Why should we ignore the "skeptics" but not the unattributed "testimonials". Joe Dispenza is a quack, voodoo conspiracy theorist, who seems to border line lie about his credentials.
"The placebo has had profound healing effects on many people. But, do we really need the pill if the healing power is within us? Dr. Joe Dispenza delves into the depths of the mind to reveal the connection between belief, perception, energy fields and the mystery of the placebo."
Ok.. energy fields.. got it.. I will file that right next to perpetual motion machines.
Here's a playlist of 580 video testimonials: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD4EAA8F8C9148A1B
Are they all actors?
Yes, this is an understudied / ignored field. You can't expect the people in it to present themselves exactly how your cliché "scientist" does.
It is an understudied / ignored field for the same reason prayer isn't studied for it's ability to cure disease.
A quote from one of the testimonial videos you linked me to:
"It's really hard to talk about because not a lot of people can relate to quantum healing ... " This makes sense.
If you believe in this, and it helps you, good for you. You should not try to present it as something deserving of scientific backing however.
Again, in summary the "teaching" of Joe Dispenza is that belief creates emotion, emotion modulates biochemistry, biochemistry can be harmonized (placebo) or disharmonized (nocebo).
The scientific wording is just a wrapper, if that's distasteful to you, fine, but it's nothing more than a superficial reaction, one that's very common in the "skeptic" community.
> Voodoo death, a term coined by Walter Cannon in 1942 also known as psychogenic death or psychosomatic death, is the phenomenon of sudden death as brought about by a strong emotional shock, such as fear. The anomaly is recognized as "psychosomatic" in that death is caused by an emotional response—often fear—to some suggested outside force. Voodoo death is particularly noted in native societies, and concentration- or prisoner of war camps, but the condition is not specific to any particular culture.[1]
It isn't surprising then that, just like your heart can fail from exaggerated effort, it can also fail from psychological stress forcing the same behaviors.
The same is not true for your liver or bone marrow. You have 0 conscious control over those, and psychological factors have 0 impact on these.
> Cannon stated that voodoo death resulted when all body forces were mobilized and maintained for an action which never came.
> He felt that the death was primarily due to prolonged overstimulation of the adrenals by the sympathetic nervous system. Richter, however, felt that the demise was due to a complete "giving up," a feeling of utter hopelessness and helplessness; in effect, a parasympathetic death.
> Zoological experts have observed this in the deaths of wild animals who find themselves suddenly caged in an apparently hopeless situation.
> The thin veneer of civilized intellect covering man's primitive emotions serves as an armor to prevent vulnerability to this type of influence. It is suggested that when this armor proves too thin, modern man may also succumb, albeit less directly and more slowly, than did his less sophisticated predecessors.
This stuff is fascinating to me.
PS: I have to say I'm sorry for the sometimes aggressive tone in some of our exchanges here, this is a topic that's close to heart.
Even in the playlist you gave, it's mostly people who have had improvements in things like pain, irritation, scratching, stuttering. The rest is happenstance: cancers sometimes go into remission, treatments with low chance of success sometimes work and so on.
Again every time this has been studied well it has proven to be ineffective. Sometimes subjective effects are even explicitly contradicted: placebo inhalers make people with asthma feel better, but they do not in fact improve their blood oxygen levels one iota.
You have a playlist of 580 testimonials of these frauds 'helping' people. Look for such things, and see how many millions of testimonials you'll find of people who have not survived after trying to rely on 'faith healing' and 'bioenergetics' and 'eastern medicine' and so on.
Edit to add: your example of brain pattern changes in people suffering from depression on placebo treatments is again perfectly in line with known medical practices. Depression and many other psychological illnesses are well known and reported to be improved by non-pharmacological treatments such as psyhco-therapy. The gold standard in treatment of depression is a combination of psychotherapy and anti-depressants, which has been proven to be more efficient than either on its own. However, this doesn't in any way prove that psychotherapy can help with tuberculosis, as you seem to believe.
I've watched hundreds of them, that's not an accurate description at all.
Likewise with "your condition is incurable", etc. etc.