BS: info on magnetic therapy devices?

Subject: RE: BS: info on magnetic therapy devices?
From: bobad
Date: 25 Feb 06 - 07:43 AM

Why Double-Blind Studies?

Although most people have heard of double-blind studies, few recognize their true significance. It's not that double-blind studies are hard to understand; rather, that their consequences are difficult to accept. Why? Because double-blind studies tell us that we can't trust our direct personal experience. This isn't easy to swallow, but it's nonetheless true.

The insights provided by double-blind studies have been particularly disturbing for alternative medicine. Most alternative medicine methods are grounded in tradition, common sense, anecdote, and testimonial. On the surface, these seem like perfectly good sources of information. However, double-blind studies have shown us otherwise. We now know that a host of "confounding factors" can easily create a kind of optical illusion, causing the appearance of efficacy where none in fact exists. The double-blind study is thus much more than a requirement for absolute proof of efficacy (as is commonly supposed) - it is a necessity for knowing almost anything about whether a treatment really works.

http://www.mendosa.com/bratman.htm

Subject: RE: BS: info on magnetic therapy devices?
From: Grab
Date: 25 Feb 06 - 11:26 AM

I find the deliberate false use of the term placebo unfair at the least. A placebo is not a cure, it is simply something given a patient to humour them. Sometimes -- not often at all -- just sometimes, temporary relief of symptoms occurs.

BPL, that's not the case. The unscrupulous *may* prescribe pills containing no active ingredients to humour their "patients" - homeopathy for one - but the placebo effect is well-known, well-documented and something that anyone interested in things medical needs to know about.

The effect isn't just temporary, and it isn't "just sometimes". There's plenty of evidence for people getting real benefits from placebos, right up to an outright cure. This clearly works best on things that the brain has direct control over - placebos for pain medication are a classic - but it's present in many other places too.

Want to hear something really wild? There's placebo effect in surgery too! They got some volunteers who needed a knee op doing - half of them got the real op; half of them were just opened up and stitched back together. Now the odd bit is that a significant number of the ones who *didn't* get the real op got all the benefits of it. I first heard about this through NewScientist, but this link has details.

Graham.

Subject: RE: BS: info on magnetic therapy devices?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 25 Feb 06 - 01:49 PM

That's fascinating stuff, Grab, and it suggests one thing very strongly to me....and that one thing could turn our entire materialistically-minded civilization on its head, if taken seriously and acted upon. Namely...

the most crucial factor in both illness and healing may be consciousness, not outer physical factors. Consciousness and belief may in fact be the most powerful healing forces there are, and the tragedy of modern man may be that he already HAS the conscious ability to heal himself by his own belief and control over his own body, but he has unwittingly surrendered that ability by NOT believing he can heal himself or control his own body to heal itself!

Given that situation, a sceptic is his own worst enemy, because he has already decided that he is powerless without artificial outer assistance.

This is the central matter to Jesus' teachings in the New Testament, as regards healing, that people are healed BY their own belief...that they have the power if only they believe.

I say that not as a Christian, trying to convert you...I'm not technically a Christian or any other religion....I say it because I find it fascinating that the experiments you describe in your post (where people were healed by believing that a placebo was the real thing) indicate only one thing: that what Jesus said was correct. Their belief was what healed them.

In other words, their body-mind already HAD the innate ability to heal the problem, but their mind had to give conscious assent to a supposed outer mechanism...their mind had to have confidence in that mechanism...before their body-mind would put itself effectively in gear and DO the healing!

That's revolutionary. That could change everything. As long as people believe themselves to be helpless, they will be. As such, they'll be at the mercy of some outside agent to "heal" them...if they can find one they have any confidence in. It's a shame, really, because they could do it themselves if they only believed they could.

And that's why Jesus said basically this: "Ye are gods and sons of the most high. All the things I have done, you can do these and greater." (!) That is not the line taken by most of his supposed followers, who would rather turn him into an exclusive idol and worship it...than unlock the incredible power that lies sleeping within themselves and BE like him.

