Alternative medicine / healing

[Heith]

I was wondering how do people view the so called alternative medications (such as homeopathy, herbal remedies) or healing (for example energy healing, shamanic techniques etc)- with this I mean what we here in the west consider as "softer" or "not scientific" options? Do you have any experiences with these?

Personally I am a little bit for and a quite bit against. I think there's a great number of people who are not learned enough to call themselves healers. This can be a question of self deceit or just egoism, but I do believe that the new age movement for example houses quite a lot of folk with somewhat unethical or unhealthy opinions. I would place most energy healers in this lot and tend to mistrust anyone who has some kind of marketing plan behind them. These days, everyone is a self- proclaimed shaman it seems...!

I do, however, have good experiences from homeopathy. My family had a dog who was in constant pain due to a malfunction of bone tissue growth in his legs. The x-rays revealed that his front legs were a firework of bone shrapnel. Everything the vet could think of had been tried, and finally they said we have to put the dog down. As a final attempt, homeopathy was tried, and it worked. A apathetic dog got up and started to play. He even liked running and jumping, something that hurt him a lot before. He lived to be quite old.

Of course, with animals it's difficult to tell- is one merely making the symptom go away, or is the actual problem relieved as well.

I've had help from homeopathy as well. It's possible that it was a mere placebo effect, but I could certainly see and feel my body cleansing itself. Placebo or not, I began to feel better.

In a way I am attracted to the idea that one ought to try and heal the energetic body (well, of course if a bone is broken, there's no herbal drops to fix that- it needs to be put back on its place), especially when doing occult studies. For this, alternative remedies could work. I notice I've become more sensitive to outside effects, such as different plants. Some agitate me, others can aid in many ways.

[Jiva]

In all honesty, aside from the placebo effect, I don't consider things like homoeopathy of any use at all. If it mentally helps people, great. But if not, then I hope whatever they took didn't have insane amounts of anything dangerous in and that they didn't stop taking any prescriptions from their medical doctor. Ultimately this is up to personal choice, but I disagree with alternative medicine when animals are killed for one small part with the rest of the body left to rot.

Of course, it's certain that many herbal remedies around the world have medicinal value of some sort, but then the formal field of medicine has never made any claims to have all the answers/cures. To me, the difference between 'alternative medicine' and 'scientific medicine' is that for the latter, people have made attempts to figure out why certain chemicals from a part of a plant or animal had the effect it did – if it indeed did anything at all – and then enhance this property in various ways.

[Wyrmfang]

I view the matter the same way as Jiva. If the negatively value-laden term pseudo-science is to be used, "alternative medicine" is certainly the field where it applies. People in this field tend to view science as some kind of opinion; "when our study is not done by established scientific methods, they debunk it as 'pseudo-science' without taking any further look to it". This is just not true. "Scientific method" in this case means simply statistical analysis whether "alternative medicine" can produce effects apart from the placebo effect. And there is huge body of evidence that for example homeopathy can´t. It´s psychologically very understandable that people can still gain by experience subjectibe certitude that it works (aside from the placebo effect), even when it contradicts their general worldview, but subjetive certitude counts as nothing when investigating something that can be investigated completely scientifically.

It is of course another matter that the placebo effect is quite poorly understood so far. If it would be studied more, no doubt more weight were given to the effect of mind on body. But progress in this field is slow because almost all the financiation comes from medical companies, and it is of course not in their interests that people could use less medicines. The most important point again is: faith should not be directed against science. When this is done, faith simply ridicules itself. Why oppose science, and thereby possibly nullify to some point the effectiveness of established treatments by negative placebo, when the positive placebo effect could be used along the best known non-placebo treatments (which is already done in some hospitals; along the ordinary cancer tretments people are also taught to systematically imagine the tumor become smaller)? Perhaps personal fame, money and pride are not especially characteristic motivators to ordinary scientists, but quite the contrary... (when talking about scietists themselves, not those who generally finance them)

[Nefastos]

I don't see them as futile as you, especially as I often hear how disappointing & frutrating the "real" scientifical medicine is often felt by people. It tries its best, but on the practical level it has quite many problems to solve - and I don't mean the materialistic world-view only, but most of all practical stuff. But since that comes close to politics, I let those sleeping dogs lie. In a word, even the strictly scientific medicine continues to have many weak & even primitive points in it, so it's not a wonder there is a need for alternatives, or widening of possibilities. For I think both are often used, depending on the situation.

One thing I have heard praise from many different sides is acupuncture. It has really helped some of my friends & relatives who have had no help from the Western medicine.

