Aging, Health and the Mind

[Ego]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/26/magaz ... .html?_r=0

I've posted another article about Ellen Langer here before. Her research is remarkable.

Quote: "Langer has long believed it’s possible to get people to gin up positive effects in their own body — in effect, to decide to get well. Last fall, she tested that proposition, but in reverse: She recruited a number of healthy test subjects and gave them the mission to make themselves unwell. The subjects watched videos of people coughing and sneezing. There were tissues around and those in the experimental group were encouraged to act as if they had a cold. No deception was involved: The subjects weren’t misled, for example, into thinking they were being put into a germ chamber or anything like that. This was explicitly a test to see if they could voluntarily change their immune systems in measurable ways.

In the study, which is ongoing, 40 percent of the experimental group reported cold symptoms following the experiment, while 10 percent of those in control group did. Buoyed, Langer ordered further analysis, looking for more concrete proof that they actually caught colds by testing their saliva for the IgA antibody, a sign of elevated immune-system response. In February, the results came in. All of the experimental subjects who had reported cold symptoms showed high levels of the IgA antibody."

[Riggerjack]

Ego, the burden of proof differential you have for soft sciences astounds me. If, in an article about economic work, there was this:

. Critics hunted for other explanations — statistical errors or subtle behavior changes in the weight-loss group that Langer hadn’t accounted for. Otherwise the outcome seemed to defy physics. “To which I would say, ‘There’s no discipline that is complete,’ ” Langer responds. “If current-day physics can’t explain these things, maybe there are changes that need to be made in physics.”

Your scorn and ridicule would be palpable. But since this is "research" supporting your ideas about the power of the mind, it is OK.

Now I will admit to a negative bias to both the NYT and psychology "professionals" pushing magical thinking, so it's not like I read that tripe with an open, investigatory mind.

I do believe in a placebo effect, but it is mainly measurable among the extremely suggestible, and tends to be short term.

For the record, I think bringing desperate, sick, suggestible, wealthy, people together to a resort in mexico is far more likely to end in cautionary tales in reader's digest than a breakthrough research paper. I'm not saying she's a con artist, I'm saying this sounds like an environment meant to attract con artists. Like chum in the water around a wounded seal.

[Ego]

I know. It's great, isn't it? I particularly enjoy the report of the schizophrenic who was diabetic, but only in one personality.

I enjoy "science" that attempts to explain the things we regularly experience but remain unexplained. When I was in college I got a raging flu the moment I walked out of my last final. It happened several semesters in a row and made me wonder how/why it was happening and if I might be able to harness indefinitely whatever mechanism was holding off the flu.

I've been a sucker for it ever since.

[Riggerjack]

For what it's worth, I think most science professionals are clear on the weaknesses of science, but that weakness is rarely translated outside professional circles.
When I read articles like this,I wonder if the journalist doesn't get it, or, if they do, does the journalist/editor dumb down the story for the audience, or, do they think it makes a better story dumbed down? Probably all three, to some degree.

Yes, I think the mind is powerful and mysterious, psychologists, far less so.

[Noedig]

As I age I'm getting less sharp, more tired, particularly in the last two years - and I'm only 49.

That said, my 'error correction' is better than it used to be. So my mistakes get evened out quicker.

Re Crazy alternative stuff and the placebo effect, read this: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle ... ve-healers. Made me laugh. I was also a sucker for those events, not through credulity but because I found the lunatic vibe somehow energizing. Or was it the auras.

[Ego]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/opini ... -pain.html

Even when we take a real painkiller, a big chunk of its effect is delivered not by any direct chemical action, but by our expectation that the drug will work. Studies show that widely used painkillers like morphine, buprenorphine and tramadol are markedly less effective if we don’t know we’re taking them.


and

It is unethical to deceive patients by prescribing fake treatments, of course. But there is evidence that people with some conditions benefit even if they know they are taking placebos. In a 2014 study that followed 459 migraine attacks in 66 patients, honestly labeled placebos provided significantly more pain relief than no treatment, and were nearly half as effective as the painkiller Maxalt. (The study also found that a placebo labeled “placebo” was 60 percent as effective as Maxalt if it was labeled “placebo.” If the placebo was labeled “Maxalt,” it was again 60 percent as effective as the real drug under its real label.)

With placebo responses in pain so high — and the risks of drugs so severe — why not prescribe a course of “honest” placebos for those who wish to try it, before proceeding, if necessary, to an active drug?

[7Wannabe5]

Probably because anxiety blocks the natural production and release of opiate-like substances into the blood-stream. Nature doesn't want you to feel dopey until you no longer need to be alert. If you want to learn to release your own opiates, you need to do something like put yourself into a dangerous/risky/exciting situation and then purposefully release the anxiety center of your brain or engage deep relaxation. It's like on that chart Jacob posted about high challenge/high skill except more "as if." As soon as you tell yourself that whatever pain or discomfort you are experiencing is only due to a minor problem that will be resolved with no further need for behavior on your part, you will naturally relax and then your body will release more opiates or you will be able to sleep.

[Sclass]

Last summer I found a cigarette lighter and a box of cigarettes stashed in a bush while walking in a golf course. I sat down and rolled a cigarrette through my fingers and flicked the lighter. I didn't light up but it sure gave a wonderfully familiar feeling even though I've been smoke free since 2000. I could feel the dopamine receptors firing off as I rebooted my old program.

So I ditched the box and kept the lighter. I eventually had to put the lighter in the back of a drawer to keep from fiddling with it and firing up old cravings. My BBQ lighter doesn't have this pleasant effect.