I believe that consciousness is the most crucial factor in good health and in healing. Ironically enough, though, I'm not all that good at managing consciousness myself. I know a fair number of people who are definitely better at it than I am. I've noticed that the people who are best at managing their consciousness are the ones who are most effective in life, most energetic, and least often struck down by illness. That figures. They are strenthened from within by their state of mind.

Subject: RE: BS: info on magnetic therapy devices?
From: GUEST,M.Ted
Date: 25 Feb 06 - 04:06 PM

With due respect, Grab and bobad, what you say about Homeopathy is not true--homeopathic remedies fare quite well in double-bind and other scientific studies--the mechanisms may not be clear, but the results are--here is an example--the occasional grammatical oddness are because the site is in German--http://www.mtec-ag.de/1_3_1_3.asp?lang=eng



The proof of effectivity by Leipzig University

Professor Karen Nieber, head of the institute for pharmacy at Leipzig University, set about proving that homeopathy does not work and at the most can be explained by the so-called placebo effect. It was whilst looking for a test arrangement which totally excluded any placebo effect that she came up with the following idea: she placed a rat intestines in a nutrient solution and fixed it using organic threads to a sensor in order to measure the reduction of the intestines through contraction. She then added a stimulant to the nutrient solution, which caused a strong contraction of the rat intestines.

Professor Karen Nieber, as a pharmacologist, expected that the treatment with a homeopathic agent with a potenz above C12 would have no effect against the enterospasms, since there are no more active agents present above this potenz. In order to make the degree of dilution apprehensible: a C14 is like a single drop in all the worlds' oceans together!

In Leipzig they then added Belladonna D90 to the nutrient solution with the rat intestines cramped through the stimulant they had added and lo and behold, the enterospasms ceased immediately, the measuring device registered the relaxation of the intestines.

What Hahnemann declared two hundred years ago in order to defend his homeopathy may also apply to the Leipzig study:

"I don't demand any belief in it, nor require that someone understands it. Even I don't understand it; but enough, the facts are so and not otherwise. Only the experience says it, which I believe more than my own comprehension."

Subject: RE: BS: info on magnetic therapy devices?
From: bobad
Date: 25 Feb 06 - 04:27 PM

With due respect to your belief in faith healing LH, I believe you misinterpreted the conclusions of the arthroscopy study. The authors of said study concluded that the results of the procedures for the specific condition studied were no better than placebo, to quote "Conclusions: In this controlled trial involving patients with osteoarthritis of the knee, the outcomes after arthroscopic lavage or arthroscopic debridement were no better than those after a placebo procedure." This conclusion is at considerable variance with that of saying that the placebo group were cured.

http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/short/347/2/81

Subject: RE: BS: info on magnetic therapy devices?
From: bobad
Date: 25 Feb 06 - 04:38 PM

M.Ted

I don't recall making any specific comments about homeopathy but in regards to so-called alternative therapies I do not categorically refute any of them, I would just like to see the claims made by their proponents backed up by solid research.

Subject: RE: BS: info on magnetic therapy devices?
From: GUEST,GREG_TRUE
Date: 25 Feb 06 - 04:46 PM

Pardon me if I digress... Spaw has again proved to me that laughter is good medicine. I've been moody due to the season ya know. And now, at least for a while I'm feelin alright about life because I read a Spaw Story.
However, I want to testify to the power of the electric blanket and heating pad. Okay, we all know that heat is therapeutic. But I got to believe, in my case, that my electric blanket, which I only used while sleeping this winter, might be what has given a measure of relief to my aches all day long.

Subject: RE: BS: info on magnetic therapy devices?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 25 Feb 06 - 04:56 PM

Laughter is definitely a powerful healer. So is smiling a lot, they tell me.

Subject: RE: BS: info on magnetic therapy devices?
From: GUEST,M.Ted
Date: 25 Feb 06 - 05:10 PM

You never were specific about what you considered to be "alternative" medicine.

You went on at length about double-blind studies. As is pointed out in the abstract I posted above, they aren't the be-all and end-all when it comes to treating an individual patient. They are the basis for a statistical assessment of certain types of medical treatment, mostly pharmaceauticals--many accepted medical procedures have not been subjected to double-blind studies, and, for a variety of reasons(also in the abstract above) many cannot be--