Speaker 1: Previously on the Dream. Is there any thing that you
Speaker 1: have found that a lot of these folks who make
Speaker 1: these claims have in common personality trait wise? What kind
Speaker 1: of person wants to do that? Someone who wants to
Speaker 1: make a lot of money? Yeah? Yeah, I mean, wellness
Speaker 1: sells for better or worse. It's cheap to make as
Speaker 1: a general matter, and consumers are willing to spend a
Speaker 1: lot of money because we don't want to die. They
Speaker 1: don't want to die, or they want to look beautiful.
Speaker 1: They don't want wrinkles, they don't want Alzheimer's, they don't
Speaker 1: want gray hair. They want to be sin you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and won't pay anything for that. Yes, unfortunately. Yeah. In
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty one, a stranger showed up in Spokane, Washington
Speaker 1: to open a natural health clinic. He was thirty two,
Speaker 1: married from Idaho. Not a lot is known about his
Speaker 1: early years, but it is known that he graduated from
Speaker 1: high school. That's it. He had no medical training. Apparently.
Speaker 1: A year before opening the clinic in nineteen eighty, he
Speaker 1: signed up to take a course led by a natural
Speaker 1: path but dropped out after only a few classes, stiffing
Speaker 1: the course leader with an eighteen hundred dollar unpaid tuition bill.
Speaker 1: Despite this lack of education, he opened Golden six Health World,
Speaker 1: a facility that offered a variety of naturopathic services and
Speaker 1: some that he himself developed, like taking blood samples from
Speaker 1: patients to interpret them his words in an effort to
Speaker 1: detect cancer cells. He also offered water births at the clinic.
Speaker 1: At that time, the state had been kind of lax
Speaker 1: in making sure folks practicing medicine were licensed. But something
Speaker 1: happened at Golden sixth Health World on September fourth, nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty two that would inspire the Washington State Department of
Speaker 1: Licensing and local police to stage a week's long undercover
Speaker 1: sting operation of the facility, and it would land the
Speaker 1: owner in jail. On that September day, almost forty years ago,
Speaker 1: Donna Young came in for a water birth at the clinic,
Speaker 1: as she and her husband both opposed hospital births. The
Speaker 1: father was later quoted as saying, there are more damn
Speaker 1: hazards in the hospital than out of the hospital, and
Speaker 1: there are enough damn statistics to prove it. Labor and
Speaker 1: delivery went normally, but after the baby was born, the
Speaker 1: owner of the clinic encouraged Donna to keep the baby
Speaker 1: in the water with the mistake in belief that the
Speaker 1: baby could receive oxygen via the umbilical cord for an
Speaker 1: extended period of time. They ended up leaving her in
Speaker 1: the water for almost an hour, and the baby died
Speaker 1: of oxygen deprivation. The county coroner later said there was
Speaker 1: no reason this should have happened, and that it was
Speaker 1: a perfectly normal, healthy little girl. There's no reason she
Speaker 1: should not have lived. The owner of that clinic eventually
Speaker 1: got arrested and convicted of gross misdemeanor for practicing medicine
Speaker 1: without a license. He was also the baby's father. His
Speaker 1: name was Gary Young. Later, Gary moved to Tijuana and
Speaker 1: opened another clinic where he developed a blood crystallization test
Speaker 1: and something he called orthomolecular cell therapy, both of which
Speaker 1: he claimed could treat or cure most of the world's ailments.
Speaker 1: He promised cancer patients that after a three weeks stay
Speaker 1: in his clinic that cost them six thousand dollars, their
Speaker 1: cancer would be in remission. For ten thousand dollars, they
Speaker 1: could be completely cured forever. Words spread through southern California
Speaker 1: about this miracle worker just south of the border, and
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty seven, an LA Times reporter sent him
Speaker 1: a blood sample cat blood, and the unsuspecting fake doctor
Speaker 1: gave the reporter a diagnosis of aggressive cancer. Maybe to
Speaker 1: be funny, the reporter followed up with chicken blood and
Speaker 1: was diagnosed with an inflamed liver. Quote. Your blood is
Speaker 1: indicating the possibility of a prelimphomic condition. It appears as
Speaker 1: though you've recently undergone a high level of upset in
Speaker 1: your life, which has weakened your immune response considerably. We
Speaker 1: recommend a supervised program of cleansing, detox and rebuilding. They
Speaker 1: offered him the six thousand dollars in patient detox, or
Speaker 1: if that was too much and he didn't want to travel,
Speaker 1: he could treat himself at home with four hundred dollars
Speaker 1: worth of supplements the fake doctor sold in California. Okay,
Speaker 1: now I'm going to get to the really crazy part.
