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> The ailments that Reiki seems to treat most effectively are those that orthodox medicine struggles to manage: pain, anxiety, chronic disease, and the fear or

> The ailments that Reiki seems to treat most effectively are those that orthodox medicine struggles to manage: pain, anxiety, chronic disease, and the fear or discomfort of facing not only the suffering of illness but also the suffering of treatment. This is key. Modern medicine, with the way hospitals and health insurance are run, do not and cannot address, for economic reasons, a pretty important aspect, albeit subjective, which is well-being. The figure of the family doctor that takes his time and actually shows you attention has vanished. The average experience of a hospital visit is that of being treated like a number. No surprise then that Reiki, or whatever other alternative practice really, that allows you to have the undivided attention, one day a week, from someone who cares about you, works wonders. Endorphins are powerful, Oxytocin specially, its role in modulating inflammation response is already known, and a lot of complains (chronic pain, mood disorders, mental function, even obesity) are tied to chronic inflammation. So, yes, about time more serious study is done on the importance of well-being.

sorokod 7y ago
The homeopathic a&e: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HMGIbOGu8q0 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HMGIbOGu8q0
- switch007 7y ago
  > Nurse: Strength? > Doctor: 1 part in a million > Nurse: Are you sure? It looks serious > Doctor: You're right, we need to strengthen the dose: 1 part in 10 million Hah!
  - stan_rogers 7y ago
    ...and that's using numbers people can sort of begin to fathom so they can get a laugh. That's only 7X. 30C is the "OMG potent" dilution in homeopathy - and that's one part in 10^60.
    - lonelappde 7y ago
      The writers were being responsible. It's not safe to discuss potencies like 10^-60 that casually. People might "try it at home" and hurt themselves. It's called homeopathy from "home" and "path", meaning "dangerous at home".
ganzuul 7y ago
Reiki focuses specifically on this aspect in emphasizing the focus, intent and emotional commitment of the practitioner. Replace "energy" with "emotion" and it begins to look legitimate.
- hosh 7y ago
  Sure, the attitude one holds is important. People can sense that at some level. Subtle energy is real though. Reiki is one of the modalities that does not require being in person. There’s a bunch of weirder, more obscure modalities that can work with chronic pain, trauma, and the like.
  - dmos62 7y ago
    Addressing the quiet downvoters. It upsets me how dismissive our culture can be. What if there's something to it? There's a rich history of people thinking that there is. Do they really not deserve a second thought? I wish everyone were always a skeptic, but never off-hand dismissive. To those entrusting our mainstream with authority on what's bullshit and what's not, remember that psychedelics research is still illegal most places. I'd argue that history is random, and thus the mainstream. Further, variety is a good thing: the more of it we can sustain, the healthier our society is.
    - 411111111111111 7y ago
      Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. None was provided, so we will have to dismiss it until some proof is provided. Nobody is dismissing proof here. They're only dismissive of the extraordinary claims that an immeasurable energy somehow inherent to some things has any effect beyond essentially the placebo effect. After all, there hasn't been any evidence which showed differently. If you have some studies showing actual results beyond placebo's baseline, we'd all be ecstatic for the new knowledge
      - dmos62 7y ago
        It merits skepticism. But, is it a lack of the scientific method that's motivating the backlash? Or, is it that the claim falls within an unpopular marginality? The obvious rebut is that it's unpopular, because it lacks scientific method. In other words, mainstream is mainstream due to merit and can be used as source of truth. If anyone takes this view, I hope they're very conscious of it, because in my opinion this viewpoint can't last long.
normalnorm 7y ago
> Modern medicine, with the way hospitals and health insurance are run, do not and cannot address, for economic reasons, a pretty important aspect, albeit subjective, which is well-being. The "economic reasons" are just the preferences of the rich & powerful. Resources could be allocated in other ways. It is just that those that call the shots are not interested. In the US, they also managed to convince a large part of the population to act against its own interests. I dream of an economic system that serves human beings instead of the numerical abstractions behind which the rich and powerful hide their extreme selfishness.