Since I see the energetical body (linga sharîra) as the real essence of the physical human, it necessarily brings some problems when dealing with medicine that operates with the dense physical body & sees its problems quite isolated, or only in some cases psychosomatically connected to the traumatic problems in the mind.

But since the alternative medicine doesn't have that context of experts to separate the quacks from the real deal, naturally there is among them less the latter than the former who only think they have found something. Or even deceive people to make money or hold up their own personal delusions.

[Wyrmfang]

I don't see them as futile as you, especially as I often hear how disappointing & frutrating the "real" scientifical medicine is often felt by people. It tries its best, but on the practical level it has quite many problems to solve - and I don't mean the materialistic world-view only, but most of all practical stuff. But since that comes close to politics, I let those sleeping dogs lie. In a word, even the strictly scientific medicine continues to have many weak & even primitive points in it, so it's not a wonder there is a need for alternatives, or widening of possibilities. For I think both are often used, depending on the situation.

To me it seems you didn´t get the point in my earlier message. Science is open to every kind of "alternatives" and "widening of possibilities". The point is, that for example homeopathy has already been extensively studied, and there is crushing evidence that it doesn´t work. Scientific attitude does not mean judging some methods beforehand to be invalid (not every single scientist of course has properly scientific attitude, and precisely for that reason science is an open and social practice). It is the homeopaths who refuse to study the evidence neutrally. Again, subjective certitude and personal experiences don´t count in this. The placebo effect is an extremely powerful and relatively little understood phenomenon.

And from this we come to what I said earlier. It would be great if the possibilities of the "power of mind" would be studied more, and less medicines would be needed. However, we don´t need an external method such as homeopathy in that. Even if faith can do lot of things, sometimes even "wonders" - that is, things that current science cannot explain - it is not the concrete physical method of homeopathy that produces the effect (for that has been demonstrated) but the faith as such. The reason why our culture is quite medicine-centered is not "scientific attitude" but capitalistic political system. You cannot patent the power of mind but you can make great money by patenting medicines.

Since I see the energetical body (linga sharîra) as the real essence of the physical human, it necessarily brings some problems when dealing with medicine that operates with the dense physical body & sees its problems quite isolated, or only in some cases psychosomatically connected to the traumatic problems in the mind.

It should be remembered that the science is not anyhow essentially medicalistic. The problem is that medical science is largely financed by medical companies. There is a strong consensus in the scientific community (of independent researchers) that we have all too much medicines, but it does not have almost any political power to change the situation. That power is in the companies, politicians and the media who unfortunately often don´t have the ability, time or will to study science, at least from non-biased motivations.

But since the alternative medicine doesn't have that context of experts to separate the quacks from the real deal, naturally there is among them less the latter than the former who only think they have found something. Or even deceive people to make money or hold up their own personal delusions.

Independent scientific study is the context that separates the real deal from everything else. It is just the case, that most of that which is currently deemed pseudo-scientific, will remain there forever simply because it´s the way it factually is. Most of the theories are always abandoned in all fields of science. However, by pseudo-science it is usually referred to groups of people who judge their theory beforehand to be right, and often cling to it even when it is falsified. "Alternative medicine" is just a term those people use of themselves to sound better, as if science was not open to all alternatives.

One thing I have heard praise from many different sides is acupuncture. It has really helped some of my friends & relatives who have had no help from the Western medicine.

As to the former, there is some evidence that acupuncture works (physically, not only because of the placebo effect). There are even some promising theories about why it works. So let´s study that more (and everything else too that is promising), and wait for more concluding results.

[Kenazis]

This book might interest some of you.

In english: http://www.adlibris.com/fi/product.aspx?isbn=1846198844

In finnish: http://www.adlibris.com/fi/product.aspx?isbn=9525701409

[Jiva]

In a word, even the strictly scientific medicine continues to have many weak & even primitive points in it, so it's not a wonder there is a need for alternatives, or widening of possibilities. For I think both are often used, depending on the situation.

Since I see the energetical body (linga sharîra) as the real essence of the physical human, it necessarily brings some problems when dealing with medicine that operates with the dense physical body & sees its problems quite isolated, or only in some cases psychosomatically connected to the traumatic problems in the mind.

Well, I didn't say the placebo effect was to be dismissed, but more that it depends on some belief of expectation on the behalf of the patient. If someone has an expectations of success it could contribute to a cure or heal entirely depending on the nature and seriousness of the condition, but if there's no expectation then I don't think it would do anything. It's not like this relationship isn't understood by scientists as, in a similar vein, mental conditions like depression and stress are known to have a physical effect on the body. The irony is that anything that's scientifically understood to have an effect stops being 'alternative medicine' and simply becomes 'medicine'.