Speaker 1: I'm sure some of you listeners know exactly who I'm
Speaker 1: talking about, and you're either mad at me from aligning
Speaker 1: one of your favorite people, or you're going, oh my god,
Speaker 1: she went there. But for those of you who've never
Speaker 1: heard of Gary Young, He's the man who after his
Speaker 1: daughter drowned and he moved to Tijuana to fleece desperate
Speaker 1: cancer patients and healthy people alike out of thousands of dollars.
Speaker 1: He then started another natural health company, Young Living Essential Oils,
Speaker 1: the Christian essential oils company that my family members are
Speaker 1: involved with. Gary Young, the self proclaimed healer who made
Speaker 1: millions selling miracle potions to desperate folks from across the globe,
Speaker 1: died suddenly in twenty eighteen of a stroke. He was
Speaker 1: sixty eight. That's a story I've been dying to tell
Speaker 1: you well since last season. This season, you've been dying
Speaker 1: to tell us some of your stories reports of wellness
Speaker 1: gone bad and good and have flooded our inboxes and
Speaker 1: Twitter feeds. So we gave you our phone number and
Speaker 1: asked that you call in and share your stories in
Speaker 1: your own words. And boy, you guys are fighting some
Speaker 1: ugly battles out there in wellness land. Let's listen to
Speaker 1: some of the calls. Hi, my name is Crystal, and
Speaker 1: I wanted to share my experience with quotable wellness. I
Speaker 1: had my first grandma's seizure when I was almost thirty
Speaker 1: years old. It came totally out of nowhere, and of
Speaker 1: course when it happened, my husband posted on Facebook to
Speaker 1: let all of my friends know what had happened to me,
Speaker 1: because I had to be taken away in an ambulance
Speaker 1: and it was very scary. When I came home from
Speaker 1: the hospital, I had no less than six messages from
Speaker 1: all of my friends who sold for Jutera, Young Living
Speaker 1: Thrive Plexus, all promising me that if I would just
Speaker 1: take their products, that they can help heal me from
Speaker 1: the epilepsy that I had been diagnosed with. And they
Speaker 1: figured it maybe since I heard my brain then all
Speaker 1: of a sudden I would want to buy their wellness products.
Speaker 1: I didn't, but they still hit me up occasionally to
Speaker 1: ask me if I'd like to get off of my
Speaker 1: anti theater medicine and start taking their quote unquote all
Speaker 1: natural medicine. So that's my experience. Thanks for joining what
Speaker 1: you're doing. Really appreciate it. Hi. My name is Sasha.
Speaker 1: I'm a massage therapist and training to be a birth
Speaker 1: dueler DOULA. Excuse me in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I just listened
Speaker 1: to your podcast with Birth and thought that was really interesting.
Speaker 1: But the thing that I mostly wanted to share was
Speaker 1: that I've noticed, as somebody who works in the wellness
Speaker 1: industry and who feels that they have an evidence based
Speaker 1: and science based practice in that that matters a lot
Speaker 1: to me that everyone thinks that they have an evidence
Speaker 1: based practice. You hear quantum mechanics a lot to me,
Speaker 1: that's not something that rings true. You hear about frequencies
Speaker 1: and things like that a lot to me that doesn't
Speaker 1: make sense. Even going into conspiracy theories like tem trails,
Speaker 1: people will say, well, I listened to an expert, I
Speaker 1: read about an expert, this guy with a Harvard he's
Speaker 1: got to be right. And I think that as laypeople,
Speaker 1: or even as professionals and science, it's important to know
Speaker 1: that we aren't all being objective. Much like your podcast
Speaker 1: shares your own personal, subjective experience, and you're honest about
Speaker 1: how that influences and informs you. And so that's my
Speaker 1: two cents. I guess it's not really so much an
Speaker 1: experience as a observation. Thank you, bye. Sasha's call connects
Speaker 1: to some evidence. We presented an episode five of this show,
Speaker 1: the one about birth. In that episode, we also talked
Speaker 1: about the dangers or maybe not dangers of thalates. They've
Speaker 1: been studied to death and there's possible links to birth effects,
Speaker 1: though causality has been hard to prove. But right after
Speaker 1: our show, like one day after that episode was out
Speaker 1: of our hands and I said maybe there wasn't anything
Speaker 1: to worry about with thalates, a paper came out saying,
Speaker 1: hold up, wait a minute. Maybe they're actually terrible for
Speaker 1: pregnant people, even in low doses, and can affect early
Speaker 1: embryonic cells, leading to miscarriage, among other things. But the
Speaker 1: study was done on worms. The doctor we talked to
Speaker 1: in that episode argued, thalids are everywhere. They're the thing
Speaker 1: that makes plastic flexible, and they make things stick to
Speaker 1: other things like printer ink. So just look about thee
Speaker 1: to find some using thalate free as a selling point
Speaker 1: on your natural shampoo bottle, but not warning customers that
Speaker 1: there's a ton more thalates on the three foot long
Speaker 1: CBS receipt for that shampoo. That's where the problem lies.
