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healing with reiki

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    MP - I'm with you all the way....
    If Reiki works for some then great. But its the explanstions that are just so fkn out there. I'd rather they said "It works, we're not actually really sure why but we think it does and thats great"
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    Sorry BB, got that wrong didnt I!

    Just so sad.

    There is plenty of info on the web for reiki - just google it!
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    I'll take that bait - there are a lot of things that used to be done that are now being re-evaluated. For example maggots on open wounds to keep them clean or leechs to help restore blood circulation following skin grafts. It is important that any scientist keeps an open mind.

    The difference is that - and back to teh kep point - all of these old / new treatments show _predictable_ outcomes. You can point to a woulnd and say that if we introduce x number of maggots healing time will be reduced by y amount in comparison to this similar wound without maggots.

    There is not yet that predictability about alternative treatmenst. If they are as effective as the practitioners claim then why not?
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    SezzSezz ✭✭✭
    Totally agree with you, Mrs Pig, that whoever is treating you be they complementary practitioners or GPs, they should indeed by qualified and registered. In 2000 a House of Lords select committee on science and technology published a report on Complementary and Alternative Medicene, the CAM report. Becaue of this report, courses should now be standardised and accredited by professional bodies and all training should include basic medical sciences. The report also recommeded that medical undergrads should receive training on therapies.

    If anyone is seeking complementary therapies I would always recommend going to to the approrpriate governing body first to be referred to a practitioner.
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    Mrs Pig..I agree! I'm quite happy for people to undergo alternative therapies if they want, but I wish the practitioners wouldn't spout the utterly ludicrous claims that they do for it....eg about negative and positive energy...there's no such thing!!! Energy is energy.

    If they just said "have reiki session*, it'll relax you and less stress is good for you", that would be fine!

    *or crystal healing or magnetic healing or homeopathy or whatever else is trendy this week
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    Chill TD

    I think you need some stress relief

    :-)
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    yeah...I'll go balance a lump of quartz on my head and rub my knees with Castrol GTX. That'll do the trick.
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    If anyone would like to give me £70 an hour I assure them that I will be able to cure any illness they have...

    ... but if it doesn't work it's because their mind is closed... (I'd still like my £70 though)

    The late John Diamond's book 'Snake Oil and Other Preoccupations' is a must for anyone considering 'complimentary medicine'

    In any case, I don't understand the term 'complimentary medicine'... surely there is medicine which works and medicine which doesn't... if it works I'd like to see the peer reviewed proof or I'm not buying (in a very literal sense)
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    Complementary I have always understood to refer to the fact that it complements i.e. 'goes well with' conventional treatments implying that it does not stand alone.

    However everybody is free to choose - no one is forced into conventional treatments (except by the fact that they are offered free whereas you usually have to pay for complementary.)

    Acupuncture is free on the NHS - so is this now conventional medicine?


    If you live in China is chinese medicine conventional???
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    It's quasi-spiritual quackary.

    If it's not then the comments from a number of people asking for evidence would have been answered by now. Instead they have been roundly ignored.
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    Acupuncture is quasi-spiritual quackery?
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    Mrs P

    No one is forced to join religious cults either, but they do, in thier thousands. When someone is ill (or has a loved one that is ill) then any straw will be grasped at and unscruplious peddlers of snake oil can use this to thier own advantage. In many cases all they offer is false hope but that hope is enough to draw the therapy fees out of wallets that may not be able to afford it.

    A surgeon - who really should have known better - told a relative of mine (who had terminal cancer) that he knew someone who recoverd using some stupid therapy or other. My relative siezed on this and was ablaze with teh idea that this would be a mirical cure. Obviously it wasn't and the utter collapse of hope was devastating. This false hope offer was irresponsible in teh extreme and I made sure that he was reported to his superiors for it.
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    I've done my Reiki 2. Can't really say that it 'cures' things, but does help people to relax. I haven't done any for ages, I'm not really convinced by it, although I did experience some 'strange' things. I've had acupuncture on my PF which seemed to help. Hurt like hell though!
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    pub med limited research

    Never tried Reiki or any other complementary medicine.
    Not trying to convince you it works.
    Just interested in the argument and feel that both sides have points.

    I totally agree with the risk to vulnerable ill people grasping at anything -money will always creat con(wo)men.

    I also think it merits research and discussion and not to be thrown out just because there is not that organised research.


    Many many years ago I'm sure people poo pooed conventional medicine as they couldn't understand it or why it worked for some and not others. Research is far more advanced in conventional medicine and yet there is still so much unknown!

    If complementary practitioners want to be taken seriously they would support qualified practitioner status (and regulation) and research -----which as far as I have read several do.

    You will always get unprofessional complementary practitioners (whether on a mercenary basis or because they are just inclined to want to believe in it) - it doesn't rule them all out.

    Several 'professional' conventional practitioners that I know are pretty dodgy as well!

    Hope my link works.

    And then, if you'd like to look at my web page (www.are you desperate.I'll have your cash.co.uk) you can see the range of complementary treatments I offer...........only joking!


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    and there is a lot of "conventional medicine" which has no hard proof backing it up, unfortunately
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    Mrs Pig...there have been several peer-reviewed, double-blind type studies that show that acupuncture can relieve some types of pain (by stimulating the brains pain reaction, or something like that)...but only for some types of pain. It won't cure heart disease, or improve your chances of having children, or cure cancer etc etc etc
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    Agree (in part) but not all illness is cured by pharmacy based conventional medicine or radiotherapy.

