The following is in response to CBC interview of a fellow who will market placebo pills. Parents can use them to make a complaining child “better”.
(One of us should market slices of a tasty red apple in competition!)
These two emails challenge the stranglehold of the pharmaceutical companies on the medicare system and the public purse.
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” … Had I been given a pain-killer when I went to the walk-in clinic, the cessation of pain would have been attributed to the drug. Had I been given a placebo, the cessation of pain would have been attributed to the “placebo effect”. Nowhere in our paradigm of understanding do we allow for the possibility that our bodies provide direction to us. …”
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TO: CBC Radio, The Current, Friday’s host Linden McIntyre
RE: Placebo pills sometimes make it better. (June 20th broadcast.)
My experience leads me to conclude that “the placebo effect” is often not the placebo effect, but rather, it is part of the healing and communication processes carried out by the body itself.
As a society we do not appreciate our ability to self-heal, nor do we seek to understand the dynamics of the process.
The placebo effect will remain incomprehensible if we treat it as the cause.
The cause-and-effect relationship between placebo and “getting better” is wrongly attributed. If we understand the larger self-healing phenomenon, the placebo effect will become comprehensible in that context.
The question “under what conditions and how does the body self-heal?” yields different results than the question “how does the placebo effect work?”
The more useful answers arise out of attempts to understand how our immune system works – the self-healing. Unfortunately many of “the authorities” in the medicare system remain stuck in a drug-centred view that denies the organism’s self-healing capability.
I understand self-healing by thinking of my self as a dynamic system that has feedback mechanisms. The feedback we receive from our bodies is purposeful. If we respond with the APPROPRIATE action, in a TIMELY way, then “the system” (me) has the potential to return to health, if supported.
In order to take the appropriate action, the body has to communicate with the conscious self in order to tell me what remedial actions I need to take.
I am not an authority. However, my experience has validity. One of several experiences can perhaps illustrate . If it is taken seriously and if other similar experiences were collected from other people, we would progress in understanding.
I went to a walk-in clinic in response to three days of persistent stab-like pains in my side rib, which had followed a weekend of very severe flu-like symptoms (elevated temperature, aches in my bones).
The doctor x-rayed my chest. He left the room while the x-ray was being developed. The pain stopped obviously and suddenly for no apparent reason when he walked out the door. I thought, “Oh my lord, this must have been a psycho-somatic pain. The Doctor is going to return and say there is no evidence of anything wrong. Am I nuts?”. I was embarrassed by the prospect of being in the doctor’s office for no good reason. And perplexed by the idea that my mind could play such games on me.
The Doctor returned with the x-ray. It showed a large volume of fluid on one lung. What relief!
I was hospitalized and tested. It was several days before any of the fluid was drained off. The procedure was carried out twice over the course of a week and a half.
THE CRITICAL POINT:
after the appropriate steps in getting my self to a doctor, the relentless stabbing pain stopped and not once did it return, even though it was several days before anything was done. The insertion of the needle to drain off the fluid was a bit nerve-racking because of the potential for puncturing the lung, but it was not painful.
Had I been given a pain-killer when I went to the walk-in clinic, the cessation of pain would have been attributed to the drug. Had I been given a placebo, the cessation of pain would have been attributed to the “placebo effect”. Nowhere in our paradigm of understanding do we allow for the possibility that our bodies provide direction to us.
I work on learning to read the feedback provided to me by the other parts of me. It seems reasonable that another part of my being knew that “we” would be in good hands – that I would help to look after “us” – if it could get me to the doctor. There was no need for the pain after the x-ray was taken. The “self” had confidence that its communication was being acted upon – the problem would be “fixed”; the pain stopped. (The “fix” wasn’t the draining of fluid. The toxin level inside my body was more than my immune system could handle. When that was addressed I returned to health.)
I do not say that all pain works this way. I do say that it is feedback from the larger self.
If we listen and respond appropriately and early in the game (timely response), if we understand that we are more than our conscious and rational minds, if we work WITH rather than against our immune system (which is just a part of the larger being), we enable our immune systems to look after us.
We are taught to be repulsed by pain; sweat is another example. Rather than repulsed, we should be in gratitude – sweat is a mechanism for moving wastes and toxins out of the body. The sweating during menopause is extremely healthy. A person who understands their body would pat it on the back and tell it “thank-you”! Work with your body while it does what has to be done today – – it will save you pain and disease down-the-road.
We are ignorant and made more ignorant through advertisements that have been carefully researched to mold our thinking and to then play on learned, but nonsensical, fears.
Yours truly,
Sandra Finley
Saskatoon SK S7N 0L1