"Alternative" treatments can be valid even if not well understood

This is a collection of musings…not a tight article and there are links to other posts at the bottom of the page.

Just because something hasn’t been understood by science at this point doesn’t mean it’s not real…any honest scientist understands this…there is much in the natural world we simply do not yet know how to measure…

Many of us who’ve learned to care for ourselves are very much scientific in learning to apply that which works for us…unfortunately we do not have the funds of pharma to see if it’s repeatable for others…and frankly it doesn’t always matter…we’re individual enough that finding what works for us through experimentation and the scientific method is just fine by me.

And in fact, as one of my readers pointed out when I shared the above thoughts on Facebook, many drugs in allopathic medicine are not understood either. Psychiatric drugs are a perfect case in point. Yet we are not encouraged to question allopathic medicine even as it rampantly harms people. Those of us who do question have generally already been gravely harmed. At the point that we start to question all sorts of inconsistencies in what we’ve been taught to believe start to come to light. The whole house of cards starts to fall down.

AND the other thing that gets maligned when “alternative” medicine is questioned…the placebo effect…

I’m always astounded when the placebo effect is talked about as though it were a nuisance…it’s such an incredibly and sadly closed minded way of viewing the mystery. Of course we need a new name for placebo…one that makes it central…we are healing machines! As it stands now it’s only viewed in the context of proving pharmaceuticals aren’t particularly helpful when in fact the truth is they’re not particularly helpful AND they often harm quite badly.

So, we in fact, need to learn how to harness the power of placebo because it is, essentially, nothing other than our own mind/body/spirit’s power to heal our whole beings. Pharma and many scientists want to dismiss it…it’s simply a nuisance in research.

What is clear to me is that the phenomena is part of our human heritage and rather than find it an annoying thing that gets in the way of drug making, we should put more money and effort into learning how to use it within ourselves without the props!

I suppose when research into placebo without drugs is seriously pursued it tends to get dismissed as “woo.” It’s convenient to mock that which competes with pharmaceuticals.

Do what makes you and your body healthy…this will evolve and change as your needs and understanding evolve and change.

Diet too is important:

The process of finding new life-giving and sustaining foods is often called for at this juncture. It takes paying attention to the body and experimentation with how we feed it. In this way we can learn how to truly support the body with the food we put in it. This is not a process that is about feeling guilty and doing what is right. No. Instead it is a process of learning to deeply love and attend to the body.

a list of things to consider when Learning to live well…