- dotancohen 7y ago
  > I dream of an economic system that serves human beings instead > of the numerical abstractions behind which the rich and > powerful hide their extreme selfishness. So did Gene Roddenberry. Most of his work is based on that premise.
  - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
    I've heard this before .. in his books so the senior officers get luxurious quarters as they did in the TV series? That seems to be a contrast with basic egalitarianism?
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      Not sure about TOS as I didn't watch much of it, but from TNG onwards, everyone has luxury quarters on Starfleet starships, of roughly equivalent size. I remember watching some youtuber calculating how much space of Enterprise-D is used for various purposes; from there I've learned that a typical quarter would be ~35 sqm if you were single, 45 sqm if you were a family. (With the exception of the Defiant, TNG-era Starfleet ships tended to be luxury liners.)
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - sneak 7y ago
    He was not alone in literature of dreaming of a socialist utopia, enforced by a military dictatorship (Starfleet, in this instance). The Culture novels also dive deeply here, and are IMO better literature, despite both canons carefully avoiding the sticky problems associated with scarce or finite resources (which is easy to avoid in storytelling if not philosophy, once you’ve gone post-scarcity). I think Roddenberry patched over it by not having precious metals being able to be produced by replicators, so the rest of the unwashed not-military-dictatorship can still engage in trade. I’ve still never seen a solution to post-scarcity finite resource allocation, though. Banks dodged it wholly for the Culture. Not even Doctorow, who grazed up against it in Down and Out, has tackled it head-on. You can’t really have eg Georgism if you don’t have a system of money.
asjw 7y ago
> pain, anxiety, chronic disease, and the fear or discomfort These are all treated in Italy for free by the public healthcare system which also provides psychological (or psychiatric) support, rehabilitation and pain management
pjc50 7y ago
This is one of those areas where public healthcare isn't necessarily any better - the important barrier is getting the profession to take you seriously, and for many chronic conditions deemed "livable with" that is a problem. Everything from fibromyalgia to endometriosis.
zelos 7y ago
They're also the areas that are hardest to measure, of course. I always loved the Mitchell and Webb take on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgxzSUxxRzE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgxzSUxxRzE
- sebastialonso 7y ago
  Try to find a single area which is easy to measure where these "alternative medicine" successfully surpasses medicine based on the scientific method. Just one.
pedroguitarm4n 7y ago
I agree -- generally, holistically, well-being is crucial for any person's health. And a lot of that is related to emotion/psychology. Reiki, or whatever other fad-of-the-day, will keep that at its core and just help people with that. That being said, from a results-oriented point of view, if it works for people, great. Keep on doing it. But I wouldn't put it anywhere near some exact science. Rather, as you said, it's related to something that needs serious consideration in the medical and scientific community.
andrepd 7y ago
>The figure of the family doctor that takes his time and actually shows you attention has vanished. The average experience of a hospital visit is that of being treated like a number. This doesn't have to be so (indeed in many places it isn't yet). This is a consequence of a strained public health system which is simply running over capacity. Maybe if we stopped pumping money into banks and wealthy people's pockets we could have some left for such purposes.
- barry-cotter 7y ago
  The US spends more on healthcare per capita than any other country, which is hardly surprising given that it’s the richest country. Whatever criticisms one might make of the US healthcare system not enough money is far down the list.
  - PaulAJ 7y ago
    The US also spends more as a proportion of GDP than anywhere else, by a considerable margin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_health_expenditure_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_hea... Of course its not clear how much of this expenditure goes to various middlemen and how much actually gets spent on the patients. Even phrasing the question in a meaningful way is non-trivial, never mind getting a clear answer.
    - andrepd 7y ago
      34% of all healthcare expenditure in the US is "administrative costs".
  - skissane 7y ago