Speaker 1: Either thalids are a global health threat and we have
Speaker 1: to change everything about the physical environment we've built with them,
Speaker 1: or we live with an unknowable amount of risk. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the almost impossible to navigate World of True Wellness. Okay,
Speaker 1: back to the Calls Hi Dream podcast. My name is
Speaker 1: Tatiana mccofkin. I'm from California, and I have a little story.
Speaker 1: I've been waiting to know someone, so thanks for asking.
Speaker 1: So it was probably back in like two thousand and five.
Speaker 1: I had young children and was feeling confused about it.
Speaker 1: I wasn't prepared to have children and disoriented and meeting
Speaker 1: to find a new sense of identity for myself. A
Speaker 1: lot of mothers go through that, you know, and so
Speaker 1: I was doing something to take care of myself, to
Speaker 1: sort of be good to myself by signing up for
Speaker 1: this herbal workshop. So the herbalist who taught this workshop
Speaker 1: had created a little mini industry in the small northern
Speaker 1: California backwoods kind of way. But she would hold these
Speaker 1: workshops at her place. Women would come and gather and
Speaker 1: they would learn about different aspects of wellness, so to speak,
Speaker 1: at herbs. Work in her garden will not really work
Speaker 1: in her garden, but like half classes that were oriented
Speaker 1: around the garden or around more creative type stuff, introspective
Speaker 1: sort of activities. So it was sort of like a
Speaker 1: bonding self nurturing experience. At the same time as supposedly educational.
Speaker 1: So one day it was time to learn about flower essences. Now,
Speaker 1: flower essences are supposedly like energy medicine kind of. She
Speaker 1: explained how they work, that you are getting the basically
Speaker 1: sort of we didn't worn callers that they get cut
Speaker 1: off if they talk too long, so Tatanna called back, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'll try and wrap it up in this message, in
Speaker 1: this less message. So um, so we're going to learn
Speaker 1: about flower essences, and she explains how it works that
Speaker 1: the energy if the flower needs to be transmitted into
Speaker 1: the water and then it provides this magical medicine that
Speaker 1: transmits this healing energy just from sort of the quality
Speaker 1: of the flowers magical vibration or whatever. So she tells
Speaker 1: us how to make the flower essence, which is you
Speaker 1: have a bowl of water. I'm sure there were special things,
Speaker 1: like it was a crystal bowl or a glass bowl,
Speaker 1: or something in the water was like from a spring
Speaker 1: or you know, like I don't remember all those details.
Speaker 1: But what you said is that you put the flowers
Speaker 1: into the water, but you do not touch the flowers
Speaker 1: or the water. You do not want your human finger
Speaker 1: to touch beef things because we are making something that
Speaker 1: is just a pure vibration of flower. And I was
Speaker 1: in a small group. I think there were four or
Speaker 1: five of us, and we were gathered around this little
Speaker 1: bowl and putting flowers into the water with some kind
Speaker 1: of tool. Maybe it was like chopsticks or something like that.
Speaker 1: And this one flower was a little bit stuck. It
Speaker 1: was kind of damp and sticking to the tool or whatever.
Speaker 1: And one of the members of our group just, you know,
Speaker 1: a little sneaky gestures. She reached in there and just
Speaker 1: poked the flower, bumped it into the water. Right she's
Speaker 1: touching it with her finger. We've been clearly instructed not
Speaker 1: to touch these things. And I felt this sense like,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, that's not what we're supposed to do.
Speaker 1: But nobody in the group said anything. It was one
Speaker 1: of those little moments of shared denial, I guess, and
Speaker 1: something in me at that moment clicked like, Oh, we're
Speaker 1: just pretending. We're all just here pretending together, and it's
Speaker 1: making us feel good to do this together. There's no
Speaker 1: integrity to this process. We're paying all this money to
Speaker 1: just come here. It's and kind of play act together
Speaker 1: in the woods and pretend to make medicine, and this
Speaker 1: medicine is pretend to medicine, but flower essences are sold.
