Word: patients
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Soracco, an Estonian-born "healer" who draws on Christian, Buddhist and Native American traditions, did not know the people for whom she was praying. All she had were their photographs, first names and, in some cases, T-cell counts. Picturing a patient in her mind, she would ask for "permission to heal" and then start to explore his body in her mind: "I looked at all the organs as though it is an anatomy book. I could see where things were distressed. These areas are usually dark and murky. I go in there like a white shower and wash...
Many researchers believe these same neuronal and hormonal pathways are the basis for the renowned and powerful "placebo effect." Decades of research show that if a patient truly believes a therapy is useful--even if it is a sugar pill or snake oil--that belief has the power to heal. In one classic 1950 study, for instance, pregnant women suffering from severe morning sickness were given syrup of ipecac, which induces vomiting, and told it was a powerful new cure for nausea. Amazingly, the women ceased vomiting. "Most of the history of medicine is the history of the placebo effect...
Larson would like physicians to be trained to ask a few simple questions of their seriously or chronically ill patients: Is religion important to you? Is it important in how you cope with your illness? If the answers are yes, doctors might ask whether the patient would like to discuss his or her faith with the hospital chaplain or another member of the clergy. "You can be an atheist and say this," Larson insists. Not doing so, he argues, is a disservice to the patient...
...patient told us how he was rescued from death by a kidney transplant at the age of ten, gradually lost his vision, and has lived with chronic pain. Senator Kennedy asked whether he had brothers and sisters. The patient replied, quite matter-of-factly, that two older brothers had died from the disease when he was very young, because kidney transplants were not yet available. So he felt fortunate to have been born recently enough to benefit from a life-saving transplant. The patient was also glad that affected children born yet more recently could avoid the kidney disease altogether...
...telecommunications law, smoothing relations with Moscow. But part of his sway in the White House flows from being not just an inside guy. His book Earth in the Balance, linking family and ecological dysfunction, sold more than 500,000 copies. He has independent stature because of his decades of patient work on arms control, TV violence, putting computers in classrooms...