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by bmcleod
4708 days ago
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I suspect what's happening with all the people who this works for is that given there are some people who have a psychological component to their pain and some who have a mostly physical component. Even if there are far fewer suffering from the psychological version, they are the ones who physical treatment will fail for. So they will be the ones that get as far as trying the pseudosciencey approach to dealing with the pain. So the mind body approach will have a high success rate amongst the people trying it even if it would be a terrible initial remedy to try. |
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I'd encourage anyone who speaks of a "pseudosciencey approach" to do some careful thinking and propose an approach that would let us measure the effects our minds have on our bodies. So far most people sweep this effect under the rug calling it the "placebo effect" (a catch-all phrase for everything we do not understand). That's not an answer.
Notice: we live in the XXI century, and yet we treat our bodies as though our heads were detached and completely independent. Medicine as we know it is based on pills, syringes, vials and knives. Anything else is the "placebo effect" or in the (decidedly non-scientific) domain of psychologists and psychiatrists. I'd call that hiding our head in the sand (double-entendre intended).
We do all this while readily accepting that we can sweat, or get diarrhea from nervousness. If people accept that the mind can (subconsciously) control sweating, why can't they accept that it can (subconsciously) control the narrowing of blood vessels?
Most people dismiss psychosomatic effects without understanding what they are. Psychosomatic pain isn't any less real. The physical changes are there, they just might not be exactly the changes you are looking for (e.g. no inflammation). And they are caused by the mind, which is why we call them "psychosomatic". But they are not hallucinations, or misfiring neurons in your nervous system.
I am all for scientific approach to medicine. But that includes not shutting your eyes to an entire huge branch of it that we simply do not understand — the connection between the mind and the body.
Also, many people don't understand the mechanism behind all this. It's not that Sarno is a magic-voodoo healer. All he does is show you the mechanism — which is very often enough: the mind, once exposed to its own tricks, starts working differently. This is why just reading his books and thinking about them causes changes in so many people (either the pain is gone, or the symptoms shift and change).
Source: myself. I got rid of joint pain after 8 years of fruitless doctor visits. It is now almost completely under control: if it happens, I can tell why it happened and control it. As a bonus, it turned out that my frequent throat infections and the allergies are gone, too.
Don't dismiss psychosomatic effects. Sure, go see a doctor first, but if multiple doctors are unable to find a cause of your pain, at least read one of Sarno's books and think (critically!) about it.