Monthly Archives: December 2011

A WORD FROM SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN ON BELIEF AND PLACEBO EFFECTS

Posted on December 10, 2011 by Hey!

Placebo effects can arise not only from a conscious belief in a drug but also from subconscious associations between recovery and the experience of being treated—from the pinch of a shot to a doctor’s white coat. Such subliminal conditioning can control bodily processes of which we are unaware, such as immune responses and the release of hormones.

Researchers have decoded some of the biology of placebo responses, demonstrating that they stem from active processes in the brain.

And from The Skeptic’s Dictionary:

The body’s neurochemical system affects and is affected by other biochemical systems, including the hormonal and immune systems. Thus, it is consistent with current knowledge that a person’s hopeful attitude and beliefs may be very important to their physical well-being and recovery from injury or illness.

Another popular belief is that a process of treatment that involves showing attention, care, affection, etc., to the patient/subject, a process that is encouraging and hopeful, may itself trigger physical reactions in the body which promote healing.

While it may be unethical to knowingly package, prescribe, or sell placebos as magical cures, complementary and alternative medicine folks seem to think they are ethical because they really believe in their chi, meridians, yin, yang, prana, vata, pitta, kapha, auras, chakras, energies, spirits, succussion, natural herbs, water with precise and selective memory, subluxations, cranial and vertebral manipulations, douches and irrigations, body maps, divinities, and various unobservable processes that allegedly carry out all sorts of magical analgesic and curative functions.

And, uh, Wiki:

Another factor increasing the effectiveness of placebos is the degree to which a person attends to their symptoms, “somatic focus”. Individual variation in response to analgesic placebos has been linked to regional neurochemical differences in the internal affective state of the individuals experiencing pain.

Those with Alzheimer’s disease lose the capacity to be influenced by placebos, and this is attributed to the loss of their prefrontal cortex dependent capacity to have expectations. Children seem to have greater response than adults to placebos.

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A QUICK FORAY INTO PAST LIVES, TO BE EXPLORED IN MORE DETAIL ANOTHER TIME

Posted on December 8, 2011 by Hey!

While I’m atop the table at Mark’s practice room in Byron Bay, we take an unscheduled excursion into past lives.

“There’s an energy blockage around your solar plexus,” Mark says, widdling away with his fingers above my hips.

“Oh. So would that be connected to a chakra which means something in particular?”

“Apparently.” (Quick recap: Mark’s not into chakras.)

“Maybe it’s just human anatomy.”

“There’s your ego mind again.”

“Oh dear, I’ve learned nothing.”

“There it is.”

I tell Mark about a weird sensation I’ve felt in two spots in my solar plexus since I was a kid; a feeling so awful I’d even dream of it. If a new ager touches me there – which I always tell them not to and they always do – they get a knee in the face.

“Jealous lover,” Mark says, on the verge of a chuckle. “You had someone else’s baby.”

“But I’ve had this since I was a kid. And I haven’t.”

“Past life. There are two arrows I can see. Yes, that must hurt. I’ll pull them out.”

I feel my new age optimism waning away and impatience leeching back in.

“Past lives. Everyone thinks they’re Joan of Arc, don’t they?”

“I try not to delve into stories,” Mark says. “People just become attached to them. But we do have past lives; no doubt about it.”

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GOING TO SEE A HEALER AND OVER-INTELLECTUALISING IT

Posted on December 8, 2011 by Hey!

“I don’t know what I do for a living,” shrugs Mark. “People ask me and I say, ‘I make people cry. Sometimes they fall asleep.’”

I’m back in Byron Bay, the Most Spiritual Town in Australia, back where I started my Snake Oil Skeptic quest. I’ve bought some Aphrodite Herb Tea, Maca Inca Superfood Powder, worn a floaty frock, followed the sound of steel drums and talked rubbish to the local ne’er-do-wells while staring out to sea, but really I’m here to see the healer from day one.

So far all my experiences with healers and psychics have left me with nothing but flaring nostrils and clenched fists – all except for Mark. There’s definitely something going on with him. I shit you not, when I look into his eyes I feel a bit hypnotised, like the rest of the room disappears. I’m hoping he can give me some pointers on how to become more open to spiritual experiences while accepting none of the rhetoric. I’ve felt like I’ve had a spiritual side since I was a kid without all that; I’ve felt it buzz and pulse and hum. And then abandon ship at around puberty.

