Do any alternative therapies actually work??

Hi folks,

I went to a healing group last night and a very nice lady told us that we could get rid of our emotional problems, negative beliefs etc, by saying some affirmations and tapping ourselves with a finger in various places, on the face, chest etc. She said that this is called 'Thought Field Therapy'.

I tried really hard to suspend my disbelief, but I was struggling to accept that a cure could be this easy. At one point the lady said that this therapy had been known to cure diabetes, proved by blood tests. Hmmmm.

I would love to hear people's views on alternative therapies, and if there are any that have worked for you. I have a pretty open mind, and I have tried a few therapies myself.

I'm still not sure though, not really.

Cheers, M

Ive never heard of this type of therapy?...sorry

Myzen,

I think when we are hurting we want something, nearly anything to 'work' to help ease our suffering. Unfortunately wishful thinking and the placebo effect can cause us much time and effort lost from finding things that actually do work. In many cases cure delayed is a cure denied, when years or decades of youth are lost to flimflam and snake oil empty promises. While I love to hear about new or rediscovered ideas, my belief rests in the verifiability of results.

Here's some sites that point out many traps for the unwary and gullible hopeful.

http://www.quackwatch.org/index.html
http://health.yahoo.com/centers/depression/2416
http://health.yahoo.com/centers/depression/44

As with all info look it over and come to your own informed decisions.

Good luck with your search for your solutions.

~Down

probably depends on the person and how intense one has faith, believes, gives positive self-talk, and meditates while using the alternative therapy. if the alternative therapy isn't hurting you but helps relax you, then why not?

Hi folks,

Thanks for the responses, I am most interested in this, and I'm just checking out the sites that you suggested Downsolong. The 'Quackwatch' one does seem a bit cruel (in a funnyway), but it's a necessary balance in my view.

I have been to a few groups while in depression and most of them have a faith-healing flavour to them.

I remember having Shiatsu while I was low, and the guy talked a lot about energies and pressure points and stuff, but the truth was that I just wanted someone to touch me in a caring way, to remind me that I was still here!! I'll bet loads of people go for that reason - just to get the attention and the touching. Having said that the Shiatsu guy was pretty sensitive to how I was at the time, and guessed I was holding some grief anger. The reflection helped.

I hope some more people reply to this thread, maybe it could be a poll as well? How do we do polls?

Cheers, M

I feel very strongly on this issue, but don't side with one viewpoint or the other. Like most things I do believe in balance.

I do strongly believe in the mind-body connection. And I don't mean that only in a "spiritual" way... more and more science shows that things like our immune system goes through physical changes based on how we feel. So I do believe there is a firm grounds for belief in alternative meds, no matter if you want to interpret them as "spiritual" or "physical" or "placebo".

You're point about the touch therapy is an excellent example. That might relieve stress simply because you are having contact with another human being. But they may call it "healing shakras". But maybe it isn't even two different things, maybe our "energy points" are just what the wisdom of the ages has come to understand as our need to be nurtures and to set the stage for our bodies to heal themselves.

But I don't rule out science either. I'm big on "Western" medicine. I think the medical profession knows a lot and there is a lot that they can do for us. But I don't think that any treatment in the world will work well if we are not emotionally ready to be healed, and that's where the "alternative" stuff might come in, or whatever an individual does to adjust his "state of mind" to fight illness and disease. My only criticism is that some docs discount the importance of our emotional well being when treating us for physical ailments.

There was a series of shows on PBS with Bill Moyers... I can't remember the name but it had to do with medicine and healing and the mind. The different episodes explored different things like Western medicine vs Chinese medicine. One episode followed breast cancer survivors and found that there was a definite statistical correlation showing women who went to a peer support group following surgery had significantly better recovery and less relapse than women who did not. We here at PsychCentral know that already though, don't we

But just as it is wrong for "science" to discount the mind and "alternative" treatments, I also think it is wrong to discount science and go for only the alternative. There can be several things that make this dangerous as downsolong points out. False hope, ridiculous claims.

