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You can say "this is probably wrong" before you start experimenting, but it's not scientific at all. There's a reason practitioners are blinded in a double blin

You can say "this is probably wrong" before you start experimenting, but it's not scientific at all. There's a reason practitioners are blinded in a double blind trial. Also, there is an art to deciding what to "aim" your science at, and as much as some might hate to admit it, it is simply based on logic and intuition. In this case, it is entirely logical to me that breathing can modify circulatory patterns pumping more blood to your joints, thereby promoting healing for arthritis. I'd personally be surprised if there was zero benefit, but I respect your right to a different intuition from mine. I'm less confident about any similar benefits to something like MS although perhaps circulation to the brain could be similarly helpful. I'd recommend withholding judgment until we have more science, but again, that's my intuition. If you don't want to improve your breathing, you certainly don't have to.

simiones 5y ago
> In this case, it is entirely logical to me that breathing can modify circulatory patterns pumping more blood to your joints, thereby promoting healing for arthritis. By this logic, people with tachycardia would be much faster at healing, right? Since all that you can do with breathing techniques directly (without discussing how this might affect your mind etc.) is to increase your pulse and maybe arterial pressure. Why exactly increased pulse would reduce the inflammatory auto-immune response that is the cause of arthritis is beyond me. If anything, I would expect increased blood flow to increase the auto-immune response and make the arthritis worse.
- tarboreus 5y ago
  Not the person you're responding to, but my experience as a runner and someone who practices breathing is that it does engage some specific mechanisms that promote certain kinds of blood flow. I think your intuition here is off, and you're treating the body as a pretty simple machine rather than something that has some pretty sophisticated feedback mechanisms between the mind and the body.
  - simiones 5y ago
    As I said, I am open to explanations that this is a mind/body effect. I am not open to explanations that breathing fast/deep in itself, through the extra blood flow that it can obviously generate, are directly therapeutic for arthritis. This was, by my understanding, GP's preferred explanation.
- darkerside 5y ago
  No. Pulse rate is not necessarily correlated to volume of blood flow. You can have a high pulse rate, and often do, _because_ your heart is weak and failing to pump sufficient blood. Deep breathing actually tends to slow your heart rate down. I don't know what it does to overall blood flow rate. But, I wouldn't be surprised if it directed more blood flow to your capillaries and other areas that don't typically get great blood flow, similar to how your body pumps more blood to your extremities when you are warm. General advice, keep an open mind. When people say things that give you an emotional reaction, ask yourself if it's possible you are getting that reaction because you are afraid they might be right.
Quekid5 5y ago
(Apologies about reordering your statements slightly.) > There's a reason practitioners are blinded in a double blind trial. Well, yes. That's to avoid experimental bias by the experimenters themselves. > You can say "this is probably wrong" before you start experimenting, but it's not scientific at all. There's a threshold before you even engage with speculation. Speculation is good, but as a scientist one must decide to what to spend time on. > [...] as some might hate to admit it, it is simply based on logic and intuition.[...] What to do experimentation, trials, etc. on is mostly based on pure conjecture. But that's not contrary to anything that's been said ITT. Conjectures generate experiments, but these conjectures usually have *some* grounding in known physics, biology, whatever. (This a very poor explication of David Deutsch's brilliant exposition on this point of epistomology in The Beginning of Infinity.)
- darkerside 5y ago
  Are you arguing with me? I don't see anything you said that is inconsistent with the points I made.

simiones 5y ago

> In this case, it is entirely logical to me that breathing can modify circulatory patterns pumping more blood to your joints, thereby promoting healing for arthritis. By this logic, people with tachycardia would be much faster at healing, right? Since all that you can do with breathing techniques directly (without discussing how this might affect your mind etc.) is to increase your pulse and maybe arterial pressure. Why exactly increased pulse would reduce the inflammatory auto-immune response that is the cause of arthritis is beyond me. If anything, I would expect increased blood flow to increase the auto-immune response and make the arthritis worse.

tarboreus 5y ago
Not the person you're responding to, but my experience as a runner and someone who practices breathing is that it does engage some specific mechanisms that promote certain kinds of blood flow. I think your intuition here is off, and you're treating the body as a pretty simple machine rather than something that has some pretty sophisticated feedback mechanisms between the mind and the body.
- simiones 5y ago
  As I said, I am open to explanations that this is a mind/body effect. I am not open to explanations that breathing fast/deep in itself, through the extra blood flow that it can obviously generate, are directly therapeutic for arthritis. This was, by my understanding, GP's preferred explanation.
darkerside 5y ago
No. Pulse rate is not necessarily correlated to volume of blood flow. You can have a high pulse rate, and often do, _because_ your heart is weak and failing to pump sufficient blood. Deep breathing actually tends to slow your heart rate down. I don't know what it does to overall blood flow rate. But, I wouldn't be surprised if it directed more blood flow to your capillaries and other areas that don't typically get great blood flow, similar to how your body pumps more blood to your extremities when you are warm. General advice, keep an open mind. When people say things that give you an emotional reaction, ask yourself if it's possible you are getting that reaction because you are afraid they might be right.

Quekid5 5y ago

(Apologies about reordering your statements slightly.) > There's a reason practitioners are blinded in a double blind trial. Well, yes. That's to avoid experimental bias by the experimenters themselves. > You can say "this is probably wrong" before you start experimenting, but it's not scientific at all. There's a threshold before you even engage with speculation. Speculation is good, but as a scientist one must decide to what to spend time on. > [...] as some might hate to admit it, it is simply based on logic and intuition.[...] What to do experimentation, trials, etc. on is mostly based on pure conjecture. But that's not contrary to anything that's been said ITT. Conjectures generate experiments, but these conjectures usually have *some* grounding in known physics, biology, whatever. (This a very poor explication of David Deutsch's brilliant exposition on this point of epistomology in The Beginning of Infinity.)

darkerside 5y ago
Are you arguing with me? I don't see anything you said that is inconsistent with the points I made.