Speaker 1: Then Tatiana got caught off again. Sorry Tatiana, you're a
Speaker 1: real trooper. All right. Well that's the basic story. And
Speaker 1: I also gave a presentation at the end of this
Speaker 1: session where I was reporting on this flower colendula, and
Speaker 1: I just looked in the book and read all the
Speaker 1: things it was supposed to do. It was supposed to
Speaker 1: cure cancer, it was supposed to cure AIDS, and I
Speaker 1: fucking included that in my stupid report. It's embarrassing, you know,
Speaker 1: but it's also good to remember that group mentality, that
Speaker 1: group think that we had, and that people still have.
Speaker 1: Friends of mine even today are surprised when I tell
Speaker 1: them the homeopany and bullshit and they I don't want
Speaker 1: to believe it. I live in northern California. Did they
Speaker 1: mention that? Okay, So anyway, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: the show. I hope you liked the story. I don't
Speaker 1: know if it's good enough to use, so anyway, thank me.
Speaker 1: It's uh yeah, my name is Jacob. Loved the podcast.
Speaker 1: So I'll just calling in about my experience with wellness
Speaker 1: more or less my mother's about a year ago, there's
Speaker 1: a bunch of people in our circle of friends, and
Speaker 1: more or less because of there, you know, Evangelical Christians.
Speaker 1: I come from a church background. All my friends are Christians. Therefore,
Speaker 1: all my friends seemed to be selling young living essential oils.
Speaker 1: And it's a huge part of a lot of the
Speaker 1: culture of people I'm around us, and they're always trying
Speaker 1: to get us to try it be a part of it.
Speaker 1: And about a year ago, my mom's stort of going
Speaker 1: to liver failure and was extremely sick and was in
Speaker 1: the hospital for a while, and it went through a
Speaker 1: year of just being really sick, and um, we didn't
Speaker 1: know if she was going to make it u And
Speaker 1: it just really surprised me and shocked me how many
Speaker 1: people kind of came out of the woodwork. Um, not
Speaker 1: so much to help with practical things with my dying mother,
Speaker 1: but um, more or less to try to sell her
Speaker 1: central oils. Um. You know, we were worried about things
Speaker 1: like meals and trying to make sure that my mom
Speaker 1: had food because she wasn't able to necessarily cook or
Speaker 1: take care of her house. And people were showing up
Speaker 1: not to helpe with those things, but to sell um
Speaker 1: oils that she should ingest or rub on her liver
Speaker 1: to help with that. So, um, it's just it's been
Speaker 1: a really shocking kind of experience, um with with that.
Speaker 1: And so I'm glad that you guys have touched on
Speaker 1: a lot of the essential oils because it's you know,
Speaker 1: obviously the wellness mixed with this multi level marketing where
Speaker 1: they're trying to sell a product. But it's like people
Speaker 1: that should care, people family and friends that that we
Speaker 1: love and that love us. But at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, like I feel like it's they're trying to
Speaker 1: sell us oils when we just you know, need food
Speaker 1: and help with like I said, practical things or just
Speaker 1: a hey, praying for you or thinking of you. But
Speaker 1: instead it's Facebook message after Facebook message. If this oil
Speaker 1: will help your liver, this oil is going to help
Speaker 1: your digestive system, this help this oil help detox. She
Speaker 1: not to even mentioned obviously, my mother would never take
Speaker 1: any of these things because she's on such a regimented
Speaker 1: diet and medication and you know, she can't even take
Speaker 1: a tile at all without consulting her doctor. Right now,
Speaker 1: with the state of her liver, So why would she
Speaker 1: put something that's potentially could damage her further into her body.
Speaker 1: So that's just been something that's really been really horrifying.
Speaker 1: Hi there, my name's Ali. I'm based in the Bay Area.
Speaker 1: I have a good story about wellness. I've been getting
Speaker 1: these B twelve shots basically all over the Bay Area.
Speaker 1: There's these like happy hours, we can go get a
Speaker 1: shot of the vitamin B twelve. I have no idea
Speaker 1: if they like actually work, and the scientific evidence has
Speaker 1: been pretty shoddy, but my therapist recommended them, and since
Speaker 1: I have seasonal depression and there's a lot of really
Speaker 1: great treatments for seasonal depression, and so I go and
Speaker 1: get my B twelve shots every few weeks, and I
Speaker 1: think that they worked. They could be utter bullshit, but
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed that, And yeah, thanks so much. Hi.
