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Comment by pazimzadeh | Hacker News Reader

At a very high level, I am very interested in the general concept that sometimes, the same thing that causes you a problem can be the solution to the problem.

Examples I have come up with so far:

1. radiation: causes cancer, but preferentially kills cancer cells

2. glue: sticks, but can be used to dissolve old glue to separate stuck things

3. violence: threat of mutually assured destruction can lead to peace, theoretical

4. infection: stimulates your immune system against further infection

5. ???

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5. Muscular injuries. In my experience the vast majority of the time the answer to a muscle injury has been to exercise that muscle at lower intensity. This applies to delayed onset muscle soreness, pulled muscles, and everything that’s not an overuse injury (which takes experience to identify).

This does NOT apply to joint and connective tissue injuries.

Even an overuse injury in some cases. For some reason I'm prone to tendonitis with repetitive loading - think digging, or sets when lifting. The solution is to increase blood flow by doing the same movement that gave me tendonitis, but at a MUCH lower intensity.

Fight fire with fire.

(ancient concept, when there was a big fire approaching, small fires were started to burn into the direction of the big fire, so in the end the big fire had nothing more to consume)

I believe that the concept is called Hormesis.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hormesis

Kind of, but not precisely?

Hormesis is that idea that the same compound can have opposite effect at different doses.

But a dose difference is not strictly necessary for what I am talking about

Sill not what you're looking for, but another term to throw in the bag: "Iatrogenic"

A disease or problem which is a side-effects of medical investigation or treatment.

The term for the parent comment's concept is anti-fragile

A big one is giving children microdoses of peanuts to reverse peanut allergies. [1]

https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/oral-im...

Giving peanut oral immunotherapy—daily doses of peanut flour—to children ages 1 to 3 with peanut allergies desensitized most and induced remission of the allergy in 21%.

one of our kid’s friend had a peanut allergy and at twice had to travel by helicopter to a suitable hospital. Always had an epipen at birthday parties. Very diligent family leaving the kid home alone with a friend for the first time and as part of the spread the mother inexplicably purchased choco-tacos.

The kid ate them thought they were good and asked the mom to get them again.

The mom realized that they had peanuts and through new tests it turns out he is no longer allergic.

The first thought was choco tacos contain no peanuts. They contain peanuts.

This applies to everything: a gun, water or money. There is no concept out there.

Employment: You can't fire me! I quit!

Homeopathy is an alternative medicine based on the theory of treating ‘like with like’.

https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/conditionsandtrea...

For the record, I am not a practitioner of homeopathy. I just know from talking to people that this is the idea behind it.

It's not a terrible idea. Like how fever was used to fight malaria a while back

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrotherapy

That's not what your link says. It says malaria was induced to cause fever as a means to combat syphilis until they discovered penicillin.

You're right

And that escalated quickly because that theory is completely bonkers and any results of that if anything placebo.. so then we can just say everything here.

It's not treating like with like, it's attempting to treat with something that has contain the substance but no longer contains it. They add something to water or alcohol then dilute repeatedly until it's just water.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathic_dilutions#Diluti...

If you believe it works then you should drink a bit of water from the ocean everyday, because so many sewage are poured there that every virus and bacteria of every human illness has been there, and the oceans are so vast that it's been diluted properly!

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