    It's horses for courses.....


    Sniggers and runs off to silly sayings in clubhouse
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    quote 'If it's not then the comments from a number of people asking for evidence would have been answered by now. Instead they have been roundly ignored'

    Amadeus, as I have said previously, it worked for us when all hopes of having a baby were written off by 'conventional' medicine i.e NHS specialists and a private fertility clinic. We decided to stop expensive treatment and opt for the non-conventional route because at the very least, it didn't involve pumping your body full of drugs (not really a good thing) that were not working for us. Now I'm a convert after admittedly being a bit sceptical at first but what was there to lose.

    I'm not advocating the abandonment of conventional medicine, merely that there are alternatives, whether complEmentary or not.
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    Sezz...Twig...

    I'm off to college to do my Reiki I on 4th Nov! (its a 2 day course) I can't wait for my attunement! I need to chill & relax, so I hope this will help me. I can also see auras if I concentrate.(nothing in colour yet though!) so I'm hoping this will open me up to more energy work.
    I'll hopefully do my Reiki II as soon as i am able to. (If I can find a reputable Master as you have to wait till May for the next one at college)
    Roll on energy flow!!!!

    Shorty
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    Placebos work!
    there's all sorts of things, not just the slightly 'woolly' areas of depression, headaches, etc, wher placebos are a definite improvement on no treatment - that's why they are used in formal clinical trials. There's some interesting research on ways to up the effectiveness of placebos - red pills seem to work best, and if you can produce slight side-effects then they are even more effective 'cos more believable. there's lots of research associating immune system dysfunction with stress (cortisol etc) so if you do just entertain someone while they are ill by sticking crystals round their room or something, then they will quite possibly get themselves better faster.

    I tend to think that for minor illnesses then 'alternative' medicine is probably going to make you feel better without nasty effects - it's better to have a mug of camomile tea & stick some lavender on a hanky if you are just having a bit of trouble sleeping than go straight for sleeping tablets, and honey & lemon for a cold is cheap, probably will make you feel a bit less icky, and is better for you than trying to hassle your GP into giving antibiotics which don't work on colds.
    for more serious illnesses, i'm sure that something like aromatherapy or massage probably does help people get better - because it makes them feel better which makes it easier to stick with conventional unpleasant medical treatment.

    i'm quite sure that lavender only helps me get to sleep because i associate it with getting to sleep, it makes me feel like i'm doing something useful, and it smells nice. but lavender's cheap, reasonably effective, and doesn't make me wake up feeling like i've been stamped on by a warthog - so i'll try it before resorting to prescription sleeping tablets, though i'd never rule prescriptions out.
    i'd want a bit more in the way of RCTs before i tried trepanning, though!
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    Mrs Pig..admittedly, I only read the abstract of that article you linked to, but it seems the people would know that they were having reiki treatment, and therefore, it's not a double-blind trial. It could be the placebo effect, couldn't it?


    "I can also see auras if I concentrate.(nothing in colour yet though!)". I'm sorry, but this is just the kind of stuff that makes sceptics like me find it so hard to take any of this seriously.
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    TwoDogs, Believe me, if you've never seen a swirling grey cloud round someones torso when they are angry, then you won't be able to take it seriously.
    If i ever see that again, i aint sticking around!
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    SezzSezz ✭✭✭
    Placebo effect does not work for children or animals, they don't think that way. Yet complementary medicine often works very well on them. Homeopathy has proven very effective on horses.
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    Still think this is fascinating discussion.

    Aside from the argument of 'vulnerable sick people either parting with money or having hopes raised' why is there such opposition to complementary medicine??


    Again I'm stating I don't actually use it and have reservations about much of the whackier stuff but curious at the responses.
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    I object to the outlandish claims made for it, the fact that there is no science behind it, and the fact that some of it is getting funded by the NHS.
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    Glad you mentioned homeopathy, Sezz. Based on "like cures like" and dilution. Toxins, diluted so much that they are essentially water. I'll paraphrase from Bad Medicine:
    The dilution on some homeopathic cure is 30x. That's 30x10. Start with 1 part medicine per 10 parts water. Take one part of that mixture, and mix with 10 parts liquid. Repeat this 30 times. The solution is now one part medicine to per 10 to the power of 30 parts water. That's 1 per 1000000000000000000000000000000. You'd need to drink 7,874 gallons or the solution to get one molecule of the cure.
    Of course, most homeopthic medicine is diluted 30c...that's 1 part medicine to 100 parts water..mixed as above, 30 times. Giving one part medicine to 100 to the power of 30. You'd have to drink the entire solar system to get one molecule of the medicine.
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    But surely funding with NHS requires NICE go ahead (ie it should be considered effective and cost efficient)
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    SezzSezz ✭✭✭
    Explain how it works so well for animals then.
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    So, to get round this, the makers of homeopathic medicine claim that the water they are selling somehow remembers the shape of the medicine molecules. And this is true if it's in liquid or pill form. And some people claim you can capture this digitally and email it to people.
    This water memory logic would imply that all water is theraputic. Dioxin causes cancer. Removing dioxin from water must leave a memory of the dioxin, so therefore water stripped of dioxin must be a cure for cancer.
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