Apr 22 2009
Woo Treatments Not Always Bogus
I sometimes think of “alternative medicine” as hunch-based medicine. Typically there is no scientific superstructure supporting the claims. Folklore, ancient dogma, yes. Hunches about how to treat illness get clothed-in or justified-by pseudoscientific reasoning.
That said, hunches have their place. They are one of the first steps of discovery. But for something to prove effective it has to be tested. And once tested it would be nice if the mechanisms of action were understood and disclosed.
Alternative medicine also tends to take small finds and speculate wildly, blowing them up to ridiculous proportions. In effect, a pretty little truth become a grotesque falsity. For instance -
A few decades ago Norman Cousins wrote of his self-treatment of an auto-immune disease. He chose laughter as his medicine. And got better.
One person getting better is a very small tidbit of data. From his experience Cousins wrote a best-selling book: Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient. Suddenly there was a grotesque ground swell of healers professing the power of laughter and positive attitude.
You might call his “laughter is good for your overall health” hypothesis a hunch. Perhaps it was even an educated hunch. And it turns out to have had some merit. Some. A recent, very-well conducted study has indeed shown that laughter has healthful effects on humans. As good science will do, details were shared:
The patients in the laughter group (Group L) had lower epinephrine and norepinephrine levels by the second month, suggesting lower stress levels. They had increased HDL (good) cholesterol. The laughter group also had lower levels of TNF-a, IFN-?, IL-6 and hs-CRP levels, indicating lower levels of inflammation.
At the end of one year, the research team saw significant improvement in Group L: HDL cholesterol had risen by 26 percent in Group L (laughter), and only 3 percent in the Group C (control). Harmful C-reactive proteins decreased 66 % in the laughter group vs. 26 percent for the control group.
Woo hunches and treatments are not always wrong. Yes, laughter is good for you. But to claim it is a cure-all and/or that stress is thus the cause of disease is to venture far into the land woo.
