How to Get Rid of CAM
CAM = Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Getting rid of CAM is getting rid of placebo-based medicine. Why should we? How could we?
People feel that it works.
No, it doesn’t. Not the ‘dummy pill’ (or whatever acts as such) works. You work, although not necessarily in conscious awareness of how.
So, if people trust their feeling, they are correct. There is something to feel all right. The problem lies in what makes one feel it. The symptom may diminish, but what makes it so?
Part of the challenge lies in the power of placebo that may even rival regular treatment, as is scientifically shown again and again. This is starkly underestimated by most people, including practicing physicians.
Psychotherapy is no exemption.
People feel regular medicine to be hard and cold.
Yes, it is much too hard and cold. Of course, most healthcare providers are warmly empathic beings who repetitively choose to give their best to help patients. I am in awe of many of my colleagues. Meanwhile, the core of what they are providing is different.
What patients in many cases really need is also different. Regular medicine-as-science falls short whenever the mind-view is more essential than the body view in health management. The main reason for this is its drive to be based strictly conceptually. That is the royal gate out of warmth and depth ― at least, without the aid of A.I. which may drastically change the picture. If correctly used, A.I. may even change body-oriented medicine towards more human touch. Hopefully, this will help keep people out of CAM. Hopefully, it will also prevent much burnout of healthcare providers (which is widespread).
Why should we then get rid of CAM?
There are many reasons, which I described as adverse side effects. Many of these are related to an underestimation of the power of placebo ― which, again, is the power of you.
In the center of this also lies the main reason, being you yourself. Valuing yourself – instead of some weird concoction, instrument, or procedure – turns you around to what also can help you most: your inner self. Much illness is psycho-somatic, costing society tremendously, not to mention personal cost. Opening this is impeded by closing the doors using a placebo at therapy time.
Closing the doors to yourself means that your problem can in-depth keep festering on. You may feel helped, but that is only cosmetic, therefore temporary. In reality, the problem may even worsen through doing so by carrying the symbolic message that the real you isn’t important enough.
That, dear reader, is the main reason for inner dissociation and depression. At least, the choice should be yours.
How could we then get rid of CAM?
To me, the only decent way is by being open concerning the placebo, whether it’s about regular or alternative medicine. Getting rid of CAM thus goes together with seriously opening much of the regular house. How challenging is this?
The art of dis-illusion may help.
Giving placebos openly is – to some researchers – one first step but to me, by far not enough, as I have argued in this article. People should generally be more informed about placebo, so they understand it and give their informed consent ― which is generally crucial in medicine, including legally.
[Sidenote: A time will come when this will be legally acted upon. What if someone dies from the real side effects of some medication that is mainly placebo based according to the science but unknown to the patient?]
Being entirely open to placebo is the only way to open up the true face of CAM. This may not be feasible, for instance, in a primitive society lacking science. It becomes challenging with growing scientific insight. In any case, it should and could be done as much as possible ― even if it opens much placebo within regular medicine and psychotherapy.
It is necessary out of human self-respect and many other direct benefits, including the avoidance of unneeded dangers. Due to the involvement of many, it is also crucial towards a better society for our and the next generations.
Isn’t AURELIS an ‘alternative (to) medicine’?
No, it isn’t. AURELIS is not even medicine, so it is also no ‘complementary medicine.’ One might say it is complementary TO medicine as mind-oriented hygiene. Hopefully, it will thwart as such a substantial part of what is now managed through medicine.
[Sidenote: Hopefully, in its guise of AURELIS (Lisa) mediation, it will also thwart a substantial part of what is now managed through jurisdiction. Yet, AURELIS is no jurisdiction. Likewise in other domains.]
AURELIS is an attempt to get beyond the placebo, therefore, beyond CAM. The striving is not to diminish rationality, while also not diminishing human depth. You may recognize in this the AURELIS USP.
Getting rid of CAM may (only?) be done by putting AURELIS at the forefront.
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