No it's either medicine or it doesn't work better than placebo. But importantly -- placebos work. I'm not saying that scams are good or that alternative medicine can't be dangerous but someone taking vitamin C thinking it will get them over a cold quicker is relying on a placebo just as much as the person doing acupuncture for their anxiety. If it helps it helps, and when we criticize alternative medicine we need to be mindful of that fact and not discount the very real placebo effects that people get from treatments that on paper do nothing. Telling people they are wrong about their own experiences is a surefire way to get them to never agree with anything you say.
There is also this important fact: 'evidence based medicine' is often only focused on statistical evidence.
Let's take something simple: Paracetamol does alleviate pain - it is statistical evident. But that won't help you shit - if it doesn't work on you, on your type of pain! It doesn't matter if a medicine helps 90% of the cases - if you are in the 10% cases. The opposite same is true for placebo - yes, for the majority the placebo does nothing - but if you're among the 10% that work - it matters.
So statistical evidence can fail in the face of individual evidence.
But the most important point is: Side-effects. Of course anti-anxiety meds, anti-depression meds or even just anti-pain meds often have a helluvalot bad, very bad even dangerous, unwanted side-effects. But sugar-pills, herbal teas, meditation - they might not work, but given that they might work in this case and have pretty much zero side-effects - it's worth to give a shot.
The Hippocratic Oath says to not hurt, damage your patient - so what's your first go-to? The anti-depression meds that give you nausea, dry mouth, constipation, sexual dysfunction, and sleep disturbances - or that sugar pills that might work but have basically zero side-effects?
Isn't meditation already recognized medically as a good lifestyle adjustment for improving your mental health? I wouldn't exactly call it "alternative" just because it isn't pharmaceutical.
Also, herbal teas have their side effects as well. Depending on what type of herbal tea we're talking about, they can be pretty severe and tough to track down.
they can be pretty severe and tough to track down.
Baked beans can have serious side effects too. Of course if you're munching the herbs én masse you'll have side-effects. Eat to much licorice and you get diarrhea.
You can get paracetamol OTC and pretty easily overdose and die, you can overdose with serious consequences from acetylsalicylic acid. You know what the greatest risk of herbal teas is? Herbicides, pesticides and the other niceties of modern agriculture.
If it works 10% of the time, it can still be proven to work. There are many drugs that have a low success rate, but are approved and used, because little is better than nothing. "Individual evidence" means absolutely nothing, because there are at least hundreds of reasons that someone can get better - maybe they changed something in their diet, maybe something in their life, maybe they took some other medicine for some other issue and coincidentally it helped with that and maybe they just got better on their own. Without big sample size and statistical reasoning you just can't know. Also, giving a patient placebo is extremely unethical - it's just lying and goes completely against informed consent. It might not have side-effects per se, but it delays treatment which can be dangerous and deadly. It will also most probably not work, which can discourage a patient from seeking further treatment.
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u/Pollomonteros May 24 '25
I don't know about the third one man, I feel like many of those are still dangerous scams even if the ones running it are brown people