Word: kaptchuk
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...final question: What happens now that more of us are onto the placebo/nocebo problem? Will our expectations adjust to reality? Who knows? "The placebo is a trickster," says Ted Kaptchuk, a placebo expert at Harvard Medical School. "We still don't understand how it works." But Kaptchuk says it's possible to defeat placebo benefits and overcome nocebo problems simply by being aware of them. Mind, in other words, over mind...
...even hard scientists concede that those things aren't the whole story and that there's a constellation of other variables that are far harder to measure. "Religious belief is not just a mind question but involves the commitment of one's body as well," says Ted Kaptchuk, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. "The sensory organs, tastes, smells, sounds, music, the architecture of religious buildings [are involved]." Just as the very act of coming into a hospital exposes a patient to sights and smells that are thought to prime the brain and body for healing...
...Though Kaptchuk has worked at HMS for 12 years and served as the director of the Shattock Hospital Pain Clinic before then, his unconventional training meant less acceptance earlier in his career. “People brought me in because of my training in Chinese medicine,” he says. “But for many years people tried to keep me in the closet. People didn’t know how to deal with me.” But by publishing several scholarly articles and demonstrating his capacity as an expert researcher, Kaptchuk has climbed...
...addition to being a master of traditional Chinese medicine, Kaptchuk is also an expert on the placebo effect—the phenomenon that results in people feeling healthier simply because they believe in the medicine they are using—and has published a number of articles on the subject. Kaptchuk continues to do research on the placebo effect, in addition to speaking, attending seminars and helping to run the Osher Foundation...
Despite all Kaptchuk’s success and his hopes about alternative medicine’s potential, Kaptchuk acknowledges that the future of his field is an uncertain one. “I’m a skeptic even though I’m a practitioner,” he says. “I’m not sure these therapies are most effective. They may work better on the fringe...