Energy Medicine

[Orrex]

The Skeptic's Dictionary is endlessly valuable to people seeking information about the practice of critical thinking and the dismantling of bogus claims by frauds, charlatans, and hucksters.

Despite the generally high ambient level of intelligence and education, this DU's Health forum features a disturbing number of people who believe in energy medicine despite a complete and total lack of actual evidence in support of its efficacy.

The Skeptic's Dictionary has another good entry, this one on Consegrity®. Read, if you will, the story of another death hastened by poorly-advised adherence to the nonsensical claims of the energy healing cult.

[LaurenG]

1. I don't know why you think all energy medicine is the same

and it may not cure all but it is helpful and soothing, otherwise hospitals wouldn't incorporate it. Just fyi your post is highly selective in it's information and insulting. Why put others down about something you so obviously know so little about.

[Orrex]

2. You can do better than that

In terms of verifiable evidence, all energy "medicine" that purports to influence or affect "chi" or "prana" or "mana" or "mojo" or "juju" or whatever is exactly the same. That is, they're all equally unsubstantiated by any controlled observation.

The argument that it's "helpful and soothing" is very pleasant, and if it's offered only for its "helpful and soothing" effects with no claims of "energy balance" or the like, then that's just fine. But when the claim is made that this energy "medicine" is a curative in its own right, well, that's when the claim becomes unethical.

[LaurenG]

3. Agreed n/t

[Celebration]

4. You know, if you feel better, you feel better

As far as I know, there is not a single person who practices energy medicine of any type that claims that it cures people. What they say is that they are balancing the body so that it can cure itself. This is basic to the whole thing. Who is more likely to have an intact, working immune system, someone who is all stressed out, or someone who is relaxed??? You may not like the nomenclature--"manipulating the energy fields" but in no case that I know of is anyone saying that it is the person who is doing this that is curing ANYTHING. It is the patient being put into a position of healing himself or herself.

[LaurenG]

7. Thank you for that thoughtful remark

I am a bit amazed at what scares people into jumping to conclusions about all sorts of things. Good post.

[Orrex]

9. But if they accept a fee from the patient, then they're stealing, no?

Hell, they're stealing anyway, if they market themselves as energy-balancers or whatever. Or at least they're advertising themselves as providers of a service for which they have no solid evidence.

The problem is specificity. When you get a prescription, it doesn't say "Ms. Itsjustme needs a bottle of pills." Instead, it gives very precise information about what you should be taking and in what dosage. The nomenclature is important, because the ambiguity enables hucksters to hide behind equivocation and other deceptive tactics.

If the treatment involves lowering one's level of stress, why not say so? Why couch it in hocus-pocus language, except for the purpose of giving oneself more credibility than is due?

[Celebration]

12. Because

Like it or not, manipulating the energy fields is how they help the person get in balance and relax. It is what energy practitioners do. Yes there IS a great lack of specificity and a totally different paradigm than traditional western medicine. So when a person has a problem with the third chakra, for instance, it can manifest in a broad range of symptoms, different with each person. Also, the same disease or set of symptoms can have totally different causes in different people. So, yes, it is VERY non-specific to disease. Because of this, it is very difficult to fit this neatly into double blind studies.

So, see, it works like this. If people like energy practitioners, then they go to them. If they think they are quacks, they don't. Funny how it works out like that, ya know, everyone doing their own thing so to speak.

[Orrex]

15. It's not simply that it's non-specific--it's 100% unverified

First off, you really ought to lay off the thinly-veiled "thought police" accusations. At some point in pretty much every discussion we've had so far, you make some comment about how I want to restrict people's freedom of choice or tell them what to think or tell them how to live or that kind of thing. Frankly, it's getting pretty old.

Unless the person is making a profit (financial or otherwise) through dishonest means, I'm not telling anyone how to think (though I admit that I do lament the culture-wide hostility to critical thought).
===================
Here, in essence, is your assertion:

A phenomenon exists that may completely differ from one person to another, and it can't be verified except by those who believe in it, and even they can't actually verify it so much as really, really insist that it works.

If this nebulous phenomenon doesn't fit nicely into double-blind studies, well, that's too bad. Hell, I'd be happy to see any clear evidence other than personal testimony, but none exists. And by none I mean none.

[Celebration]

16. Personal Testimony

Is not enough for Orrex. That is fine with me!!

However, if a friend heartily recommends something, and I try it, and I like it, you should have no problem with that either.

We have been through this time and time again. Fraud statutes exist for those who think they have been hoodwinked.

I don't know if you want to restrict people's freedoms or not........but there are those that *would* like to, and I feel that would restrict my freedom.

[Warpy]

5. The problems are the practitioners who tell their paitents to stop

conventional treatment. This is a big red flag, folks. If you ever run across one of these, run like hell!