Speaker 1: My name is Karen, and this is my story. Like you,
Speaker 1: I had a fall when I was in my childhood,
Speaker 1: in fourth grade. I fell down the stairs. I fell
Speaker 1: down two flights the stairs and hit my head on
Speaker 1: the concrete. I woke up, I was busy. They sent
Speaker 1: me to the doctor and they said I had a concussion.
Speaker 1: I was the hope of school. Like you, I had migrains.
Speaker 1: I was you know, it was debilitating. It was really awful.
Speaker 1: I was throwing up, I was sick. I had to
Speaker 1: grind my teeth at night. And now I'm taking all
Speaker 1: kinds of medication for it. I'm taking Zanaflex, which is
Speaker 1: a really really intense multiple relax or Topomax, which is
Speaker 1: an anti convulston. I'm taking pain killers. Basically, I take
Speaker 1: a fistful of pills every night for all this medication.
Speaker 1: For the intense amount of pain and the amount that
Speaker 1: I clenched and grind my teeth at night, it's really terrible. Anyway,
Speaker 1: over Christmas, my family decided to go to Las Vegas.
Speaker 1: I'm a bitty two shoes and I've never done any
Speaker 1: drugs before in my life. My siblings, who are significantly
Speaker 1: cooler than I am and significantly more party animals, decided
Speaker 1: we were all going to go to an dispensary together,
Speaker 1: and they hided me CBD gummies because we were going
Speaker 1: to go watch a Stircisella show. And let me tell you,
Speaker 1: the knot between my shoulders was gone, the quenchion my
Speaker 1: job was gone. I was relaxed. I didn't feel high.
Speaker 1: I went to bed, I took another one. I woke
Speaker 1: up in the morning and it was as strong or
Speaker 1: stronger than any of my medications. It was like magic.
Speaker 1: I have taken one every night before I go to bed.
Speaker 1: I've realized it's better for me to take every night.
Speaker 1: And I've taken this medicine for years and I'll swear
Speaker 1: by them. Thanks. I love this caller. She is like
Speaker 1: me in every way, except she hasn't done drugs for fun,
Speaker 1: and I am thrilled that she found something that works
Speaker 1: for her. So yes, it's totally possible that a substance
Speaker 1: CBD that does nothing for me or at most makes
Speaker 1: me grumpy, or actually has pain relieving and anti anxiety effects.
Speaker 1: That's still being studied. The jury's still out. But it's
Speaker 1: also possible that what we're all experiencing, at least some
Speaker 1: of the time, is a version of the placebo effect.
Speaker 1: And what's so wrong with that? We've mentioned the placebo
Speaker 1: effect as a powerful force in the wellness world many
Speaker 1: times now on this show, so we sought out an
Speaker 1: expert who could tell us more about it. My name
Speaker 1: is Catherine Hull, and I am an assistant professor at
Speaker 1: Harvard Medical School and an associate molecular biologist at Brighaman
Speaker 1: Women's Hospital in Boston. Doctor Hall is currently studying how
Speaker 1: our genetics might impact our response to placebos, which is
Speaker 1: an amazing idea and important to figure out. Think about it.
Speaker 1: Placebos are used as the control for every clinical trial
Speaker 1: for every FDA approved medication, so it'd be nice to
Speaker 1: know if there are differences already inside each of us
Speaker 1: that would somehow throw those experiments off right right, Yes,
Speaker 1: but today we're just going to get into the basics
Speaker 1: of the placebo effect. Doctor Hall took a very kind
Speaker 1: break from looking at our DNA and talked me through
Speaker 1: what the placebo effect even is. You know, we're still
Speaker 1: trying to quote unquote piece it together. We started off
Speaker 1: with a very simple hypothesis and this is I'm talking
Speaker 1: the eighteen hundred and nineteen hundreds, that your imagination was
Speaker 1: this powerful mediator of clinical response. And I think that
Speaker 1: you know, nobody would argue that that's not true, but
Speaker 1: there's an incredible stigma associated with that. And you know,
Speaker 1: what is our imagination, Like, where is it coming from?
Speaker 1: Obviously we think it comes from the brain, and so
Speaker 1: when in the early two thousands, they started to do
Speaker 1: nearer imaging on brains of people while they were being
Speaker 1: treated with placebos. They saw that they were very serving
Speaker 1: regions of the brain that were activated in response to
Speaker 1: placebo treatment. And they also saw that the greater your
Speaker 1: expectation for benefit from a treatment, the more signaling there
Speaker 1: was in the brain. And this shouldn't really shock us,
Speaker 1: because if you think about it, if somebody was to
Speaker 1: walking now and bang on the door and say, you know,
Speaker 1: like you need to get out, there's a fire, three
Speaker 1: things are going to go up. At a minimum, your
Speaker 1: heart rate is going to go up, your breathing will change,
Speaker 1: and you're going to physically get up right to move
Speaker 1: your muscles, and you're going to have this translation of
Speaker 1: words into a physiological response. So it's not surprising then
Speaker 1: that whether it's through conditioning or expectation, we can translate
Speaker 1: the context of the therapeutic encounter into a physiological response
Speaker 1: because we do that all day long. That's what we do.