I think we all need to be on our guard, and be seeking balance, not a magical alternative cure. Things like touch therapy and meditation may help in the treatment of serious diseases. They may be sufficient to CURE some illnesses, in cases where our bodies have sufficient repair facilities but stress is keeping our immune systems from functioning properly.

It is going to be different for every illness and for every individual as to what balance is needed for best healing. This is why things making absolute claims for healing should set up red flags right away. Especially the ones that claim a cure-all for everything. Like taking calcium will cure diabetes, arthritis, mental illness, and a whole host of other things. From a "spiritual" perspective it sounds nice to be able to "unify" everything for simple treatment. And that may be effective for the spiritual side of healing. But you can't mix that up with the mechanical requirements of the body. The body is an immensly complex machine, with electrical systems, chemical systems, all working together and overlapping to function properly. Make it even more complicated by recognizing that our state-of-mind plays an important role in our health. So if one illness may be a result of stress for one person, an invading virus for another, just a body part malfunctioning for another, and for most of us some unique combination of all of these elements, how is one simple "one size fits all" magical treatment going to fix us all?

So what I beleive is that there is no free lunch... gotta do the hard work to be made healthy again... but you also have to be open to all the avenues required for healing and the many many different ways available to tap into those avenues. What might suffice with a doctor and a few aspirin for one person might do better with a doctor and some accupunture with another and with some simple self meditation for a third person.

So in the end, "alternative" just means "choices" and we have to make those choices wisely.

In the Bill Moyers show, the most striking demonstration I saw was an experiment done with some laboratory mice.

Do you remember Pavlov's Dogs... "conditioned reflex" where he would ring a bell every time he fed his dogs, so after a while the dogs would associate the bell with the food, and soon just hearing the bell would cause the dogs to salivate even if there was no food around. The response that Pavlov discovered wasn't something "learned" as in "thinking about it" it was a direct connection that was established in the dog's brains that became strong over time until the two actions were strongly associated together in the dog's reflex system (causing the salivation).

These laboratory mice had an illness that had to be treated with medication. Without the medication the mice would get sick. The experiment was that with one group of mice, every time they gave the mice the medication, they would ring a bell. After establishing a strong connection, they were able to ring the bell without giving the medication and the mice stayed healthy!!! This was a very limited experiment, but examinations of the mice showed that the ones in the "bell" group had physical changes to their immune systems that the scientists could see and measure.

So "Mind" and "Body" do have a connection with regard to healing and illness that science can recognize.

Hi

If I'm not mistaken, its called Reiki Therapy. Reiki

REIKI - ('Rei' which means 'the Wisdom of God or the Higher Power' and 'Ki' which means 'life force ...

Thought Field Therapy is marketed as an extraordinarily fast and effective body-tapping treatment for a number of psychological problems. However, it lacks even basic empirical support and exhibits many of the trappings of a pseudoscience. ... premiere power therapy for the twenty-first century

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dexter said:
In the Bill Moyers show, the most striking demonstration I saw was an experiment done with some laboratory mice.

Do you remember Pavlov's Dogs... "conditioned reflex" where he would ring a bell every time he fed his dogs, so after a while the dogs would associate the bell with the food, and soon just hearing the bell would cause the dogs to salivate even if there was no food around. The response that Pavlov discovered wasn't something "learned" as in "thinking about it" it was a direct connection that was established in the dog's brains that became strong over time until the two actions were strongly associated together in the dog's reflex system (causing the salivation).

These laboratory mice had an illness that had to be treated with medication. Without the medication the mice would get sick. The experiment was that with one group of mice, every time they gave the mice the medication, they would ring a bell. After establishing a strong connection, they were able to ring the bell without giving the medication and the mice stayed healthy!!! This was a very limited experiment, but examinations of the mice showed that the ones in the "bell" group had physical changes to their immune systems that the scientists could see and measure.

