures have been known to play a game after suffering a broken bone that put them out of commission after the game was over.

Shalom,
Vern

[Mirage]

I think there is an as yet unknown biochemical process which takes place when a person expects relief or a cure. I have long wished that we would study the placebo effect in greater detail, because it is possible we might be able to induce it artificially. There may be some amazing potential there since the placebo effect is the closest thing we've ever seen in medicine to a panacea. Unfortunately, it doesn't work on everyone, and there are limitations to the placebo effect, but it's something I am really amazed has not been pursued much more actively in the last century.

Worth noting, some people also report negative side effects when taking a harmless placebo. I am guessing some people expect side effects, and the side effects are psychosomatic.

[vivamis123]

Wow Margie: Worth noting, some people also report negative side effects when taking a harmless placebo. I am guessing some people expect side effects, and the side effects are psychosomatic.

That is very interesting.

I recall a time where my sister in law and I got drunk. It had been snowing and the snow was knee high. We had to walk through a field. One minute we were laughing and the next minute my sister in law was gone. I started to panik and was immediately sober.

I think that Metis is right it is mind over matter, but what triggers a change to come about?

I have a cold at this time. I love it because I can experience with it, since I am not allowed to do it on others LOL. Every morning I wake up with a sore throat and a stuffed nose. It takes me about 30 min to an hour to get rid of it for the rest of the day. I simply give no thought to it.

I agree with you Margie that more research should be done on the placebo effect. Can we pin point some triggers? Maybe:

1) Need
2) Refusal
3) Expectation

[mooomooo]

Today's Doctors have so many clients they cannot spend much time individually with each client . Most of their clients have 'de-facto placebo' illnesses ..... and leave with a prescription for whatever .




>>>"I think there is an as yet unknown biochemical process which takes place when a person expects relief or a cure. "<<<

'Emotional Energy' , is defined by me such as when someone hurts you with a cruel remark . You are hurt by those words . It can be graphed by placing leads onto certain and various points on the body and depending on the input stimuli -your blood pressure will go up or down as will pupil reaction and respirations will also be monitored .

Having done Touch Healing so many times l know of it well .
If a person was in a coma and cognitive but un-responsive they do not have a way to express their opinion and the Touch Healer would have to 'asume' that the client wants the Touch Healing attempt done .



If a person has just stopped doing Heroin , by the third day they will hit 'physical withdrawl' no matter what they 'think' or attempt mentally .

[Mirage]

To clarify, when I say psychosomatic, I am using the medical definition, as per this one:
psychosomatic: Definition and Much More from Answers.com

In common parlance, psychosomatic usually means "not real" but in medical terms it means physical symptoms which have a mental origin. They can be perfectly real, and very unpleasant, even fatal (fatal cardiac arrest, for example). Another little known element of medicine is that people can be accidentally "voodooed" by their own doctors. An overly negative doctor who convinces a patient he or she is going to die soon can actually make that person sick. In magick tradition, in order to successfully "voodoo" curse someone you also have to make them somehow aware they have been cursed. Common methods including leaving a dead animal on their doorstep and symbols like that. Many ancient cultures had protective emblems to ward off harmful magick and the "evil eye." Those psychologically counter the negative thoughts. I make no judgement about whether there are also spiritual effects. That is not measurable.

There was a brief controversy over the tendency some doctors have to terrify patients into changing harmful lifestyle patterns, after some research showed extreme scare tactics actually increased the likelihood of the patient becoming ill or dying, but because it is easier to sue a doctor for not warning you of a danger than it is to sue a doctor for accidentally voodooing you into a heart attack, preventative medicine still commonly uses those tactics, even when they may frighten a patient to the point of being physically dangerous. If you ever have a doctor who tells you if you do not do x, you will die, or you will probably be dead in 2 years, etc. get another doctor.

[metis]

Originally Posted by vivamis123

I have a cold at this time. I love it because I can experience with it, since I am not allowed to do it on others LOL. Every morning I wake up with a sore throat and a stuffed nose. It takes me about 30 min to an hour to get rid of it for the rest of the day. I simply give no thought to it.

Sounds more like an allergy that's affecting your sinuses (one simply does not get rid of a cold in the afternoon and then have it again next morning). Colds should be gone in a week or so depending on the strain of virus you might have. Allergies are often much longer and they tend to follow a pattern. In two cases, my wife and a close friend of mine, they thought they had colds, I told them to see an allergist, and both found out they had allergies (my wife also got diagnosed with asthma, which is also a form of allergy).

Shalom,
Vern

[vivamis123]

That's interesting Metis. I have not considerd allergies. What is the difference between a cold and allergies (symptom wise) and would I not see a pattern if it were allergies?

I do catch a "cold" (allergy : ) maybe once a year, sometimes it skips a year.

[metis]

Originally Posted by vivamis123

That's interesting Metis. I have not considerd allergies. What is the difference between a cold and allergies (symptom wise) and would I not see a pattern if it were allergies?

I do catch a "cold" (allergy : ) maybe once a year, sometimes it skips a year.

The symptoms can be so close that it may be very hard to tell. What makes it even more complicated is that an allergy may help to trigger a cold because it weakens your immunity system.

If you only get this once a year, and as long as it goes away in a week or so, then it may be a cold. Usually a cold will also have other symptoms such as tiredness, aches, but not normally a temperature (if there's a temperature that runs more than one degree for a few days, it's probably a flu virus). My wife has what's sometimes called a "winter allergy", so when the snow flies or its very humid outside, she gets all plugged up.

I don't know if this helps at all? It can be very hard to tell the difference sometimes.

Shalom,
Vern

[vivamis123]

Yes, Metis it helps, but it does not really matter, if I am experiencing a cold or an allergy. Both are of the mind and should be possibly overcome through the mind : ) If you know what I mean.

Back to the subject of this thread; I ask myself is the placebo effect is a mind over matter as you think it is, or is it matter over matter? Meaning replacing a physical thing with another physical thing. Let's say you have a cold and take medication, this medication could be replaced with anything else, as long as belief in the replacement is present (consciously or not).