Speaker 1: We also do this other thing doctor Hall told me
Speaker 1: about predictive processing, where we make a mental map of
Speaker 1: the world and updated as we go through life, you know,
Speaker 1: guessing what might happen next and being right enough of
Speaker 1: the time to not feel completely startled all the time.
Speaker 1: You don't have to go too far from prediction processing
Speaker 1: to start to understand how placebo response or placebo effect
Speaker 1: might be one small subset of that phenomenon that we've
Speaker 1: cut out and carved out and kind of put in
Speaker 1: the context of the medical clinical encounter, right, So, meaning
Speaker 1: whether a drug is an actual pharmaceutical medication or sugar,
Speaker 1: as long as there's not some wild, adverse, unexpected effect,
Speaker 1: you can see a shift place of a research is
Speaker 1: the first to say that this is not true for
Speaker 1: all conditions and all diseases. You know, if you have
Speaker 1: cancer and you go to the physician, you're packed with hope,
Speaker 1: and when you take that chemotherapy treatment or that pill,
Speaker 1: you can still have a placebo response or a placebo effect.
Speaker 1: It's just that it's not going to have an impact
Speaker 1: on the tumor genetic process that's happening independent of all that.
Speaker 1: But if for instance, I go in and I have
Speaker 1: this knee pain, the first insult may have been like,
Speaker 1: I bounced my knee right, and you know, I see
Speaker 1: that it's red or it's you know, black and blue,
Speaker 1: and when I touch it, I feel the pain. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm definitely engaged in this pain process interaction with this
Speaker 1: wound that I see, and I'm experiencing the pain. If
Speaker 1: somebody gives me this, you know this, somebody who I
Speaker 1: really believe in, gives me this ointment and says, rub
Speaker 1: this on it. In a couple of days, you're probably
Speaker 1: going to feel much better. I might rub it on it.
Speaker 1: And now I'm going to start to check in, right, Wait,
Speaker 1: how am I feeling? Oh? You know, I might not
Speaker 1: have I don't really feel that so much. I must
Speaker 1: be getting better. And I've created this, I have shifted
Speaker 1: the prediction and now I'm starting to move away from
Speaker 1: a focus on the pain. I've taken my focus off
Speaker 1: of the pain and I've put my focus on am
Speaker 1: I getting better? Right? Which is a good thing because
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, we want to be well,
Speaker 1: we want to feel better. Doctor Hall also told me
Speaker 1: about the first placebo study ever done in the seventeen nineties.
Speaker 1: This guy named Elishah Perkins came up with this therapy
Speaker 1: using two metal rods that he claimed could quote draw
Speaker 1: off the noxious electrical fluid that lay at the root
Speaker 1: of suffering. They were called Perkins tract and people were
Speaker 1: into them. Google them. The illustrations from the time of
Speaker 1: people being cured are bonkers. The tractors became such a
Speaker 1: popular magic cure all that hospitals were buying them up,
Speaker 1: and Perkins claimed that the President bought them. But within
Speaker 1: a few years some British physicians started to doubt the
Speaker 1: efficacy of these metal rods, so they painted some wooden
Speaker 1: sticks silver and ran a study telling patients they were
Speaker 1: being treated with the real Perkins tractors. Never mind the
Speaker 1: fact that neither sat were doing anything. And guess what,
Speaker 1: they worked just as well. Now, what's amazing about this
Speaker 1: paper that he writes is the stories of the healing.
Speaker 1: You know, he has mister so and so who for
Speaker 1: years has been unable to walk, another person who's been
Speaker 1: unable to lift their arm, somebody who's been depressed, and
Speaker 1: to a man or woman. These people, the physicians that
Speaker 1: do the studies with the sham wooden tractors, report amazing findings.
Speaker 1: But the thing that is more amazing to me and
Speaker 1: more all of us on a certain level alarming, is
Speaker 1: not that these things work. Because we've seen this, all
Speaker 1: of us have seen some version of this in our
Speaker 1: lives or maybe even have experienced it. But it's the
Speaker 1: fact that we then stigmatize and take the tractors away
Speaker 1: and we don't replace it with something that is just
Speaker 1: as effective. And I'm not saying that we should be
Speaker 1: giving people placebos that it's not what I'm saying. I'm
Speaker 1: saying that we need to really figure out what's important
Speaker 1: here and how to deliver it so that people can
Speaker 1: feel better. Right, what's the goal? Right? What's the goal right?