    > The US spends more on healthcare per capita than any other country, which is hardly surprising given that it’s the richest country. Qatar, Luxembourg, Singapore, Ireland, Brunei, Norway, UAE, Kuwait and Switzerland all have more GDP per capita (PPP) than the US yet spend less per capita on healthcare (PPP). So, the US coming first in health expenditure per capita is not simply due to coming first in wealth. (The US does come first in nominal GDP, but it doesn't make much sense to compare an overall figure like that with a per capita one.)
stronglikedan 7y ago
> The figure of the family doctor that takes his time and actually shows you attention has vanished. They're still plentiful if you seek them out.
- wpietri 7y ago
  Where? I've been seeking for years. The best one I found didn't even take insurance, because that didn't pay enough to justify the time she spent with patients. She recently closed her practice, alas. And on my insurance, I'm now required to go through one of the approved primary care doctors.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
infinity0 7y ago
A key foundational fallacy of modern "dogmatic scientism" (for lack of a better phrase) is the fallacy fallacy - just because something doesn't have a scientific or otherwise formally-theoretic explanation, doesn't mean it's false. This is why empiricism was and remains so key in pushing technological progress, contributing to the Enlightenment and the efficacy of the scientific method. As opposed to "dogmatic scientism" where scientifically-oriented religious zealots denounce techniques for merely the reason that we don't properly understand how they work, in the false belief that they are promoting science or being scientific. (A variant of this is where they denounce something for merely the reason that it seems to contradict another scientific theory, but in fact that theory only applies in a different context with different assumptions, and there is no actual contradiction.) "The Science Delusion" is a very good pro-scientific book that covers various other examples of these topics.
dominotw 7y ago
Its not doctor's job to tell her patients to manage anxiety. Doctors job is not to play a guru. Her job is dispose medically proven solutions. Why would a doctor be in better position to give this personal advice to her patients ?
- ativzzz 7y ago
  Why not? The mayo clinic defines anxiety as a medical disorder: https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/anxiety/symptoms-causes/syc-20350961 https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/anxiety/sympt.... Why shouldn't doctors help patients manage it?
  - dominotw 7y ago
    sure if the patient is sufferring from anxiety Feeling nervous, restless or tense Having an increased heart rate Breathing rapidly (hyperventilation) Thats not what the article is talking about though. GP is talking about promoting some sort of "well being" thorough anxiety reduction. Has nothing to do if the person is sweating or breathing rapidly.
    - ativzzz 7y ago
      How about the other symptoms you didn't list? > Having the urge to avoid things that trigger anxiety > Feeling weak or tired > Trouble concentrating or thinking about anything other than the present worry > Having trouble sleeping Those are exactly the issues GP is talking about, article even mentioned anectodes of improved sleep.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - dominotw 7y ago
        > Having the urge to avoid things that trigger anxiety wow :D.
Delk 7y ago
I only have a very superficial understanding of reiki and other alternative treatments, but I wonder how much of the subjective effects have to do with psychological suggestion. I mean, of course the placebo effect is also real, and just getting the feeling that someone is personally and emotionally engaging with you and your issues can sometimes do wonders, and things that just feel good can improve well-being regardless of whether the theory behind them makes any sense. But if some kinds of treatments do appear to have effects beyond placebo or just plain "this feels good" (I don't know if reiki does; my limited understanding is that research doesn't support that), I wouldn't be surprised if it had something to do with suggestion as well. (For example, hypnosis can apparently help with irritable bowel syndrome, and I have a vague recollection that there's even some scientific support for that. So yeah, suggestion can even have an effect on physical symptoms.) Even things like yoga or other exercises where part of the practice may be getting into a certain state of mind probably involve suggestion at least on some level. I could totally see something like reiki producing a higher-than-expected effect of e.g. relaxation in some people, especially those who are more susceptible to suggestion. But that's just a hunch; it might be interesting to know if there's been any research on that.

