Psychosomatics: How realistic is this?

[SpyderEdgeForever]

Here is my question that I would welcome all of your feedback on. Over the years I have read and heard arguments put forth that some diseases and illnesses in both humans and animals are "psychosomatic", that they have a cause or partial cause in human feelings and emotions and enviromental and internal stresses, and that some of them or all of them that fit this can be cured or helped through alleviation of those causes.

The problems come when people, and I have actually been told this by some of the more extreme advocates of this idea, make the claim that diseases like cancer and other seriously life threatening and also chronic conditions can be cured by psychosomatic means.

I remember someone telling me years ago that he had proof that when a control experiment was done, one group was given a harmless sugar or water pill and the other group was given the medicine, and the sugar pill group was cured of the same illness or helped. I was never told of any proof or evidence so I remain skeptical. But some things may have a root in psychosomatics. What do you all think?

Do you have experiences where people have made these claims?

This ties in with hypnosis. I remember a woman who was a big advocate for hypnosis telling me that an advanced hyponotist and willing patients could cure any and all diseases and bad habits because, according to her, "its all in the subsconcious". Sounds like quackery to me. But again, there may indeed be some basis in reality for hypnotism under certain conditions.

[Doc Dan]

The sugar pill is a placebo and the placebo effect is well known, however it is taken into account in experiments and even used in experiments as a control. If a medicine and the placebo are similar in effect then the medicine is not viable or there could be something wrong with the sampling of people.

Psychosomatic illnesses are well attested, as well. Some people get it into their head they are sick, and they become so. However, most diseases are not psychosomatic and have clear causes. Ebola is no psychosomatic illness, as an extreme example, and neither is cancer.

Hypnosis was developed from Franz Mezmer's Animal Magnetism (AKA Mesmerism). He even stated he could not cure diseases, but could help with back pain and etc. The hypnotists who claim to be able to cure diseases are quacks. This has been debunked many times and there is even an argument as to whether hypnotized people are truly out of their own control.

[SG89]

Pseudocyesis is a really interesting condition

[Evil D]

https://youtu.be/aLBhaYDAlU8


Seriously though, I believe the mind is a powerful thing (at least within our own bodies) and with enough convincing I'm sure it's possible to raise or lower our own immune system to the point of allowing ourselves to be more or less susceptible to illness but as Doc pointed out you're not going to think your way out of herpes.

[SpyderEdgeForever]

Here is another entire branch of weird diseases and conditions: Sleep paralysis and sleeping actions, also called sonambulism. Sleep walking and all that is involved. I have heard and read of situations where people will be technically unconscious/asleep but they will stand and walk and even go and eat and do other things. One of the more extreme cases is when one who is a marital partner will have or attempt to have intercourse with their marital partner while in that "sleep walking state".

Supposedly human beings need rapid eye movement based sleep and if they do not get enough of it, serious and severe health problems occur.

https://www.sleepfoundation.org/sleep-d ... eepwalking

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleepwalking

I have read and heard of cases of "night terrors" where people claim short demonic like creatures will come and attack them. Perhaps some of those are actual evil spirit entities and others are hallucinations.

One of the core problems with modern Post-Enlightenment science is that they "threw the baby out with the bath water", as the saying goes. Because of centuries of false religions and cults and superstitions, many of the scientific community went to the other extreme and deny all super natural and non-physical effects, and that is a poor extreme. The right balance is to look at it from a scientific and skeptical but not a debunker mentality: Understand some things have a super or preter natural cause and others a material cause and try to determine which is which.

But then again, with our present state of technology we cannot perform control experiments on spiritual things.

[SpyderEdgeForever]

Pseudocyesis is a really interesting condition

Wow you are right, that is a very strange condition. I have heard of people thinking they are pregnant and are not. The scary result is when they feel something physical there and it turns out to a tumor mass or something like that.

Do you think it is possible for a woman's mind to be so convinced that she is pregnant that her mammary glands actually lactate and produce milk? The human brain is powerful.

https://www.webmd.com/baby/false-pregna ... docyesis#1