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Originally Posted by stopdog
I don't think natural remedies only work because of the placebo effect - certainly no more than the drugs created by the drug overlord companies.
I don't care if someone doesn't want to try them, but they are no less real than the plastic stuff put out by the chemists. I have used them to quite good effect - not for depression but for physical things like infection (raw honey) and so forth as well as a specific ptsd situation (sacral cranial energy work). And I swear by acupuncture.
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I don't think pharmaceutical companies are the end all, be all, but I have enough scientists as friends to know that they're doing actual research. And if someone wants to do alt med that's cool. But I prefer to see studies first, that's just me. It's probably why I feel so iffy about antidepressants - so much vagueness! :P
And I don't knock the placebo effect. I think it's useful. The human brain is pretty amazing.
One of my favorite books on the issue is "Do You Believe in Magic? The Sense and Nonsense of Alternative Medicine" by Dr. Paul Offit. He does a pretty awesome overview of medicine over the last 200 years as well as how certain myths (like the power of Vitamin C) have entered into our cultural mainstream.