Very true, American Indians used to use Cayenne pepper to help sooth stomache aches, now you have to buy some foil bubble package of bullshit, that does the same thing, yet causes some nonsense side-effect. Society as a whole is turning into a large machine being fed by pharm corps doling out crazy assed drugs. Whoever would buy something to cure muddbutt that CAUSES cramps, AND muddbutt. Can you feel the stupid? Because I can sure as hell feel it.
It sounds (to me) like a lot of the problem comes down to when medicines started targeting higher brain functions (How do you feel? Better or worse?) instead of concrete physical problems (Are you shitting water? Yes / no).
Obviously there’s more to it than just that, but I can’t help but feel that’s part of the problem. When you’re trying to treat the thing that makes you feel ways, it doesn’t seem that surprising that your feeling-patterns start going all haywire. Um, like, you’re metaphorically boot-strapping your brain. Or something.
The Ascension War is going the way of the Traditions.
FTA:
“It’s not that the old meds are getting weaker, drug developers say. It’s as if the placebo effect is somehow getting stronger.”
I think you’re onto something there. And I think it works on both ends; it’s not just that it’s harder to concretely say if you feel better or worse; it’s that it’s harder to diagnose the depression concretely in the first place.
I am just as certain that there are a large number of people misdiagnosed with depression as I am that some people are genetically, biologically chemically imbalanced.
Mix in a huge helping of “new age” quackery, wishful thinking and a massive profit motive and… who the fuck can tell what’s real any more? The Scientific Method surrenders.
You got that right, spices and herbs can fix damn near anything. I used to have really horrible reflux, and from using cayenne in just about anything I can put it in made the reflux go away. My doctor didn’t believe me either, but once she figured out I wasn’t kidding, she actually takes cayenne in capsule form. Oddly, folks with arthritis often use concentrated capcacin which is derived from that pepper on their joints to alleviate pain. Herbs and veggies rock!
There was a great RadioLab a couple of years back about the Placebo Effect. They found that blue sugar pills, when presented as sleeping aids, helped people get a longer, more restful night’s sleep than red or yellow sugar pills presented as sleeping aids.
Yes, but I personally prefer them to be ground up into pills that actually contain the active ingredients rather than various unknowable compounds. That’s why I eat aspirin tablets instead of giant chunks of willow bark.
Don’t get me wrong, i use peoper drugs like Motrin and such, but when I feel gross in the lower quadrant, the cayenne or ginger seem to fit the bill quite nicely. I’m not some filthy hippy, I just prefer avoiding some things if I can manage to find an alternative. An example is Claratin, I can’t find an alternative tht works worth a damn, so I’m stuck with that stuff.
Yeah, and its true there’s a lot of relatively uncontroversial things you can do with diet to cure common everyday maladies.
But there are also people who construct their own birth control pills out of various herbs which actually function by literally poisoning you and making you sterile over the course of several years (true story, forget the herb she was taking though).
Are doctors allowed to prescribe placebo pills?
They prescribe antibiotics instead.
According to that article, they sometimes write prescriptions for effective medications in doses too small to do anything, so that’s essentially the same thing. As to whether they’re allowed to actually prescribe sugar pills, I don’t know (and really, for them to remain effective, it would have to remain a secret). It’s be a little weird though, because presumably it’d need to be filled by standard pharmacies, so unless there’s a specific “Placeb-icil” drug out there that’s the standard sugar pill, it seems unlikely.
I’ve been giving the neti pot a shot. I’ll let you know how it works. So far, the results are… really gross.
I nearly bought one a few days back man, but the thought of flushing my sinuses out with warm salt water kinda freaks me out. I may just give it a shot, it’s a ton less cash than buying Claratin D all the time.
No, but as mentioned, they sometimes fudge the doses or prescribe antibiotics (which are effective against bacterial infections) for the common cold (which is caused by a virus, which is not affected by an antibiotic).
I would have liked it if that Wired article had some links (maybe it did and I missed them) to the research it references (especially the IBS one).
So, have you ever gone swimming in the ocean and gotten a little seawater up your schnozz? It’s like that, only not as bad, and not unexpected.
Well, i already had a vasectomy, a little salt water won’t kill me I guess.
Hey, I have no empirical evidence, but I do have anecdotal. I was taking a very high dose of Zyrtec and then Xyzal all year long for allergies, and started buying local honey from a guy I work with. He actually squeezes the bees himself evidently. And it is raw honey, that is important. Result, no allergy meds in a year. Savings of $30/month. I put honey in my oatmeal and my hot tea every morning and I am good to go.
Try it, you might like it. Or something.
Well, I have never made you guys aware of this but I am a Wizard of High Magick, 2nd Class. I have always frowned at taking profit for performing the works of my kind, but now that I see that others are doing it, I think I may have to rethink that. Ebay, here I come!