I suppose this is what you mean by only understood psychosomatically, but I'm curious when you mention the linga sarira's other effects. Do you mean something like Karma causing problems?

And although corruption, religion and politics obviously effect the medical industry, I think the situation is obviously preferable to medicine even in the 19th century where, for example, all of us would almost certainly have had at least one sibling die as a child due to what are now preventable medical problems. And actually, I think the removal of obvious suffering and death due to diseases from public view has caused a collective amnesia about what has been achieved in this area and what the previous reality was. Accordingly, something that characterises the alternative medicines that have survived is their ostensibly relatively benign nature. For instance, no-one sees more invasive stuff like trepanning and blood-letting any more, although alternative medicines lose their benignity if people decide to attempt to treat things like cancer solely with something like homoeopathy.

[Wyrmfang]

The irony is that anything that's scientifically understood to have an effect stops being 'alternative medicine' and simply becomes 'medicine'.

Is there any irony in this? There is quite a dense body of basic knowledge in medicine, and usually what is called alternative medicine contests this basic knowledge. Sometimes it happens that there are good grounds for some fundamental refinement, but these are rare cases. I think "alternative medicine" is actually a too respectful term in many cases (since, when generally used, it gives a picture that there is a coherent "alternative body of knowledge" in alternative medicine as a whole, which clearly is not the case) when simply "pseudo-science" would do. I mean cases when something has been extensively studied, and the conclusion is inevitably that there are no effects besides the placebo, but the proponents still keep claiming otherwise. At least there has to be some other term for this than simply science, even if it still may happen sometimes that the scientific community has been mistaken.

Otherwise I´m in agreement with you.

[Nokkonen]

There are so many kinds of alternative medicine that the issue of its legitimacy is quite complex. Unlike many of you, I don't see the polarity between alternative medicine and conventional medicine. Western medicine, and science in general, is a relatively new thing and the philosophy and methodology behind it is quite crude. To me, the important questions are if it works, and only after that comes the question of why.

I basically agree with many of the writers with the kind of caution that advises not treating cancer solely with homeopathy or in any way omitting conventional treatments, but oftentimes the best results can come from using both. From personal experience, I am pretty well versed in alternative medicine because I have problems that western medicine can't fix, but "alternative medicine," and especially its holistic view on health has helped me a great deal. Here's my anecdotal, personal thoughts of various fields of alternative medicine:

1: Acupuncture has really helped me a couple of times in my life when I've experienced severe pain and I was originally referred to an acupuncturist by a conventional medicine doctor, unofficially of course. Now, acupuncture is based theory of meridians which has no scientific basis, but for some reason lots of people have found help from acupuncture and it shouldn't be discredited just because sticking needles into someone's back to alleviate pain doesn't seem to make sense.

2: Then there's hands-on healing like Reiki and shamanistic surgery techniques, which I have used in alleviating less tangible, psychological and spiritual conditions with good success. Of course it would be hard to empirically prove that they work, but I do believe in the existence of some kind of a subtle body that has links to the material body. I don't know if people commonly use Reiki to heal actual physical conditions.

3: Homeopathy. I don't personally believe in homeopathy but I know people who have found great help with their physical conditions from it, so it's hard to completely discredit it either.

4: Then there are herbal remedies which I definitely believe in because, like they say, aspirin contains willow-like substances. I'm glad to see conventional medicine getting more and more into studying things like honey and spruce sap, among others, just because they really help and it's great that there's more healing all around even if it comes through medical companies. People have known forever that honey can be used in treating skin infections and I'm glad they persisted in doing so despite of it not being exactly scientific. And then there are subtle effects in plants that couldn't (yet?) be studied with crude scientific methods but that doesn't, in my opinion, mean that they don't exist.

All and all, I don't think we are even close to the pinnacle of scientific knowledge and I'm glad every time I see medical studies taking alternative ideas seriously. I'm sure there's so much more we can learn about how mind affects our health and how important bacteria and good, clean diet are for our physical AND psychological well-being. These ideas are tossed around in alternative circles and there is large amount of anecdotal evidence of things that work, but as far as they haven't been studied, they don't enter into the sphere of conventional medicine.

Post Scirpt: I will absolutely vaccinate my kids if I ever have any.

[Wyrmfang]

Western medicine, and science in general, is a relatively new thing and the philosophy and methodology behind it is quite crude.

That it´s a new thing means nothing. People believed that the earth is flat for a very long time (at least in most cultures). And of course they did because it seems to be so. Once it was shown the earth is not flat, things are differently, although this kind of factual knowledge is never absolute in nature.

