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What comes after successful placebo surgery?

March 30, 2017 By christianscienceminnesota Leave a Comment

 

Placebo surgery?

Yes.  Not just sugar pills but actual fake operations that result in the same positive outcomes as real surgery.

“The patients didn’t know which procedures they got—real surgery or sham surgery.  Both groups had equivalent results.  A year later, approximately 80% of patients in both groups said their knees felt better.”

Wow.

This was the report from Dr. Teppo Jarvinen, the Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation Clinical Professor of Orthopedics and Traumatology at the University of Helsinki, who led a rigorous study of placebo-controlled knee surgery.

The placebo effect also isn’t limited to those who don’t know they’re getting a placebo.  Even when informed that their medicine is made of inert ingredients yet is beneficial, patients still experience positive outcomes.

This all points to how powerful our expectations are!  What we believe in can have a profound physical effect.  You could even call it “mental medicine.”

But surgery?

It’s one thing to take a pill that disappears into the system and expect positive results.  Perhaps it’s even understandable that someone can trust in mysterious benefits of a known placebo.

But surgery is so concrete, so hands on.  In surgery, there’s a definite adjustment.  Someone went in and did something.  How can that be faked?

In the study above, “all received anesthesia and incisions.” For some, the rest was mental.  Just believing that surgery had been done and seeing a confirming incision, was enough to produce lasting physical correction.

Doesn’t that impel the next logical question:  Is it possible for such correction to occur even without fake surgery – completely mentally?

Yes, it can.  From the expectancy that comes through faith.  And I’m not talking about blind faith.

I’m referring to an expectation of good results based on a spiritual understanding, which can bring needed physical change. That’s the kind of understanding I’ve learned to strive for and cultivate in my practice of Christian Science.

Here’s an example of what might be called, “mental surgery.”

“…as I fell, I heard two loud popping sounds coming from my leg….The doctor diagnosed the injury as a severed anterior cruciate ligament, and a torn posterior cruciate ligament….He said I had only two options: one, to have surgery; or two, to undergo several months, if not more, of rehabilitation.  But either way, I would never have full mobility in my leg, and my knee would never be the same or heal properly on its own.

…I was constantly tuning in to God—listening for Him and for the assurance that as His loved and well-constructed idea, I was never for an instant outside of His care or separated from Him.  Within less than a month of the skiing accident, I was fully recovered without any medical assistance.”

Obviously, there’s more going on there than can be fully discussed here.  But this account, and others like it, offer thought-provoking evidence of what’s possible through a purely spiritual approach.

The success of placebo surgery takes us to the cutting edge of mental medicine – pun intended.   I’d say the next level requires no scalpel.

(photo ©Glowimages – model for illustrative purposes only)

Is Prayer No More Than a Placebo?

June 25, 2014 By christianscienceminnesota Leave a Comment

@Glowimages 1793254.
© GLOW IMAGES (model used for illustrative purposes only)

My Massachusetts colleague, Ingrid Peschke, discusses how prayer can pick up where placebos leave off.  Here’s Ingrid…

Debates abound on the power of the placebo.  There’s one man who has made it his mission to try and settle that debate, or at least shed significant light on it.

Described as wanting to “broaden the definition of healing” (The New Yorker), Ted Kaptchuk is considered the leading researcher on placebos as a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and the director of the Program in Placebo Studies at Harvard.

Kaptchuk’s research points to a question often left unanswered in medical treatment:  To what extent does a patient’s thought affect outcomes? The unseen, yet powerful elements of healing, such as hope in a certain result, may, according to his research, “fundamentally contribute to the improvement of patient outcomes” (programinplacebostudies.org).

Kaptchuk was one of the experts on a panel discussion I attended at Harvard designed to explore the topic, “Placebo and Prayer:  Why Prayer Practice Might Help.”

I’ve heard skeptics compare prayer to placebos.  And while I’m no expert on the placebo effect, I have had a lot of experience seeing the effects of prayer on health.

I would suggest the prayer referred to as placebo is based on blind belief.  That kind of prayer, I will agree, is no different than placebo.  But the prayer that has depth of conviction, that seeks to understand and appeal to a distinctly divine Mind, ceases to rely on the human mind for healing.

please click here to read the rest in its original context…

Health care after doomsday

January 22, 2013 By christianscienceminnesota Leave a Comment

On December 21, 2012, my wife and I happened to wake up at 4:00am.  As we were talking, the power went out.

Being familiar with apocalyptic predictions for that date based on the Mayan calendar, we looked at each other with an eerie feeling.  I said, “You’ve got to be kidding me!”

As you probably know, the world didn’t end.  Our power came back on in a couple of hours.  There was a tomorrow and I’m confident there will be many more.

In thinking about that morning and its implications on health, I remembered a famous comment by the great jazz pianist, Eubie Blake.  Near the end of his 96 years, (he’d been a smoker for 85 of them) he quipped, “If I’d known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself.”

Since it looks like we’re all going to be living longer here on the earth, health care still matters.  Some survivors of 12/21/12 are currently striving to follow through on New Year resolutions to be healthier.  And they’re reaching for that common goal from many different angles. 

Please click here to read the rest in its original context

Also featured in West Central Tribune

A healthier view of a negative test result

June 22, 2012 By christianscienceminnesota Leave a Comment

If your test comes back negative, you’re glad because as we commonly say, “They found nothing.”

Is that really true?  Was nothing found?

Yes, the diseased condition or the problem they were looking for isn’t there.  So then what is?  Health.  And health is not nothing, it’s something.  Something was found.

It’s popular to think of health just as the absence of disease.  I remember being struck by this phenomenon years ago while in a “health” food store.  As I looked around, I realized that every product was geared toward treating, preventing or warding off sickness.  There was barely anything about wellness.

Our health-care system is primarily a disease-care system.  The focus and the incentives are not on establishing and maintaining health but on paying for the treatment, management and occasionally the prevention of disease.

In recent years there have been efforts to promote healthy lifestyles as a path to wellness. Mostly the emphasis is on nutrition and exercise.  But there’s been very little shift in how we think of health.

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Expectation — the ultimate placebo effect

May 3, 2012 By christianscienceminnesota Leave a Comment

Everyone knows that the placebo effect depends on not knowing that it’s a placebo, right?  Wrong!!

Here’s the link to a 1/10/12 piece from, The Wall Street Journal, called “Why Placebos Work Wonders:  from weight loss to fertility, new legitimacy for ‘fake’ treatments”.

The author, Shirley S. Wang, gives several impressive examples of effective placebo treatments but also reports this:  “It doesn’t seem to matter whether people know they are getting a placebo and not a ‘real’ treatment.”  What?!

She mentions a study done by Dr. Ted Kaptchuk, director of Harvard’s Program in Placebo Studies and the Therapeutic Encounter.   Patients were informed that what they were taking was made with inert ingredients and yet they still had beneficial results.

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About Joel

Joel Magnes Hi, I’m Joel Magnes, writing about the connection between our thinking and our health -- focusing on how spirituality and prayer can have a positive impact on our well-being.   I'm a practitioner of Christian Science, with over 25 years of expertise and experience in prayer-based healing.  And I serve as the Christian Science Committee on Publication for Minnesota; the church's media and legislative liaison. Contact Joel HERE.

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