Speaker 1: Because the point is for people to feel better exactly, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but not but to be safe. And it would be
Speaker 1: obviously better if the thing that they were buying had
Speaker 1: some efficacy. That's so complicated, though, because listening to your body,
Speaker 1: if you want your body to be feeling better because
Speaker 1: of this thing, and then it does because you wanted it.
Speaker 1: If you think about like how many different things we
Speaker 1: can put in our body on this planet, it's surreal
Speaker 1: and disturbing. And there's a really old quote that says
Speaker 1: it's you know that anything can be poisonous at any
Speaker 1: at some dose, and so I think we do have
Speaker 1: to be very cautious what we put in our body,
Speaker 1: and thank God, we have kind of, at least in
Speaker 1: terms of drugs, the FDA to kind of put a
Speaker 1: barrier on things that and tell us like, you know what,
Speaker 1: this might cause you to have tart if dyskinesia, but
Speaker 1: that's okay because it's going to treat you, know, your
Speaker 1: symptoms of schizophrenia, you know what I mean? Like, that's
Speaker 1: I'll get rid of your cancer, but your hair is
Speaker 1: going to fall out, And that's right exactly. You can
Speaker 1: make You can make that trade off for yourself, right,
Speaker 1: And I think there's no substitute for that. Hi M.
Speaker 1: I grew up in a family who were big believers
Speaker 1: in some naturopathy and stuff like that. We basically only
Speaker 1: thought a chiropractor unless it was really serious. I actually
Speaker 1: ended up with Hodgkins floom homa at the age of sixteen.
Speaker 1: No idea what you know, no idea how that happened.
Speaker 1: But the chiropractor that we saw, he recommended to us
Speaker 1: that we go to Houston and received a treatment from
Speaker 1: an FPA not approved doctor named doctor and I ended
Speaker 1: up doing his treatment for I don't know, at least
Speaker 1: six weeks or more, and my cancer actually spread during
Speaker 1: that time. And apparently doctor is still practicing and it's
Speaker 1: still not SDA approved. And I've been cancer free for
Speaker 1: a really long time, but that's because I eventually went
Speaker 1: through medical science to get radiation and surgery and all
Speaker 1: the things that actually did the job. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: was sixteen, it was like nineteen ninety and so yeah,
Speaker 1: I've been well since then. But I just thought you
Speaker 1: guys might be curious to hear about this guy started
Speaker 1: to down in Houston. You know that he's been going
Speaker 1: on for so long. Thank you so much by We
Speaker 1: wanted to name the clinic and tell you all about it.
Speaker 1: So I called and gave them the heads up that
Speaker 1: we were running this story and asked for comment. And
Speaker 1: that's when they asked me to tell them the patient's
Speaker 1: name so they could find her file and talk about her.
Speaker 1: And that's when I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure that's illegal, but maybe it's not illegal if
Speaker 1: you're not a real medical doctor, which this one isn't.
Speaker 1: He has a doctor, right, So that's why we had
Speaker 1: to bleep it. Hi there, this is califrom Wisconsin. I
Speaker 1: am calling to tell you about my wellness experience. I'm
Speaker 1: somebody who has occasionally gone for chiropractic care, acupuncture, that
Speaker 1: sort of thing, and I got a referral to a
Speaker 1: wellness center in Eau Claire, where I went and had
Speaker 1: something called q in RT quantum Neural reset therapy, And
Speaker 1: though I was skeptical, I tried to go in with
Speaker 1: the open mind. My insurance would mostly cover it, so
Speaker 1: why not at any rate? Turns out that this doctor
Speaker 1: essentially had me were a few different pairs of like
Speaker 1: tinted you know, colored eyeglasses while waving lights around my body,
Speaker 1: had me hold vials with certain things in them, and
Speaker 1: at the end told me that I should try to
Speaker 1: avoid soy products and chocolate, and had he say some affirmations.