sorokod 7y ago

The homeopathic a&e: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HMGIbOGu8q0 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HMGIbOGu8q0

switch007 7y ago
> Nurse: Strength? > Doctor: 1 part in a million > Nurse: Are you sure? It looks serious > Doctor: You're right, we need to strengthen the dose: 1 part in 10 million Hah!
- stan_rogers 7y ago
  ...and that's using numbers people can sort of begin to fathom so they can get a laugh. That's only 7X. 30C is the "OMG potent" dilution in homeopathy - and that's one part in 10^60.
  - lonelappde 7y ago
    The writers were being responsible. It's not safe to discuss potencies like 10^-60 that casually. People might "try it at home" and hurt themselves. It's called homeopathy from "home" and "path", meaning "dangerous at home".

ganzuul 7y ago

Reiki focuses specifically on this aspect in emphasizing the focus, intent and emotional commitment of the practitioner. Replace "energy" with "emotion" and it begins to look legitimate.

hosh 7y ago
Sure, the attitude one holds is important. People can sense that at some level. Subtle energy is real though. Reiki is one of the modalities that does not require being in person. There’s a bunch of weirder, more obscure modalities that can work with chronic pain, trauma, and the like.
- dmos62 7y ago
  Addressing the quiet downvoters. It upsets me how dismissive our culture can be. What if there's something to it? There's a rich history of people thinking that there is. Do they really not deserve a second thought? I wish everyone were always a skeptic, but never off-hand dismissive. To those entrusting our mainstream with authority on what's bullshit and what's not, remember that psychedelics research is still illegal most places. I'd argue that history is random, and thus the mainstream. Further, variety is a good thing: the more of it we can sustain, the healthier our society is.
  - 411111111111111 7y ago
    Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. None was provided, so we will have to dismiss it until some proof is provided. Nobody is dismissing proof here. They're only dismissive of the extraordinary claims that an immeasurable energy somehow inherent to some things has any effect beyond essentially the placebo effect. After all, there hasn't been any evidence which showed differently. If you have some studies showing actual results beyond placebo's baseline, we'd all be ecstatic for the new knowledge
    - dmos62 7y ago
      It merits skepticism. But, is it a lack of the scientific method that's motivating the backlash? Or, is it that the claim falls within an unpopular marginality? The obvious rebut is that it's unpopular, because it lacks scientific method. In other words, mainstream is mainstream due to merit and can be used as source of truth. If anyone takes this view, I hope they're very conscious of it, because in my opinion this viewpoint can't last long.

normalnorm 7y ago

> Modern medicine, with the way hospitals and health insurance are run, do not and cannot address, for economic reasons, a pretty important aspect, albeit subjective, which is well-being. The "economic reasons" are just the preferences of the rich & powerful. Resources could be allocated in other ways. It is just that those that call the shots are not interested. In the US, they also managed to convince a large part of the population to act against its own interests. I dream of an economic system that serves human beings instead of the numerical abstractions behind which the rich and powerful hide their extreme selfishness.

dotancohen 7y ago
> I dream of an economic system that serves human beings instead > of the numerical abstractions behind which the rich and > powerful hide their extreme selfishness. So did Gene Roddenberry. Most of his work is based on that premise.
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago
  I've heard this before .. in his books so the senior officers get luxurious quarters as they did in the TV series? That seems to be a contrast with basic egalitarianism?
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    Not sure about TOS as I didn't watch much of it, but from TNG onwards, everyone has luxury quarters on Starfleet starships, of roughly equivalent size. I remember watching some youtuber calculating how much space of Enterprise-D is used for various purposes; from there I've learned that a typical quarter would be ~35 sqm if you were single, 45 sqm if you were a family. (With the exception of the Defiant, TNG-era Starfleet ships tended to be luxury liners.)
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- sneak 7y ago
  He was not alone in literature of dreaming of a socialist utopia, enforced by a military dictatorship (Starfleet, in this instance). The Culture novels also dive deeply here, and are IMO better literature, despite both canons carefully avoiding the sticky problems associated with scarce or finite resources (which is easy to avoid in storytelling if not philosophy, once you’ve gone post-scarcity). I think Roddenberry patched over it by not having precious metals being able to be produced by replicators, so the rest of the unwashed not-military-dictatorship can still engage in trade. I’ve still never seen a solution to post-scarcity finite resource allocation, though. Banks dodged it wholly for the Culture. Not even Doctorow, who grazed up against it in Down and Out, has tackled it head-on. You can’t really have eg Georgism if you don’t have a system of money.

asjw 7y ago

> pain, anxiety, chronic disease, and the fear or discomfort These are all treated in Italy for free by the public healthcare system which also provides psychological (or psychiatric) support, rehabilitation and pain management

pjc50 7y ago

This is one of those areas where public healthcare isn't necessarily any better - the important barrier is getting the profession to take you seriously, and for many chronic conditions deemed "livable with" that is a problem. Everything from fibromyalgia to endometriosis.

zelos 7y ago

They're also the areas that are hardest to measure, of course. I always loved the Mitchell and Webb take on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgxzSUxxRzE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgxzSUxxRzE

sebastialonso 7y ago
Try to find a single area which is easy to measure where these "alternative medicine" successfully surpasses medicine based on the scientific method. Just one.

pedroguitarm4n 7y ago

I agree -- generally, holistically, well-being is crucial for any person's health. And a lot of that is related to emotion/psychology. Reiki, or whatever other fad-of-the-day, will keep that at its core and just help people with that. That being said, from a results-oriented point of view, if it works for people, great. Keep on doing it. But I wouldn't put it anywhere near some exact science. Rather, as you said, it's related to something that needs serious consideration in the medical and scientific community.

andrepd 7y ago

>The figure of the family doctor that takes his time and actually shows you attention has vanished. The average experience of a hospital visit is that of being treated like a number. This doesn't have to be so (indeed in many places it isn't yet). This is a consequence of a strained public health system which is simply running over capacity. Maybe if we stopped pumping money into banks and wealthy people's pockets we could have some left for such purposes.

