PROVE IT!!, or Why The Truth Is Entirely Up For Grabs So You Might As Well Try Acupuncture In The New Year.

Ah, the New Year. We're all going to be better, smarter, healthier in this next 12 month period, no?

Well, the Spleen hopes so. And she's going to end with a little spleen to go out on.

Often when I am helping people by giving them some sort of holistic health advice, I am witnessing this deep struggle within them, and if it could be accurately articulated, I think it would go something like this:

"IF I TAKE THIS HERB AND IT HELPS ME THEN THAT MEANS EVERYTHING I HAVE EVER BEEN TAUGHT IS WRONG. IF I TAKE THIS HERB AND IT HELPS ME, IT MEANS MY DOCTOR IS AN ASSHOLE, AND I LIKE MY DOCTOR AND I DON'T WANT HIM TO BE AN ASSHOLE. IF I TAKE THIS HERB AND IT HELPS ME, THEN I'M A FUCKING HIPPIE AND I HATE HIPPIES. IF I TAKE THIS HERB AND IT HELPS ME, THERE IS NO GOD AS I UNDERSTAND IT."

And to that, I say - slow the fuck down you paranoid freak.

Western Allopathic medicine is a modality of health care. So is Traditional Chinese Medicine. So are the uses of Western/Eastern European herbs. These are all just different ways of taking care of yourself. Your body, your choice.

What we have been taught is that there is One True Medicine, and it has been proved to work by science, and since science is never wrong, then it would be pointless to try anything else, right?

Jonah Leher's piece in the New Yorker, "The Truth Wears Off" ends his excellent discussion of the tendency of scientific study results to become less decisive the more the study is repeated with this excellent quote: "

"The decline effect is troubling because it reminds us how difficult it is to prove anything. We like to pretend that our experiments define the truth for us. But that’s often not the case. Just because an idea is true doesn’t mean it can be proved. And just because an idea can be proved doesn’t mean it’s true. When the experiments are done, we still have to choose what to believe. "

 

I assume that most of the people who read this blog have some interest in alternative healing, and that most have dabbled in it. I am the first to admit that going the holistic route has its drawbacks - the results are more permanent than with symptom-suppressing drugs, but the road is often longer, and involves more discomfort. It's not for everyone.

 

But don't turn your back on alternative medicine in the name of sound science because the science you think is there often isn't. And if that is true (which it is) then your health is back in your own hands, and you are fully empowered to choose what you think is best for you. Your body, your choice, no truth.