I don't really find this distinction useful - essentially it comes down to definitions. It's not a treatment that is well understood in the way that some physio

I don't really find this distinction useful - essentially it comes down to definitions. It's not a treatment that is well understood in the way that some physiological mechanisms may be understood, but trick is an overloaded term and the persisting feeling that it is a trick may well be dampening furthering our knowledge in this space. In any case after studying some pharmacology, my takeaway really was that "understand" is a pretty relative term - biochemistry is insanely complex and medical chemistry is a pretty fuzzy thing when it boils down to it...