The Placebo Molecule Is Emerging

[ChicagoGranny]

Give people a sugar pill, they have shown, and those patients — especially if they have one of the chronic, stress-related conditions that register the strongest placebo effects and if the treatment is delivered by someone in whom they have confidence — will improve. Tell someone a normal milkshake is a diet beverage, and his gut will respond as if the drink were low fat. Take athletes to the top of the Alps, put them on exercise machines and hook them to an oxygen tank, and they will perform better than when they are breathing room air — even if room air is all that’s in the tank. Wake a patient from surgery and tell him you’ve done an arthroscopic repair, and his knee gets better even if all you did was knock him out and put a couple of incisions in his skin. Give a drug a fancy name, and it works better than if you don’t.
You don’t even have to deceive the patients. You can hand a patient with irritable bowel syndrome a sugar pill, identify it as such and tell her that sugar pills are known to be effective when used as placebos, and she will get better, especially if you take the time to deliver that message with warmth and close attention. Depression, back pain, chemotherapy-related malaise, migraine, post-traumatic stress disorder: The list of conditions that respond to placebos — as well as they do to drugs, with some patients — is long and growing.

...

Aided by functional magnetic resonance imaging (f.M.R.I.) and other precise surveillance techniques, Kaptchuk and his colleagues have begun to elucidate an ensemble of biochemical processes that may finally account for how placebos work and why they are more effective for some people, and some disorders, than others. The molecules, in other words, appear to be emerging. And their emergence may reveal fundamental flaws in the way we understand the body’s healing mechanisms, and the way we evaluate whether more standard medical interventions in those processes work, or don’t.

Full article -> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/07/maga ... icine.html

[chunkyfrog]

Might there be a link to the assertion that laughter is the best medicine? . . .

[Goofproof]

Might there be a link to the assertion that laughter is the best medicine? . . .

Would building a Tree House in a Apple Tree, help keep Doctors Away? Jim

[chunkyfrog]

Maybe the ones who cannot climb . . .

[chunkyfrog]

After carefully searching the formulary, it appears that my Medicare part D will not cover it.
I have been experimenting with laying on of hands, and it mostly helps with stress and blood pressure.

[jnk...]

I believe that science is a truly valuable tool for defining discovery and discussing it productively but that science itself is nonetheless merely a tool that should be wielded carefully without being worshipped. Humans invented scientific methodologies, so I would consider it futile to look to science as being the perfect tool for defining all the deeper aspects of what it is to be human. And if any medical scientists are offended by my statements, I suggest that they go take a sugar pill, unless, of course, their insulin status does not allow for that sort of thing.

[JJR]

This is the nice thing about CPAP, air is our medicine. No exotic drugs, just air.

[ChicagoGranny]

This is the nice thing about CPAP, air is our medicine. No exotic drugs, just air.

Sounds dangerous.

NAME SYMBOL PERCENT BY VOLUME
Nitrogen N2 78.084 %
Oxygen O2 20.9476 %
Argon Ar 0.934 %
Carbon Dioxide CO2 0.0314 %
Neon Ne 0.001818 %
Methane CH4 0.0002 %
Helium He 0.000524 %
Krypton Kr 0.000114 %
Hydrogen H2 0.00005 %
Xenon Xe 0.0000087 %

[jnk...]

This is the nice thing about CPAP, air is our medicine. No exotic drugs, just air.

Sounds dangerous.

NAME SYMBOL PERCENT BY VOLUME
Nitrogen N2 78.084 %
Oxygen O2 20.9476 %
Argon Ar 0.934 %
Carbon Dioxide CO2 0.0314 %
Neon Ne 0.001818 %
Methane CH4 0.0002 %
Helium He 0.000524 %
Krypton Kr 0.000114 %
Hydrogen H2 0.00005 %
Xenon Xe 0.0000087 %

I've read the MSDS. It ain't pretty.

[JJR]

Plus the industrial solvent dihydrogen monoxide!

[ChicagoGranny]

Plus the industrial solvent dihydrogen monoxide!

I've read that Monsanto sprays it on the crops we eat!

[chunkyfrog]

The bullfrog uses it on our tomato plants.
Unfortunately the weeds love it too.

[jnk...]

I was going to give this whole thing a measure of conscious thought, but then somebody told me that there is actually no such thing as conscious thought. Who'da not thunk it!

https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... s-thought/

Frankly I'm not sure what not to think about all that.

[chunkyfrog]

Climb on board the string of consciousness.
It's a party.

[DreamDiver]

I was going to give this whole thing a measure of conscious thought, but then somebody told me that there is actually no such thing as conscious thought. Who'da not thunk it!

https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... s-thought/

Frankly I'm not sure what not to think about all that.

Consciousness as process separate from thought... The mind is an instant pot. Consciousness is the control panel -- more like a child's busy box control panel, giving us the illusion of control of the contents of the pot. Thoughts are the contents of the pot, bubbling and simmering...