Woo-Woo Medicine

This summer, for various reasons, I’ve tried a number of alternative medical treatments, including deep-tissue massage, cranio-sacral therapy, acupuncture, and most recently colon hydrotherapy. While each of them made me feel better in some way, none was really profound, and I’m not entirely sure that I wouldn’t have felt better had I taken the money I spent on the treatments and bought a plane ticket to go lie on the beach for a few days.

I guess I’m somewhat skeptical about the ability of any sort of treatment administered by someone else to really make me feel much better. It seems like the most effective things I do to heal an injury or recover from a cold are things I do to myself. When I injured my neck, for instance, nothing felt better than doing a headstand between two chairs with my head hanging free; when I feel a cold coming on, I still think the best treatment is self-administered echinacea and massive doses of vitamin C.

It’s odd that, as a physician’s son, I should be so wary of the healing arts.

Or maybe not.

I know that my aversion to hospitals is at least in part a product of being dragged to my dad’s office at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center on numerous Sundays either before or after Steelers games. And even though I liked that we didn’t have to go to the pediatrician to get our throat cultured when it looked like we might have strep, I was still made very nervous when, in order to remove a splinter from my foot, Dad would first sterilize the needle with a match.

Overall, healing is a strange business. If it works, it makes itself unnecessary, so it seems like professional healers have a vested in interest in your being unwell.

All of the practicioners I went to this summer invited me back for further work; something’s sick about this, but I’m not sure it’s me.