“I just can’t get past chakras,” I say, as Mark sits across from me and bores his eyes pleasantly into my head. “So they’re everywhere spinning in the body… but where’s the shred of evidence? Can I get anywhere without accepting chakras as a basic foundation upon which to build?”

“I’m not interested in chakras,” Mark says. “I just know what I can see and feel; I can’t explain it and I don’t want to study it. It was drummed out of me as a child, because I grew up in a very scientific family. Then, when I reached my thirties I tried studying healing under two egotistical healers and it was a terrible experience.”

He asks if I’ve read any Eckhart Tolle. “I’ve been carrying around The Power of Now for ages,” I admit, “but I can’t bring myself to read it.” Especially in public.

“Your ego mind won’t let you,” Mark says. “But the ego mind is just a construction. Imagine it as a voice sitting on your shoulder, trying to tell you what to do. You are not your mind, you are a higher self.”

“I would call that ‘higher self’ my unconscious mind,” I challenge. And that goes for angels, higher powers, spirit guides, coming across weird ‘signs’ and ‘miracles’, and much other new age phenomena. Unconscious mind.

“Yeah, whatever you want to call it,” he says (touché!). “Just try not to intellectualise spirituality. You’re spiritual already; your ego mind just doesn’t want you to be because it wants to be in control. People study spirituality as hard as possible and think they should be here, when they’re here.” He moves his hand along an imaginary scale. “You get people wandering around Byron who look spiritual, but they’re not – they’re terrible people.”

Before I hop on the table, Mark checks out my energy by staring at the wall a few metres away.

“It’s all over the place,” he says.

“You’re not even looking.”

“I don’t have to look right at you, I can see it anywhere. I can see it remotely, around someone in another town. You’re throwing energy out but not letting any in. It’s important to forgive yourself for things. And you’re floating a metre above the ground. It’s important to stay grounded and draw up energy from the ground.”

I’m probably on the table for about 40 minutes, with Mark moving his hands around about six inches over my body. I’ve had this done loads of times in the name of journalism and felt nothing but intense irritation. When Mark does it I bounce like I’m floating on a lilo in the sun, a pina colada in one hand. There’s a subtle sense of being pulled upwards, but more noticeable are the ripples pulsing down my body from my head, finally streaming out of my feet. It’s not an Icke-style awakening, but it’s something.

I swing my legs off the table and Mark looks into my eyes. “Wow. That’s beautiful,” he swoons of my newly arranged energy, in a totally non-pervey way. I think everybody – new ager or skeptic – is secretly waiting for someone to tell them they have a stunning aura, so I’m pleased by this.

Questions I wanted to ask but didn’t, for fear of hearing vague answers that would prompt more questions:

Can you mess with someone’s energy as they’re walking down the street without them knowing?

Are the spirit guides aliens from the star system Alpha Draconis?

Why did they give us critical minds?

Why does Universal energy need human vessels?
If we’re made up of a higher self and ego mind, which one does the libido belong to?

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Ho ho ha ha ha: joining a laughter club

Posted on December 6, 2011 by Hey!

In my youth, my hatred of humankind was such that I would rather sit next to a turd than my fellow man. I know this exactly to be true, because one morning upon jumping on the tube at Hounslow East, I discovered some early bird scoundrel had lovingly laid a massive brown log upon one of the seats.

Brilliant, I thought. If I sit opposite that, no one will come near a 10m radius of me.

I cracked open a can of cider. Result.

Around the time of the turd, these new seat designs were introduced on the tube. Conspiracy theorists claimed the patterns were designed to look like the letters ‘S’ ‘E’ and ‘X’.

You’d think, then, that a laughter club in the middle of a park in country Victoria would be a cognitive challenge. However, I’ve come to realise since those youthful days that a) being open-minded and friendly to others can bring surprises and delights, b) the world neither owes me nor is out to get me, and c) amphetamines are best left alone.

I’ve come to investigate the club with Lucy and Stampy, who are game for a, uh, laugh, even if that means joining in with a group of 12 pensioners and oddballs at 8.30 on a Saturday morning. We’re conducted by a couple who have been laughter club devotees for years. “It releases… enzymes,” Barry says with a note of uncertainty. He slaps his beer gut. “Keeps you fit, as well.”

