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Comment by freehunter | Hacker News Reader

To be fair, "this is nothing but [ancient spiritual practice] but with science backing up the claims" is more valuable than this comment might imply. There's an awful lot of ancient spiritual practices that have no benefit and lots of harm and are still practiced today in the name of ancient spiritual practices (stuff like rhino horns). So having some science behind it is worth a lot more than "packaged in a fancy journal paper".

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Agreed, but I also think it's worth pointing out that science-based medicine has been around for a long time now, yet why has there been so little attention paid to the issue of healthy breathing? Why do doctors not assess a patient's breathing rate just like they would their heart rate or blood pressure? It's astounding that an advanced medical science would bypass something so foundational for so long.

Nope - that just supposes that 5000 years of practise was done for fun and had no health benefits. And, now it is upto a few scientists to discover what 5000 years of sustained practise could not. They could have just referred to Sushruta Samhita or patanjali's yoga-sutras where praNayama and its benefits are dicussed in detail.

Well, blood-letting had 2000 years of practice and authors discussing its benefits in detail. and turned out that was done for fun and had no health benefits (in fact, it was harmful).

For some diseases and conditions it is actually healthy. You of course have to be careful with it.

And what of the hundreds of other practices? Shall we take all old things at face value and never study them? We study things we "already know" all the time. Often we discover new things while doing so, but still prove our previously held beliefs more true.

More personally, why aren't you just happy to see extra validation of something you believe in?

You are still assuming 5000 years of sustained practices have health benefits..

You're assuming studies conducted today with minimal or no replication of results are evidence of health benefits. If 5000 of scientifically less-than-perfect evidence is not worth anything, then this study is also worth nothing.

As karatinversion already pointed out, some traditional health practices have been shown to be ineffective, or even actively harmful.

There is no substitute for the scientific method.

I'm not citing it as a substitute, rather I'm saying that it isn't something you can entirely discount either. And we know for a fact that a lot of published "scientific" studies turn out to be not reproducible too, but people will continue to believe them for a long time regardless.

Nothing to assume.

Yoga and Ayurveda have proven benefits.

What method was used to prove their benefits if it wasn’t the scientific method?

I was referring to the word “assume”.

Doing it.

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