Speaker 1: To close out this treatment, he sent me into a
Speaker 1: different room where I had an ionic footbath, which used
Speaker 1: you know, tap water and this rusty looking electrical device
Speaker 1: that supposedly was pulling toxins out through the soles of
Speaker 1: my feet. And as I sat there, you know, in
Speaker 1: my thirty minute ionic footbath, actually with a laser that
Speaker 1: resembles something that they see on UPC codes at the
Speaker 1: grocery store. One of those pointed at me, I guess
Speaker 1: that's the laser therapy part. I was reading the scientific
Speaker 1: articles about, you know, whether or not an ionic footbath
Speaker 1: was a thing that actually did any good for anyone,
Speaker 1: and just grew increasingly frustrated. So maybe I was doing
Speaker 1: those affirmations wrong. But yeah, I think it's pretty safe
Speaker 1: to say that I won't likely return for those treatments,
Speaker 1: especially because I'm pretty sure that footbath was also in
Speaker 1: the neighborhood of seventy five bucks upop. So thanks for
Speaker 1: the work that you're doing. I'm very much appreciating the podcast,
Speaker 1: and keep it up. Hey, I live in northeast Wisconsin,
Speaker 1: and you asked for submissions about wellness and kind of
Speaker 1: our experience and that sort of thing. But the thing
Speaker 1: that turned me off to the most this was something
Speaker 1: that happened was I was attending a church here in
Speaker 1: Martheast Wisconsin, and it's a evangelical church, non denominational church, whatever,
Speaker 1: and for some reason the pastors decided to start endorsing
Speaker 1: local wellness center, hierocractic office, that sort of thing, And
Speaker 1: within six months, a lot of events that this church hosted,
Speaker 1: so like a woman's retreat or the Christmas Women Service,
Speaker 1: or definitely several Bible studies but they would incorporate messages
Speaker 1: of how, maybe one reason your unbalance spiritually, or maybe
Speaker 1: another reason why you feel an well about God or
Speaker 1: about life, it's because your hormones are out of balance,
Speaker 1: and you need to go to this place to get
Speaker 1: a balance or get a chiropractic adjustment. This has preached
Speaker 1: from the fulpit. And then as you walked out of
Speaker 1: the sanctuary through a coupon referral coupon that you could
Speaker 1: pick up to go to this place, and I just, oh,
Speaker 1: it was so sickening, sickening to me. I just I
Speaker 1: don't even know why you would do that anyway. Thanks. Hello.
Speaker 1: My name is Heavy. I am patient who has a
Speaker 1: rare brain thing called idiopathic intercrannial hypertension, and I spent
Speaker 1: three years undiagnosed, and they called it migraines. So we
Speaker 1: did all of the alternative treatments for migraines, because it
Speaker 1: turns out there are no real medical treatments the sides
Speaker 1: a few medications for migraines, So we did acupuncture and
Speaker 1: chiropractic treatments, and we did Dave piercings, and we had
Speaker 1: all of those because and paid out a pocket for
Speaker 1: it and didn't do a thing, But we did it
Speaker 1: because maybe maybe there's a chance they'll do something. It
Speaker 1: will help them. Wouldn't be amazing because I've basically bedridden
Speaker 1: for three years and then yeah, then they found out
Speaker 1: I didn't have migraines. I had idiopathic introchrenial hypertension and
Speaker 1: the only treatment is really brain surgery. And since then,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden to have worked. The surgery worked,
Speaker 1: and people stopped trying to sell me on alternative treatments.
Speaker 1: And it's honestly, it was the best thing good when
Speaker 1: I was sick and doing all the alternatives, well, it's
Speaker 1: more complimentary. We're doing them complimentary that they stopped selling
Speaker 1: them to us when they figured out, like, oh no,
Speaker 1: she's really sick, and yeah, thank you for doing this podcast.
Speaker 1: It justifies everything that I think and believe and have experienced.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Thanks so much to all the
Speaker 1: listeners who called in with your stories of wellness. We
Speaker 1: really appreciate it. Next time on the Dream. I think
Speaker 1: what's interesting about the anti vaccine movement to me is
Speaker 1: the idea that you can be really well intentioned and
Speaker 1: really want the best for your children or your family,
Speaker 1: or your personal health and make really bad decisions because
Speaker 1: the anti vaccine movement is based on beliefs that have
Speaker 1: been debunked over and over and over. The Dream is
Speaker 1: a production of Little Everywhere and Stitcher, written and reported
Speaker 1: by Me and Dan Galucci, editing by Peter Clowney and
Speaker 1: Tracy Samuelson, Producing by Lyra Smith and Stephanie Kayuki. The
Speaker 1: Dream is executive produced by Me, Dan Galucci, Peter Clowney,
Speaker 1: and Chris Bannon. Our mixing engineers are Casey Holford and
Speaker 1: Brendan Burns. Rate review and subscribe wherever you listen. Thank you,