barry-cotter 7y ago
The US spends more on healthcare per capita than any other country, which is hardly surprising given that it’s the richest country. Whatever criticisms one might make of the US healthcare system not enough money is far down the list.
- PaulAJ 7y ago
  The US also spends more as a proportion of GDP than anywhere else, by a considerable margin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_health_expenditure_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_hea... Of course its not clear how much of this expenditure goes to various middlemen and how much actually gets spent on the patients. Even phrasing the question in a meaningful way is non-trivial, never mind getting a clear answer.
  - andrepd 7y ago
    34% of all healthcare expenditure in the US is "administrative costs".
- skissane 7y ago
  > The US spends more on healthcare per capita than any other country, which is hardly surprising given that it’s the richest country. Qatar, Luxembourg, Singapore, Ireland, Brunei, Norway, UAE, Kuwait and Switzerland all have more GDP per capita (PPP) than the US yet spend less per capita on healthcare (PPP). So, the US coming first in health expenditure per capita is not simply due to coming first in wealth. (The US does come first in nominal GDP, but it doesn't make much sense to compare an overall figure like that with a per capita one.)

stronglikedan 7y ago

> The figure of the family doctor that takes his time and actually shows you attention has vanished. They're still plentiful if you seek them out.

wpietri 7y ago
Where? I've been seeking for years. The best one I found didn't even take insurance, because that didn't pay enough to justify the time she spent with patients. She recently closed her practice, alas. And on my insurance, I'm now required to go through one of the approved primary care doctors.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

infinity0 7y ago

A key foundational fallacy of modern "dogmatic scientism" (for lack of a better phrase) is the fallacy fallacy - just because something doesn't have a scientific or otherwise formally-theoretic explanation, doesn't mean it's false. This is why empiricism was and remains so key in pushing technological progress, contributing to the Enlightenment and the efficacy of the scientific method. As opposed to "dogmatic scientism" where scientifically-oriented religious zealots denounce techniques for merely the reason that we don't properly understand how they work, in the false belief that they are promoting science or being scientific. (A variant of this is where they denounce something for merely the reason that it seems to contradict another scientific theory, but in fact that theory only applies in a different context with different assumptions, and there is no actual contradiction.) "The Science Delusion" is a very good pro-scientific book that covers various other examples of these topics.

dominotw 7y ago

Its not doctor's job to tell her patients to manage anxiety. Doctors job is not to play a guru. Her job is dispose medically proven solutions. Why would a doctor be in better position to give this personal advice to her patients ?

ativzzz 7y ago
Why not? The mayo clinic defines anxiety as a medical disorder: https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/anxiety/symptoms-causes/syc-20350961 https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/anxiety/sympt.... Why shouldn't doctors help patients manage it?
- dominotw 7y ago
  sure if the patient is sufferring from anxiety Feeling nervous, restless or tense Having an increased heart rate Breathing rapidly (hyperventilation) Thats not what the article is talking about though. GP is talking about promoting some sort of "well being" thorough anxiety reduction. Has nothing to do if the person is sweating or breathing rapidly.
  - ativzzz 7y ago
    How about the other symptoms you didn't list? > Having the urge to avoid things that trigger anxiety > Feeling weak or tired > Trouble concentrating or thinking about anything other than the present worry > Having trouble sleeping Those are exactly the issues GP is talking about, article even mentioned anectodes of improved sleep.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - dominotw 7y ago
      > Having the urge to avoid things that trigger anxiety wow :D.

Delk 7y ago

I only have a very superficial understanding of reiki and other alternative treatments, but I wonder how much of the subjective effects have to do with psychological suggestion. I mean, of course the placebo effect is also real, and just getting the feeling that someone is personally and emotionally engaging with you and your issues can sometimes do wonders, and things that just feel good can improve well-being regardless of whether the theory behind them makes any sense. But if some kinds of treatments do appear to have effects beyond placebo or just plain "this feels good" (I don't know if reiki does; my limited understanding is that research doesn't support that), I wouldn't be surprised if it had something to do with suggestion as well. (For example, hypnosis can apparently help with irritable bowel syndrome, and I have a vague recollection that there's even some scientific support for that. So yeah, suggestion can even have an effect on physical symptoms.) Even things like yoga or other exercises where part of the practice may be getting into a certain state of mind probably involve suggestion at least on some level. I could totally see something like reiki producing a higher-than-expected effect of e.g. relaxation in some people, especially those who are more susceptible to suggestion. But that's just a hunch; it might be interesting to know if there's been any research on that.