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Sunday, 6 June 1999

Mental Medicine ::

My experience with Western medicine is that it is excellent at treating cases of obvious and severe disease. Of my parents, wife, siblings, and three children, only one would now be in the world if not for Western medicine and I am thankful for that.

But, Western medicine is not very good at treating some types of physical ailments. I suffer from a variety of minor ailments, and I believe they all are rooted in stress/anxiety. This reinforces my belief that most illness is a physical manifestation of one’s psychological state.

I don’t think Western medicine knows much about the conditions leading up to the major diseases it does know how to treat. Western medicine does seem to give legitimacy to the placebo effect without understanding it, and does accept that a positive mental outlook seems to have an effect on physical health. I know a long-term AIDS survivor, and am convinced he is still with us because he is such a positive person.

Sun, 6 Jun 1999, 00:38 EDT
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