So "Mind" and "Body" do have a connection with regard to healing and illness that science can recognize.

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post">

Hi Dexter,

I agree with this. I think you are saying that suggestion is a powerful psychological tool, which works, and these therapies rely on suggestion. Is that your point?

Cheers, M

>>suggestion is a powerful psychological tool, which works, and these therapies rely on suggestion.

Yes, but with caveat.

They demonstrated this again (same program) with a girl with a very rare disease, that required medicine that was difficult to dose properly, and too much could be dangerous for her to take. She was stable on a certain dose of this med but the docs wanted to cut it back a little bit. They created a very complicated "ritual" for her to set up an association, that involved where she took it, a rose petal scent that she sniffed with each dose, and some other stimuli. Eventually they weaned her to half the dosage of the med along with the ritual, and her body responded as if she was still taking the full dose.

HOWEVER this was not a controlled experiment. The docs have no way of knowing if the ritual really made any difference. It is possible that if they had just cut the medicine to half with no other prep, that might have been sufficient dosage for her.

The demonstation was not meant to show that this "works" it was just a way of pointing toward some outside-the-box thinking and some interesting research. The part with the mice, where they were able to observe physical changes in the bodies of the mice, showed that you can't just dismiss these things as being nonsense. That's a long long long long long way from saying eating fish heads will cure cancer, diabetes and arthritis if you "believe" it will.

So I want to point to downsolong's post again and remember that there can be serious negative consequenses for some of these things... from neglecting "accepted" treatments in favor of false hope, to the idea that some of these peddlers wares might actually do real damage to the body.

But the interesting part to me is the verification that "state of mind" can and does play a vital physical role in maintaining the bodies health AND in healing from illness ALONG with proper treatment from qualified doctors.

Also, remember that what the mind creates, the mind can resolve.... meaning that, some ppl's illnesses ARE purely psychosomatic... therefore, if someone comes along and helps them will themselves better.. they can be "cured"...

please I don't want ANYONE to think I'm suggesting that ppl could be healed if they "just" -anything! -

There is a strong integration of the mind/body... in fact, no one knows exactly where the mind IS... I personally believe the body is like a holographic image... totally all in each cell...

I would like your listing of what you consider "alternative" therapies. I also find it interesting that you said you've tried "a few".. I'm guessing without satisfying results?

TC of yourself

My psychiatrist is into alternative therapies.......when I was dealing with the trauma I went through with the home care RN stealing my Mothers ID & threatening me through that time, he wasn't sure how to help me at that time, not understanding that PTSD was in the process of happening. He knew I had to be in the hospital because physically I was sick & he knew I was having problems mentally again (thinking it was the easy answer of anorexia....not the PTSD).

We went through trying to define what treatment I really needed once I was out of the medical hospital & still physically & mentally unstable. He had received a flyer about alternative treatments that was a weekend seminar. He provided me with the flyer & the information to go....unfortunately I couldn't afford it but it even got into nutrition, chiropractors, & many other natrual treatments. His belief is still that I have to be the one that puts my life into proper perspective...no one else can do it for me or with me. He is providing me with the seroquel that helps me keep the flashbacks & nightmares away & keeps the depersonalization at a minimum......but the bottom line is ME figuring out ME.

The psychologist I had through my psychiatrist, didn't know how to deal with PTSD & I finally went back to one I had 9 years ago. I have been going through the year time frame when everything happened last year this time.....& depression is trying to force it's way back into my mind. We were discussing that in therapy & I had to chuckle at my psychologist when she said that suggesting meds for the depression wasn't even an option.....remembering how meds effect me.

There are times I wish I could just take a pill & it would all be better.....can't they just wrap a mirical up in a pill? Everything else takes soooo much work. But isn't the saying "anything worth having takes work"?
Debbie