Natural science being "crude"... I think your message exemplifies a certain very common (and I think highly detrimental) confusion among esotericists. While I completely agree that the natural scientific viewpoint has overpowered other areas of life where it doesn´t belong, there is nothing crude in natural science in the area where it belongs.

Now, acupuncture is based theory of meridians which has no scientific basis, but for some reason lots of people have found help from acupuncture and it shouldn't be discredited just because sticking needles into someone's back to alleviate pain doesn't seem to make sense.

As far as I know, acupuncture has been shown to have real effects aside from mere placebo. However it is another question is the ancient theory of meridians something that should be sustained in science (it is still another thing to use it for "merely" analogizing purposes as esotericism should do in my view).

No hypothesis whatsoever has a specific "scientific basis". For example the atomic structure of carbon was found in a dream. According to anti-realists in philosophy of science (Feyerabend is the most extreme in this direction), no object of science whatsoever "really exists". The crucial question is whether a theory can predict outcomes of empirical research and not only say afterwards "hey, that´s precisely how we thought it". I quite strongly suspect that the theory of meridians cannot do this in searching new empirically sustainable knowledge.

And of course people usually need a background theory to belive in something. It´s another thing is that something true. I think we could sustain the practical side of "alternative healing" and debunk the theoretical side as pseudo-science (in cases where it is conclusively studied) simply by teaching people to use their will consciously.

Relating to this:

Homeopathy. I don't personally believe in homeopathy but I know people who have found great help with their physical conditions from it, so it's hard to completely discredit it either.

I think quite few intelligent people "completely discredit" homeopathy. What they say is: (1) The effects of homeopathy are very likely based on the placebo effect. This is so because when we have two groups, the other getting "real" homeopathy, and the other getting something very similar but not done by a "qualified" homeopathist, the effects are similar. For this reason (2) Homeopathy is to be discredited as scientifically valid.

Then there are herbal remedies which I definitely believe in because, like they say, aspirin contains willow-like substances. I'm glad to see conventional medicine getting more and more into studying things like honey and spruce sap, among others, just because they really help and it's great that there's more healing all around even if it comes through medical companies. People have known forever that honey can be used in treating skin infections and I'm glad they persisted in doing so despite of it not being exactly scientific. And then there are subtle effects in plants that couldn't (yet?) be studied with crude scientific methods but that doesn't, in my opinion, mean that they don't exist.

Again, there is nothing crude in scientific methods in its legitimate sphere, but of course not everything has been solved, and everything never will be solved.

All and all, I don't think we are even close to the pinnacle of scientific knowledge and I'm glad every time I see medical studies taking alternative ideas seriously. I'm sure there's so much more we can learn about how mind affects our health and how important bacteria and good, clean diet are for our physical AND psychological well-being. These ideas are tossed around in alternative circles and there is large amount of anecdotal evidence of things that work, but as far as they haven't been studied, they don't enter into the sphere of conventional medicine.

And above you say, that the scientific method is "too crude" to study these things. When things are studied scientifically, it is by definition possible that they prove to be false (in the factual sense). Are you ready to for this, or if something that has worked for you in practice proves to be wrong from the natural scientific viewpoint, do you say afterwards that in this precise case the scientific methods were too crude? Why not simply confess that not everything needs to be factually true in order to "work" and be meaningful?

To me, the important questions are if it works, and only after that comes the question of why.

Completely agreed. And precisely for this reason I find it strange why you think that things you study should have scientific validity, that is, to be true in factual sense. There are moral and existential truths, truths of love etc. nothing which has anything to do with factual natural scientific truths without this reducing their value (except from the viewpoint of certain post-positivistic attitude).

As Heidegger said, the problem in the dominion modern natural scientific thinking is not that it doesn´t work, it´s precisely that it works. Let´s let scientific study to search what is factually true and concentrate in assessing the value of these truths. This is of course still not to say that there is no value in scientific truths at all (for example the "cruel" methods were precisely needed to develop vaccinations).

Sorry about an aggressive tone, but I think these points are very seldom understood and yet they are very important. It must be put clearly. It is not only a theoretical question but a question of introducing esotericism as a plausible way of thinking in today´s world (in the "golden era" of esotericism the natural scientific viewpoint did not yet exist at all).

EDIT: A further question to think for everyone. Think how many quality books of philosophy of science you have read and how many books on esotericism you have read. Or how much esoteric and scientific studies you have followed or conducted. If the science/philosophy side is close to "none" you are in no better position to judge questions related to it than a scientific minded person who debunks esotericism from all possible viewpoints without ever studying it. That one has formal knowledge tells of course yet nothing (we have professors of physics who are creationists...) but it´s a necessary condition.