Interesting article in today's edition of the Straits Times, Mind Your Body section page 19. Article titled Does acupuncture work?
The apparent conclusion would be that the jury is still out on this. What caught my eye was the "No" part of it where a study was cited that found no difference in pain relief for patients treated with and without acupuncture. Rather, one set of patients were treated using the established and proper methods of acupuncture while the other set of patients were treated with random pokes of the needle. Both sets of patients showed similar results in terms of proportion of them who felt relieved of pain.
This is where the title of my blog comes in handy. Right up my alley as some would say. Let's dissect this with a bit of common sense that any moderately well-read person would have.
Let's define some terms...
Placebo effect (Pronounced as pla-see-boh): the phenomenon whereby a patient's symptoms are alleviated by an otherwise ineffective treatment, apparently because the patient expects that this treatment will work. (Definition from Wikipedia)
For example, in many studies, the patients might be told that they are given a pill to cure their illness. The actual pill given may just be starch or other edible material which does not have any medicinal effect. The patients who receive this treatment is the control group for the placebo effect. Hence, if the real drug works, it should show a higher cure rate compared to those who received the placebo.
In case you're wondering if I'm playing mind tricks on you. YES.
The placebo effect is very real and has been demonstrated in various studies. In the light of all this, the one conclusion that we can safely draw from the article is that the placebo effect works. That acupuncture, or at least the thought of receiving it, altered the psychology of patients and offered them pain relief.
Which brings me to this point:
How do we measure the efficacy of a treatment? If the mere thought that I am receiving something good and useful for my illness heals me of it, then is it still considered a treatment?
What makes a good treatment?
What makes a good doctor?
What makes a good HEALER?
2 comments:
i want a doctor who is a good listener. i had a bad experience with a chiropractor once, he simply failed to listen.
What I think is missed out with scientific studies is that the placebo effect can be stronger than the non-placebo part of the healing treatment. I.e. the mind is very powerful, if one imagines if a doctor told you that you were going to die and you fully trusted the doctor it would have a profound effect on you(one).
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