Submitted to CBC Radio, The Current, Anna Maria Tremonti, in response to a discussion re homeopathy, March 5:
Is a clinical trial testing homeopathic treatment for ADHD a waste of time and money? (The Associated Press//Josh Reynolds)
RESPONSE:
I wish to add a note of personal experience, which might be helpful. It’s about the placebo effect and falls into the mind-body connection.
Words are important. Choosing the word “placebo” to describe an effect places restrictions on the ability of research to get at the truth of what is happening. Our allopathic medical vocabulary does not have a word for a particular phenomenon – – “placebo effect” is inaccurate and sometimes used to dismiss. (I am happy to see that Heather Boon is trying to understand, rather than dismiss.)
The following is my experience and interpretation of it, to illustrate the point.
It is not about Attention Deficit specifically (the interview arose in that context). It is about the placebo effect in the context of homeopathy and medicine in general. (As I understand it, the study by Dr. Boon is about trying to make sense of input from people whose experience is not explained by conventional medical wisdom.)
My experience:
After a weekend of the worst flu, or so I thought, on the Monday I was able to get out of bed. The flu symptoms (fever, chills, aching bones) were replaced by a stabbing pain in my side, but I could get up and do things. Late in the day on Wednesday I decided I had to go to the walk-in clinic because the pain was not going away or decreasing. (I do not use Tylenol or other forms of pain-killers.)
The doctor took an x-ray. At the point when he left the room to fetch it, the pain noticeably and abruptly came to an end. There was a kind of finality to it; it was not going to return. The pain did not just lessen, it was over, abruptly.
I kind of freaked out, thinking “Oh My God, the pain was all in my head. It was psychosomatic. The doctor is going to come back and tell me that the x-ray shows nothing wrong.”
Hence, you may understand that I was very relieved when he came back with the x-ray and said, “You have a large volume of fluid on your lung.” To me the diagnosis was: my mental health is fine!
I won’t go into the details of subsequent serious blunders in the medical profession whereby the first of two thoracenteses to remove fluid did not take place for another 5 days.
WHAT IS NOTABLE: presumably it was the large amount of fluid that was causing the stabbing and relentless pain. It stopped abruptly after the x-ray was taken. I had taken no pain medication, nor had any other medical intervention. Not once in the following days and months did the pain return.
MEDICAL INTERPRETATION: I wish to make the point that if I had taken a pain-killer, the allopathic medical paradigm would say absolutely that the pain-killer stopped the pain. Had I been given a placebo pain-killer, a scientific medical researcher would have said that I succumbed to the placebo effect.
To my understanding, as explained below, there is a third alternative, but it is excluded from consideration by our creative inability to generate possibilities. The exclusion is exacerbated by the fact that we don’t have a word in the scientific vocabulary to describe the particular phenomenon.
A BIT OF BACKGROUND: I understand things thus: a few years earlier I came to the conclusion that I have an inner being, so to speak. I went through the rational process of trying to understand (a review of related experiences) the relationship between the conscious me and my sub-conscious self. My conclusion was that my sub-conscious self has always been there and has always fought to try and protect the whole self. I just had to learn to work with, and to trust the inner part of my being.
I made a conscious decision to always try to be attuned to information that might be coming from the inner self, to recognize that the direction provided will most likely be better informed than decisions I might make which are processed only by my conscious “rational faculty” (prefrontal lobe).
A side note: In time I think it likely that we will refer not to the “conscious and sub-conscious selves” but rather to the “ conscious and HYPO-conscious selves”.
One further point: I understand my body as being a dynamic system. All dynamic systems have feedback loops to inform whether the system is stable. If the feedback indicates that the system is getting out-of-balance, and if the response to the feedback is timely and actually addresses the CAUSE (as opposed to a SYMPTOM) of the disequilibrium, the system (in this case our body) can be returned to balance (health). (“dis-ease” becomes “ease”)
SO WHAT HAPPENED IN THE CASE OF THE PAIN THAT STOPPED FOR NO APPARENT REASON?
The only explanation I can see is the mind-body connection. The inner part of my being KNOWS that I will defer to it, if I can discern what it is telling me. I have never waivered from that, since I decided that that is the way “I” work.
The inner part of my being cannot just tap me on the shoulder and say, “Oh, by the way …”. It cannot just leave me a note saying, “You need to get to a doctor. Things are kind of serious in here. We need outside help.”
The inner self has to find some way to convey information to the conscious part of the self.
You could think of it as a morse code, SOS. I responded appropriately (eventually! – – it took from Monday to Wednesday to “get the message”). My inner self knows that I am committed to working with it (her?!). There was no further need for the pain and so it stopped. I think that some people would describe this as the mind-body connection.
As it turned out, I was eventually diagnosed with tuberculosis. It was identified at an early stage, before becoming contagious. I was able to work with the Director of Tuberculosis Control for Saskatchewan, an allopathic doctor, and a naturopathic doctor.
“I”, with assistance, overcame the tuberculosis without the use of conventional TB drugs. (I believe, along with the Centre for Disease Control, that organisms quickly evolve to become resistant to drug protocols. The CDC uses the example of antibiotics. Our current practice of trying to combat organisms with stronger and stronger drugs is irrational, from a number of perspectives.)
I tell you my story because it might also be an explanation for some of the people whose experience is that homeopathic care improved their condition.
(I know there is a difference between homeopathy and naturopathy)
I could say that the Naturopathic Doctor “cured” me. The question we focused on was: why did my immune system not fend off the TB organism? What was weakening it? After all, the figure most often used is that 30% of the population is walking around with the TB organism. People often don’t know they are carrying the TB organism because their immune system simply keeps it in check. So why wasn’t my immune system doing the same? What was weakening it?
To say that the Naturopathic Doctor cured me ignores the role of my inner being. It (she) devised an early warning alert. It is plausible that if the mind-body connection in my case had atrophied through non-use, the TB organism would have continued to multiply to the point where I had a contagious case. There would then have been no option but the drug protocol. And the drugs would have been credited with curing me. “I” would have been disempowered instead of becoming more empowered.
I hope that this might in some way be helpful.
Best wishes,
Sandra Finley