In "How Meditation Changes the Brain and Body"(2016), although many people claim that mindfulness meditation can create many positive impacts on mind and body, it has few experimental based that can support these claims. J. David Creswell said that the challenge of investigating meditation is "placebo problem". After he had done experimental research for four months, he found that people who had practiced mindfulness tend to have lower levels in their blood compare with relaxation group.
_______________________________________
My responseThis news can remind me about the placebo effect. I also like to think that mindfulness meditation can reduce stress; however, it may be not. I mean mindfulness meditation may can't really be able to reduce any stress.
Moreover, this news can remind me about my pimples. When I have pimples, I always go to see the doctor because she can make me feel relaxed. Moreover, I believe that my symptom will be better after I had met her.
In addition, I knew that many doctors prescribe vitamin C instead of the real drugs to their patients. This may be because doctors know that his patient's body can get better by themselves.
_______________________________________
Reference
This topic remind me of my roommate during the internship program at Phitsanulok. He always mindfulness meditate every morning before working. He told me it made him feel good and had the consciousness during long working day. I think the mindfulness meditation is a good practice because he quite got a good score on the tests even though he is not a fast learning person.
ReplyDeleteI considerably think I should perform the mindfulness meditation on my daily basis.
In my view I also had experiences about mindfulness meditate by playing Yoga and I felt more relax and less stains. So I agree that mindfulness meditate is good activity to develop our bodies and minds.
ReplyDeleteI think placebo effect is a very amazing phenomenon, it always happens in medical field when patients get fake pills that have no any active substance but this pills effect like a real medicine and also cure symptoms.And I think this effect may associate with mind that expect a pill to do something.
ReplyDeleteI think if you already do meditation maybe you don't need any placebo anymore. Still not many can exercise meditation everyday or at least most people are not that persistent.
ReplyDeleteI liked Ae's opening point in the summary, that it has long been claimed that meditation is beneficial, but that no solid evidence had been offered. And we know that popular beliefs are often wrong: just because every educated person in the Western world from Aristotle on to Copernicus believed that the Earth was at the centre of the universe, all of which circled around us, did not make that 100% belief true: it was always a false belief, never a fact.
ReplyDeleteI thought of lots of things as I read Ae's post. I also liked the connection with the readings we did on stress. But as I read, I was also thinking of the marketing driven sales of things like Brands chicken soup. I cannot believe that that and other products are half as amazing as the buyers believe. And they conspicuously do not present solid evidence that their expensive chicken soup actually confers the expensive benefits suggested.
Another thing I was reminded of was a study showing that the drug alcohol interferes with drinkers' ability to assess how drunk and affected by the drug they actually are. Some people were complaining that this research was a waste of money because everyone already knew it was true. But they were wrong. In the absence of solid evidence, it was just a popular belief with some basis. Rigorous testing might have shown the belief to be false. As it was, the research confirmed that alcohol distorts peoples awareness of the effects the drug has on them. If claims are made that "everyone knows / beliefs X" and no evidence is offered, I'm inclined to think that the belief is false, or at least should be suspected. I was not surprised that research supported the widely held belief about alcohol, but I also think that research was worth doing.
And the meditation research Ae discusses might well have shown it was a complete waste of time and effort, giving no substantial benefits to those practising it.
If doctors prescribe vitamin C and tell patients it's something else, isn't that lying? And aren't they guilty of a criminal offence, or fraud?
ReplyDeleteI think what doctor do is to help patient and i dont think that there are not anything wrong here unless they harm the patient. But, is it ok not to follower patient's order?
DeleteFrom what i learn meditation is not just seat there and think nothing,actually,it's not easy for lay people to keep empty in their minds,we always keep thinking which we ignored easily.But mindfulness can be practiced all time in our lives,what we should do is concentrate on what we do in the moment,looking at our heart and don't let it go from the things we doing.so,that why Buddhist ven master said eating just eating,sleeping just sleeping,do not think about anything else,only in that way can you always sleep mindfulness,but not seating to think nothing.
Delete