this post was submitted on 31 May 2024
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What is it?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turmeric
Almost all plants have some effect on the body; some people think that this one is particularly powerful.
Also, there's the placebo effect; if you think something is good for you it can actually help, even if it's just a sugar pill.
The placebo effect doesn’t help. It’s just noise in the data collection process. It’s particularly problematic with human trials that rely on subjective evidence. Humans have a bias that actions have effects, even when they don’t (gamblers blowing on dice, wishing on a star etc).
Any intervention will have people think that the outcome has changed because of the intervention. This doesn’t mean the placebo effect helped, it just altered the recorded outcome. If it was a device was used to make the measurement, rather than human opinion, we just call it noise/error.
It’s a common misconception that the placebo effect does something. It does nothing other than artificially increase subjective measurements. Placebo effect is stronger in very subjective medical conditions such as pain, shiny packaging and brand names are reported to provide greater pain relief. Such medicines are so tightly regulated the formulation and supply leaves very little opportunity for medicines to actually have an effect. You don’t see the same effect when it comes to reducing the size of cancer tumours or altering directly measurable quantities.
Doctors aren’t allowed to prescribe placebos in the UK. Because it’s dangerous and a source of corruption. Such as King Charles selling homeopathic services to the NHS. Doctors do recommend such services, they do this primarily to dismiss patients and their issues.
As pain is aubjective. The subject believing their pain to be improved is an effect.
For a lot of medical science now, we look not only at medical outcomes but patient perceived outcomes.
Scientists are great at quantifying outcomes and risk evaluation mathematically. People are bad at using that data to decide on treatment, so depend on healthcare professionals to guide them. The communication skills of the healthcare provider are just as important as their clinical skill in many cases. In some cases, even more so.
If someone is happier with their objectively worse outcome, which is the better outcome?
Is there somewhere I can read more about this in non technical terms? I never knew that about the placebo effect.
The intro to the Wikipedia article on placebo is quite good. Lots of easily accessible sources often misrepresent the placebo effect. The Wikipedia article does suggest placebo effect improves pain response, but it does say perceived.
If someone says something uses the placebo effect it means it doesn’t work. They may not know that. But a placebo response is our measure for medical treatments that don’t work.
When people say the placebo effect works it’s like a microwave that doesn’t heat food. People hear the ding and tell you the food does feel warmer. The perception is that the broken microwave heats food, but the food isn’t any warmer. We avoid this issue in science by making measurements, but for fields like medicine we often rely on people saying how they feel. This is how the placebo effect corrupts medical studies. People are very unreliable. They also often want to be polite and say they had a positive effect from the treatment. This is doubly so for people that volunteer or buy these types of herbal treatments. They think only idiots would buy or take these things that don’t work, I’m not an idiot so the treatment must be working.
otoh, plenty of folks wear copper bracelets or drink a little apple cider vinegar in the morning without baleful results.
You're correct, a placebo isn't a cure, but if it helps someone think they are healthier without causing damage, why not?
edit = to be explicit I mean things that people use that aren't expensive or dangerous.
Well, because it financially supports scammers preying on people is why not. And many medical scams aren't harmless or innocent or may give people a false sense of wellness that can lead to them avoiding real medicine.
These are and can be dangerous.
Scam artists use it to exploit people. They also stop people seeking proper care.
Just because people are foolish, doesn’t mean they deserve to be defrauded.
Haribo has built itself around that idea, sugar pill cures my depression
I never shoveled candy in my mouth until I moved to the UK and found Haribo Strawberries and now I'm am addict. :(
A spice used in Indian cuisine. It's intensely yellow due to curcumin, a compound that has miraculous property of causing false positives in about any cell assay (ie it seems like it does something, but really it decomposes/is fluorescent/damages cell wall/clumps up/pulls metal ions where they shouldn't be/forms hydrogen peroxide where it shouldn't be, all of which can look like some kind of activity when looking at cells, but it is not so)
Also it's completely insoluble in water and shredded by liver in minutes, so it's physically impossible for it to be active in vivo (can't do shit if it's not there). It's great for churning out bad science tho
It is used in ayurveda, and some proponents of ayurveda want to prove that it cures literally everything, and its behaviour in cell assays makes it seem so at least as long as you don't look too closely
I'd say it's worse than placebo, because it's known by now that nothing of that shit has any chance to work yet there are still clinical trials with it. This takes away resources from things that have a better shot at working which imo makes it pretty unethical
calling it a spice feels generous, it's yellow food colouring powder.
sure technically it affects flavour but so does eating out of a different bowl..
I once severely misjudged the amount needed I'm some rice I made. I can assure you, it does have flavour.
i mean you said it yourself, you need to use waaaaay more to taste anything.
in the quantities normally used it's just yellow powder.
Turmeric root has some decent flavor, but the dried spice is pretty bland beyond its smell. Same with ginger or galangal.
A spice used in a lot of Indian cooking. Probably elsewhere too. It's brownish-orange and tasty.