Nobody disputes the power of positive thinking and the power of physical touch to make someone feel like a million bucks. It may help a person to heal, but it doesn't cure anything in and of itself. That's the problem.

I send people to Yoga classes, masseuses, acupuncturists, and others with amazing frequency. I don't tell them to stop the medical therapy, though. Forgoing standard treatment could be fatal. However, adding some of the alternatives to standard treatment can greatly improve the ability of people to cope with illnesses of all types.

Light switch mentalities really don't belong in medicine, the ones who think it's got to be all crystals and massage versus all pills and surgeries. Neither type of thinking serves a client well.

[Celebration]

6. I know lots of people who work with energtic stuff

And not ONE that I know of offers any advice to quit or get any other type of treatment. Why not? They know nothing about it and therefore have nothing at all to say about it. For sure I don't know of a single one who advises a patient to forego conventional treatment.

Obviously this only applies to the ones I know, and I realize that others may not be the same. However, I bet it is extremely rare that people are advised to stop going to an MD, for instance.

I definitely agree with you on light switch mentalities.

[Orrex]

10. That's amazing to me

not ONE that I know of offers any advice to quit or get any other type of treatment.

Really? Honestly? That amazes me, frankly. And if it's true, then you're very lucky.

Consider Kevin Trudeau or the esteemed Dr. Hulda Clark, both of whom are very well compensated for their hucksterism, and both of whom take great pains to imply some kind of Evil AMA/FDA Conspiracy. Many others claim that Big Pharma has no interest in curing cancer because it's more profitable to treat it in perpetuity. And let's consider the whole anti-Thimerosal and anti-amalgam crowd, which states outright that vested interests are seeking to profit by poisoning huge swaths of the population.

If that's not pressuring the consumer to shun actual medical treatment in favor of snakeoil, I have no idea what is.

[Celebration]

14. Here's the thing

I don't know Hulda Clark or Kevin Trudeau. Just about all of them say NOTHING about going to MDs--positive or negative--even when asked they just give you a blank stare or change the subject. If you tell them you are going to an MD, then fine, they listen and do their thing. If you tell them you are not going to an MD, then fine, they listen and do their thing.

I will say that I once went to a great chiropractor who didn't like vaccines, but he was talking about his kids and not mine. I didn't ask his advice and he didn't give it.

Even though there are a lot of anti vaccine websites around, probably 99.9% of energetic practitioners do not have anti-vaccine websites.

[HuckleB]

17. Sorry.

But I know plenty of such providers who give such advice, usually unsolicited.

[LaurenG]

8. I have never known one single practitioner who was so full of

themselves that they ever thought they were Christ or God or EVER told anyone to leave a physician. Most have way to much on the ball to believe we know better than a trained physician. Therefore why condemn the practice if the practitioners are working within medicine. That is what I was reading from the op initially. Not everyone is going to react the same to anything, in the meantime as time progresses we shall see what science can eventually measure regarding energy medicine.

[Warpy]

11. I peddled health foods for years, so I knew quite a few of them

herbalists were exceptionally bad about telling people to throw away their allopathic drugs so the herbs would "work better." Homeopaths were the same. I knew one Rolfer who tried to get people to quit physical therapy after car crashes.

You're very fortunate not to have met them. I have met them and I've seen people get sicker who didn't need to.

[Celebration]

13. Ok, I take that back

Occasionally I have seen a rolfer or massage therapist who has told a person to quit physical therapy. However, in the cases that I know about, they were right. The physical therapists were forcing the patient to do too much too soon.

I've been to about every type of energy healer around and not one say a single word about going or not going to MDs.

[HuckleB]

18. That's a joke, right?

[LaurenG]

19. No it's no joke

I guess the people you hang with have no ethics, they must be republicans, lol. I don't have that problem.

[HuckleB]

20. Sorry.

I really don't think you've spent much time with the community of practitioners in question, if that's the case.

[LaurenG]

21. I suppose the practitioners in question are a "special" group?

I guess professionals wouldn't be those you are speaking of. So you are right I haven't spent time with poorly trained individuals. Like anything else there are those who are committed to doing things in an ethical manor and those who are committed to doing things for their own benefit. I'm sorry for your experience as it has obviously blinded you to any other reality regarding the subject.

[Celebration]

22. my experience the same as yours

Again, not one energetic practitioner that I know of tells people not to go to MDs. I am just echoing this again because I know a *lot* of them. I actually did volunteer reiki at a cancer clinic in town for awhile, and none of us would have lasted long there if we had offered medical opinions. And I would have never felt so inclined, nor would the others that I worked with. I mean it is a no brainer--I can offer suggestions on how to stay balanced, I could not offer opinions on chemotherapy.

By the way some of the doctors and nurses there had reiki done and liked it a lot. Sadly all of us got too busy and the volunteer reiki kind of died out there. We are missed.