Gathering in a big circle, we’re run through a series of exercises: running around like an aeroplane with our arms outstretched and our “hahahahahaha” being the splutter of the propellor; having imaginary pillow fights, guffawing all the while; and running up to each other, staring into each other’s eyes, while tittering behind our hands “like Japanese women”. It’s all a bit manic and alarming, but so far, nothing ruptured.

In between each bout we retake our positions in the circle and clap with cupped hands (so that the vibrations run up our arms), chanting: “ho ho ha ha ha, ho ho ha ha ha”.

The idea, of course, is that faking merriment within the diaphragm region can fool the brain into releasing feel-good endorphins and boosting immunity. In fact, while laughter is now an innate instinct that comes into effect at around three or four months of age, Robert Provine, a neuroscientist at the University of Maryland, theorises that the panting of chimpanzees as they play developed into laughter as our ancestors developed speech as a way of relieving stress and communicating our playful intent.

More exercises, back here in the park: roaring in a jolly manner like Father Christmas; doing a dance – “of your preference” – around the circle; mimicking a kookaburra and a meerkat, chortling and mincing our way over invisible hot coals; and chuckling in an imaginary elevator, into which we are crammed with all 12 others.

Towards the end, we’re instructed to use our laughter for the power of good. “Does anyone know of anybody who could do with some healing laughter?” Barry calls out.

“A double fatality!” one woman practically screams before anyone else gets a chance to think. “There was a double fatality in the newspaper last night. Car crash. Tragic.”

I’m not going to allege this lady may also be a funeral gatecrasher, combing the papers for meaningful moments, but as Stampy notes later, the laughter club does seem to be full of lonely types.

Focusing our energy, we laugh at increasing volume, rushing towards the centre of the circle, arms outstretched. We do that a few times, cackling our intent at the bereaved families.

Afterwards, the three of us compare notes and find: 1) we feel like we’ve had a fairly pleasing aerobic workout, 2) we felt a bit like we were in a cult, and 3) none of us found the laughter siblings-at-the-dinner-table contagious, which was a bit disappointing. But for a recovering gelotophobe, it’s a nice hurdle to hop.

Does speaking kindly to water just before it freezes create beautiful patterns in its molecules?

Posted on December 1, 2011 by Hey!

It was David Icke who put me on to Masaru Emoto, which should be your indicator of whether to read on or not. For the past 12 years, the Japanese entrepreneur has been insisting that human consciousness can affect the molecular structure of water. Positive thoughts, songs, prayers or nice words taped to a water canister, he says, create beautiful patterns in the water crystals that can be examined with microscopic photography when frozen. Mean words create crazy, irregular shapes.

Nice crystals had been played Beethoven. Vicious blobs had received heavy metal.

One Emoto experiment involved 2000 volunteers in Tokyo vibing positive intent at bottles of water thousands of miles away in a room in California. The water in the vibed bottles, Emoto says, had increased aesthetic appeal to bottles of unvibed water in a neighbouring room. Boy, I wish I could have taken part in that experiment. Just as intrigued as me is psychic slayer James Randi, who has offered Emoto his customary million bucks to prove his theory under more controlled circumstances.

But this projecting of intent is a common theme in New Age circles. I can think of examples in which I’d agree it works. Ever had a shit massage? One where the technique is all there, but the care is lacking? Compare that to a massage by a spiritually minded practitioner, who focuses healing through their hands. And if you’ve ever made love, as I have, you will be familiar with the effect that has on every cell in your body. If you’re doing it properly.

If you subscribe to Emoto’s theories, positive intent affects all the molecules around us. This is good to know, as regular readers will remember I have been challenged to tune into the electrical frequencies of three people in different moods, as chosen by my skepto cohort Esther. This is one instance where my skepticism has taken a slide (I’m predicting further slides, just to pre-warn you). Being a sensitive – some may say over-sensitive – type, I’m confident I’ll be able to read their moods by the vibes in the room. Esther reckons not. Dr Emoto would be on my side, as would the Mayans, who thought everything in the universe was made up of energy vibrating at different frequencies. Still, why should we listen to ancient civilisations?

Oh, incidentally, if you’d like to drink some sacred geometry, you can make your own poor man’s Divine Energy Activation Water, like these healers in Texas. And THEN, you can send a sample to Emoto, who’ll test it for lovely patterns for just 55,000 yen.

Further reading: http://is-masaru-emoto-for-real.com/

Do it yourself.

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