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I don't think emotional and psychological healing can be dismissed as placebo in physiological healing. People think there's a great divide between mind and bo

I don't think emotional and psychological healing can be dismissed as placebo in physiological healing. People think there's a great divide between mind and body but if you look at common psychological problems, they very much have a physiological representation. With anxiety, you're heart rate and blood pressure are effected. You get tension headaches. It can trigger IBS. Hormonal changes in cortisol and adrenaline are present. Depression drains energy and lowers stress tolerance. Stress has a similar effect as anxiety. It also has very real hormonal changes too. These can have a big impact on physiological state. Ever been angry and then got a horrible headache? That's psychological state having a very real physiological effect!

tomhoward 9y ago
I agree with you completely. I believe wholeheartedly that mind and body are intrinsically linked, and that you can completely heal the body (of a condition like CFS) by healing the mind. It's what I've spent the past 6 years doing. You're just stuck on the definition of 'placebo' :)
- jwdunne 9y ago
  What's the definition of placebo? Was always sure it's used as a control when testing medical treatments in which the patient doesn't know if they are receiving the treatment or not, leading to a genuine change in state from the belief they're in the experimental group, from which clinical significance is measured from as a baseline. I'm saying that psychological healing can have physiological effects above and beyond placebo due to the very real influence psychological state has on hormones. If you believe that it's a placebo effect, I'm not sure if it can be called a placebo effect? The whole point of a placebo is that you don't know it's a placebo otherwise it'd have stopped working long ago. Perhaps the common thread is the belief in its efficacy.

tomhoward 9y ago

I agree with you completely. I believe wholeheartedly that mind and body are intrinsically linked, and that you can completely heal the body (of a condition like CFS) by healing the mind. It's what I've spent the past 6 years doing. You're just stuck on the definition of 'placebo' :)

jwdunne 9y ago
What's the definition of placebo? Was always sure it's used as a control when testing medical treatments in which the patient doesn't know if they are receiving the treatment or not, leading to a genuine change in state from the belief they're in the experimental group, from which clinical significance is measured from as a baseline. I'm saying that psychological healing can have physiological effects above and beyond placebo due to the very real influence psychological state has on hormones. If you believe that it's a placebo effect, I'm not sure if it can be called a placebo effect? The whole point of a placebo is that you don't know it's a placebo otherwise it'd have stopped working long ago. Perhaps the common thread is the belief in its efficacy.