Moderator: Alyrium Denryle
It's a term for having too much money or insurance needing extraction by a sensitive practitioner. After the procedure, the patient finds his or her bank account feeling balanced and lighter, and is freed from the stress of not knowing what to do with the extra cash.Zablorg wrote:What the fuck are "energy imbalances"? Is that a nifty term for being hungry?
One of my uncles spent some time in two different hospitals this past year and he said going through the surgeries was bad enough, but to hear the "Code Blue" alarm from a neighboring room in the middle of the night was even scarier, especially when it became obvious that the medical staff was unable to revive the patient. I have to imagine that the last thing you want to know is that someone just died next door.Turin wrote:There's been a considerable trend on the design side of thing to make inpatient rooms more comfortable for the patient -- warmer and more natural lighting, sound insulation from the 24hr hustle-and-bustle of the rest of the hospital, and furnishing & finishes that look more like a hotel than a hospital room. (At the same time, of course, all these finishes are microbe-growth-resistant, and those warm lights can be turned into bazillion-watt bright lamps with the flick of a switch if the patient crashes.)
That girl is awesome! I'd love for my kid to be as smart when he/she is ten years old.Darth Holbytlan wrote: This pretty much looks like Therapeutic Touch, only a little less vulnerable to disproof from an elementary school science fair project.
I think you hit the nail on the head, Mike - except callgirls don't do much for me, personally. I think I'd prefer the shaman, but then, I am NeoPagan... nor would I mistake it for real medicine. Oh, and some funny movies, those make me feel better, too. It's emotional therapy at most. Different strokes for different folks. It's really the personnel attention that's doing the trick, and the deep breathing does have a calming effect but that has nothing to do with "energy fields"Darth Wong wrote:I'm not actually joking. I would love to see one of these studies on "alternative therapies" to make patients feel better, only done with callgirls instead of shamans or witch doctors or faith healers or whatever else the woo-woo crowd is trying to sell. I'd bet that the results are at least as good, if not better.
Nope - most of the "practioners" I'm familiar with talk about things like chi and chakras, which are believed to be actual energy channels or nodes for "life force" or "life energy" or some other mystical thing. Nothing as rational/scientific as what you're proposing.Winston Blake wrote:I think of it more like an expansion and distortion of the colloquial meaning of energy as 'liveliness'. Like 'You look energetic today' or 'I feel great and full of energy!'. The word 'energy' can be treated like a substance in conversation, just the same way a person can be 'full of resolve', or have 'low satisfaction'.Zablorg wrote:What the fuck are "energy imbalances"? Is that a nifty term for being hungry?
Wasn't there actual studies done with pets in Germany, clowns in the US that support this?Broomstick wrote:I think you hit the nail on the head, Mike - except callgirls don't do much for me, personally. I think I'd prefer the shaman, but then, I am NeoPagan... nor would I mistake it for real medicine. Oh, and some funny movies, those make me feel better, too. It's emotional therapy at most. Different strokes for different folks. It's really the personnel attention that's doing the trick, and the deep breathing does have a calming effect but that has nothing to do with "energy fields"Darth Wong wrote:I'm not actually joking. I would love to see one of these studies on "alternative therapies" to make patients feel better, only done with callgirls instead of shamans or witch doctors or faith healers or whatever else the woo-woo crowd is trying to sell. I'd bet that the results are at least as good, if not better.
The problem then is what is the best way to combine the beneficial effect of this type of attention, and not dress it up in pseudoscience. Maybe they should coin a new term like emotional touch therapy and just propose that light touching and positive mood reinforcement is helpful but not 'magical'.There's no question it does something - you just provided evidence of that - the question is whether what it does is useful.
As I mentioned before, receiving individual attention alone can have a beneficial effect on the ill, whether or not that attention has anything to do with medical treatment or not. That is, after all, one of the reasons we send get well cards and hospitals have visiting hours. Using emotional reactions - from massage or placebos or energy work or whatever - may not help the medical condition, but it can sure help the mental state of the patient, which in turn can result in better compliance with medical requirements, better appetite/eating, better sleep, and so on, which could assist healing in an indirect manner.
But, as also pointed out, this has nothing to do with some mumbo-jumbo "energy state", it has to do with taking care of the emotional needs of the human being in question.
There's also the fact that a hospital is one of the best places to go to GET sick. They have many of the sickest people in a community all crammed into one building. Its a veritable germ-fest, and due to the large numbers of antibiotics passed out, they tend to be the super-resistant strains too.Darth Wong wrote:News flash: a hospital is a shitty place to hang out. There's nothing to do, the environment is ugly, the nurses are harried and irritable so you feel guilty asking them for anything, your family only shows up for a few minutes each day if you're lucky, and your friends usually figure it's good enough to send you a "Get Well" card in the mail. Virtually anything is an improvement on the status quo in hospitals.
They already do, from music therapy and bright colours for pain diversion.Justforfun000 wrote: The problem then is what is the best way to combine the beneficial effect of this type of attention, and not dress it up in pseudoscience. Maybe they should coin a new term like emotional touch therapy and just propose that light touching and positive mood reinforcement is helpful but not 'magical'.
It's impossible to measure that broadly. Our health systems in different countries, combined with individual genes, combined with the average national foods and drink they consume, (think the French Paradox, Vodka overconsumption in Russia, etc.) makes it near impossible to judge healing therapies based on their anectdotal records.Acupuncture, reflexology, thai massage and to a degree, shitasu, as based around energy points or meridians and the philosophies have been around for centuries. You don't really believe that people in the past are all that health, eh?
I'd pay $20-30 for a nice foot massage, no problem, but if I'm sick, I'm in the hospital.
I believe there is actually considerable evidence for various forms of therapeutic massage helping with things like pain, fatigue, etc. It's just the more spectacular claims (like curing cancer) that are completely absurd and unfounded.Ypoknons wrote:Acupuncture, reflexology, thai massage and to a degree, shitasu, as based around energy points or meridians and the philosophies have been around for centuries. You don't really believe that people in the past are all that health, eh?
I'd pay $20-30 for a nice foot massage, no problem, but if I'm sick, I'm in the hospital.
Exactly. As to diseases like Cancer, now you can theorize that such treatments improve the bodies circulation, which could possibly impact many modalities of health systems in your body and so forth, but this is obviously completely speculation and should be treated at best as a possibly probable rationale for health enhancement supplementation.I believe there is actually considerable evidence for various forms of therapeutic massage helping with things like pain, fatigue, etc. It's just the more spectacular claims (like curing cancer) that are completely absurd and unfounded.
