Nocebo Effect...That Voodoo That You Do So Well

We have all heard of the placebo effect. Doctors and pharma hate the placebo effect because they know the body heals itself and that they are just middlemen and drug pushers. They try to eradicate it out of studies and our of our minds but how can you eradicate something that is part of you and your DNA.

There are many books and articles on the placebo effect, you can do a google search and I won't go into it here. All sorts of horrible diseases have been healed using the power of the mind. I noticed that there is not so much information on the nocebo effect. The nocebo effect is when your doctor gives you a bad diagnosis or prognosis and you subsequently live or die up to that prediction. They act more like Voodoo doctors in that case, though they think they are being responsible and honest based on their education and training.

So when my doctor or any expert says there is not cure for Renal Failure, and I will probably have to go on dialysis to stay alive for a few years then they are putting a hex on me, imparting their belief (not absolute fact) on me and since I am not a medical expert, I then accept that belief and lo and behold I am hooked up to a dialysis machine hoping this thing will keep me alive until I can get a kidney. (Well, not me--not yet)

What is the difference between that and a Voodoo doctor putting a curse on you and telling you you will die in 2 weeks by the full moon, you fret, cry and worry-- and the full moon comes and you are dead.

But you say doctors are educated, trained, skilled etc etc you cannot compare them to a voodoo priest. Maybe I cannot but your body, mind and belief system don't know the difference.

There was a tuberculosis epidemic in the 1800s in Europe, TB has been around for ages but because of overcrowding and poor sanitation it became widespread during that time. They did not know what it was where it came from and why it was happening they just knew they were coughing up blood, losing weight and dying.Then a scientist by the name of Koch discovered it was caused by a microoganism and the government started increasing hygeine awareness and putting people in sanitariums.

The death rate dropped partly because of the isolation but it even dropped in the sanitarium so that you had a 50/50 chance of making it out alive. So it dropped from 80 to 100% to 50% practically overnight. Then they came up with some drugs and, especially before AIDS epidemic, you hardly ever hear about people dying from tuberculosis. You can say it was the drugs that made the difference, and I agree partly with that but I say that once we became knowledgeable about what TB was, that knowledge lowered the death rate because people's hysteria subsided. It lost its mystery and lore (like it came from vampires and faeries), and it didn't automatically carry the death sentence it originally had.

At one time, passing through these gates as a patient was almost the equivalent of a death sentence
However, the patients admitted to the State Sanitorium had a lower mortality rate (approximately 50 percent) as compared to the mortality prior to its opening (approximately 80 percent)

.Arkansas Tuberculosis Sanitarium




The same can be said of HIV and AIDs. When it first came out people were almost hysterical. They were also dropping like flies. You would hear someone had AIDS and they would be dead a week later. I worked in an ICU in the early 90's there was this lawyer who was admitted who was very sick, they found out he had HIV and he died in the ICU a week later.

Now people who live for years and years with HIV and AIDS, I even worked with a patient who was diagnosed with HIV and now is HIV negative. You can attibute that to the antiviral drugs, but I think once people settled down and learned about the illness, the hysteria died down and the death rate went down too.

In both cases I think people's fears killed them more than the disease, and the drugs that doctors and scientists invented worked partly because of the placebo effect.


There is mounting evidence that our imagination can kill us faster than anything else, especially when we have someone in a white coat egging us on.

Why can't we learn to use our imaginations to heal ourselves? I have learned a lot about the kidneys. I still take the blood pressure meds, the phosphate binders, the iron pills, the vitamin D and each night I use imagery to visualize my kidneys getting better and better. I don't expect my kidneys to heal overnight but I will stick with it and chart my progress here.

I am not going to ask my nephrologist voodoo doctor for any prognosis because I have a vivid imagination and I want to use it to heal not die.

There Is No Cure For Renal Failure? Really?

I have read that countless times and have been told that to my face by my Neprologist. What I have not been told is that "we haven't as yet found a cure or we haven't as yet found a way to restore kidney function."

What's the difference?

There is a big difference. When you say there is no cure you don't look for one and you don't expect to find one, your priorities and resources are used elsewhere.

They don't tell cancer patients there is no cure for cancer, they tell them they haven't found a cure for all cancers yet but there is so much that can be done and the survival rate is increasing. Cancer is definitely curable.

But Renal Failure? There is no cure....there is dialysis (which is not a cure), they usually hasten to add; then there is a kidney transplant which requires a lot of luck to even get a kidney and keep it in your body. So if you have never won anything and don't consider yourself lucky "there is no cure" sounds very cold, final and hopeless.

What if someone 200 years from now did find a cure? They would look upon our textbooks and literature as quaint and maybe a little humorous.

Since we have not found a cure yet, let's change that expression to:

we haven't found a cure yet.

I have been trolling the Internet for articles and it seems there is some promising research in staving off and even reversing Renal Disease.

I guess my doctor doesn't have time to read these journals.

