On the crystal bit: honestly, alternative medicine stuff, as bogus as it may or may not be, can be fine and even sometimes helpful if it doesn’t replace any of the actual medicine. Not only are placebos pretty dandy, some alternative medicine things actually help with treatment adhesion sometimes, because it can make the patient feel empowered in their health outcomes more than the usual spiel of “keep hydrated”/“eat well”/“sleep well”/“exercise” and in turn, can help people actually do these things, because they feel that they can actually impact their health with things they do.
Now, does this good outweigh the risk of them dropping the actual treatment over the alternative medicine stuff? I don’t know, I’m not a researcher in this area, but I feel like not everything we do had to make sense you know? If something feels good and there’s no harm in doing it, go ahead and knock yourself out, we are after all, sentient meat, and that comes with quirks.
It creates an environment for scammers and charlatans to thrive. They grow and become more powerful and exploit more people. And the behavior becomes more common and more accepted as “that’s just how it is” or “their own fault, lol idiots…”
It’s just not worth it. A patient can tell themselves a white lie if they want, but it should be illegal for ANYONE, doctor or not to sell unproven medicine, and we need to crack down on the “not intended to treat or cure any illness” loophole.
On the crystal bit: honestly, alternative medicine stuff, as bogus as it may or may not be, can be fine and even sometimes helpful if it doesn’t replace any of the actual medicine. Not only are placebos pretty dandy, some alternative medicine things actually help with treatment adhesion sometimes, because it can make the patient feel empowered in their health outcomes more than the usual spiel of “keep hydrated”/“eat well”/“sleep well”/“exercise” and in turn, can help people actually do these things, because they feel that they can actually impact their health with things they do.
Now, does this good outweigh the risk of them dropping the actual treatment over the alternative medicine stuff? I don’t know, I’m not a researcher in this area, but I feel like not everything we do had to make sense you know? If something feels good and there’s no harm in doing it, go ahead and knock yourself out, we are after all, sentient meat, and that comes with quirks.
I would agree except:
It creates an environment for scammers and charlatans to thrive. They grow and become more powerful and exploit more people. And the behavior becomes more common and more accepted as “that’s just how it is” or “their own fault, lol idiots…”
It’s just not worth it. A patient can tell themselves a white lie if they want, but it should be illegal for ANYONE, doctor or not to sell unproven medicine, and we need to crack down on the “not intended to treat or cure any illness” loophole.
Absolutely great point which I had not considered.