He doesn't have time to read:

Can We Really Lessen Kidney Damage to the Point that the Loss of Renal Function of Progressive Nephropathy May Revert?
Journal of the American Society of Nephrology
J Am Soc Nephrol 14:1411-1414, 2003

Or maybe he didn't have time to read:

ACE Inhibitors to Prevent End-Stage Renal Disease: When to Start and Why Possible Never to Stop: A Post Hoc Analysis of the REIN Trial ResultsJ Am Soc Nephrol 12:2832-2837, 2001

And he definitely didn't have time to read:

Progressive Renal Insufficiency
Office strategies to prevent or slow progression of kidney disease
Vol 108/No1/July 2000/ Postgraduate Medicine

I suppose it can be argued that many of these experiments have been done of rats.

A kidney is a kidney as far as I am concerned. Kidneys have evolved over millions of years, (I am pretty sure Dinosaurs had kidneys) on the planet earth, and though they may appear structurally different, on a cellular level the functioning is very similar.


Research is being performed, mostly in foreign countries, that challenge the idea that Renal Disease is not reversible.

So to say there is no cure is not being realistic or avoiding giving people false hope, it encouraging people to give up and accept a fate that may not be necessary.




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What does Renal Roulette Mean?

I have had poor functioning kidneys for years. I have also had high blood pressure for years. Recently I had an event in which I was hospitalized for Renal Failure (actually I had too much potassium in my blood which could cause my heart to stop). Eventually I met with a Nephrologist (kidney specialist) to get his expert information on my affliction.

I wasn't all that concerned, people have survived worse things than renal failure, right? And if there were a way to survive I would find it. Why? Besides the fact I have a smart mouth and less than sweet attitude (see my other blog Broke Down Oprah), I consider myself a very spiritual and scientific person. I believe in miraculous healings and quantum theory; the Big Bang and that Something or Someone put that tiny piece of matter in there to go bang; meditation, visualization, yoga etc and exercise, eating right, taking medication. I figured between my spirituality and scientific knowledge I would find a way.

Well, I have not found a way. Not yet.

The doctor told me there is no cure for renal failure brought on by chronic renal failure which is different from renal failure brought on by acute renal failure, because in acute renal failure the kidney is still somewhat intact and can conceivably work again, but in chronic renal failure the kidneys have been damaged over the years and have shriveled up and just don't work and don't have the infrastructure to work. The call it End Stage Renal Disease.

I protested that this cannot be the case-- not because I am afraid to die-- but because it doesn't make sense to me on a spiritual, scientific and intellectual level. I just cannot believe that of all of the billions of people who have ever lived on the planet earth, no one has ever survived renal failure without a transplant. None, Nada, Zip.

I started researching this subject and have not found much especially in the Renal Industry (Nephrologist, Dialysis Companies and Transplant agencies). I researched the spiritual side and found out you may get a miraculous healing if you believe in Jesus and accept him as your personal savior, the problem is that I don't. The other religions are pretty quiet about this subject. Alternative medicine is pretty quiet too although there are some Homeopaths in India who claim to be able to help.

So there is nothing definitive that I have been able to find that is encouraging. Surviving this affliction is pretty much like playing Roulette somewhere between Russian Roulette and Casino Roulette. Either way the odds aren't good.

Ball in motion....... Final Bets..........No More Bets.........

#20
Dialysis--Ooh so sorry, dialysis will keep you alive for a few years until we can find you a kidney or until you die. That's rough.

#4
Transplant-Now that's a little better, you take all these tests,wait on a list, get dialysis and when a match comes up we will page you and you better be ready or we will go to the next person. Of course you will need to stay alive and relatively healthy until we find one, otherwise--Next.

#36
Transplant-Rejection- We went through all that work to get you a kidney and now your stupid body is rejecting it, this is really making us look bad-- too bad we don't have an extra kidney in the fridge for you, you are going to have to go back on the list-- good luck with that.

#0
Death-You are refusing dialysis and transplant? Get your affairs in order crazy person.


Of course there are 38 slots on a real Roulette wheel but in this scenario if the ball lands on one of the other numbers (other than the 4 above) it just disintegrates. So only those four really work.

I started this blog because I think we should add some more numbers to that Renal Roulette wheel. Am I deluding myself? Maybe. I have been told over and over there is no cure for this. The kidney is just too damaged or "FUBAR" to continue working.


I started thinking.........There are a lot of people dead from ALS which is pretty much supposed to be a death sentence as soon as you are diagnosed. Why isn't Stephen Hawking dead? He contracted that disease years and years ago. He is still dictating books and discovering the secrets of the Universe. If Stephen Hawking can live a normal life span with ALS then we chronic renal insufficiency folks should be able to do the same. I am looking for people to join me in this quest. Add your comments, start your own blog, or you can join my group Baby Nephrons on the Intention Experiment Site. Let's add some numbers to that Roulette wheel.



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