What is Effective Treatment?

by Sheila Yonemoto, PT

"Effectiveness of treatment" has come up in several conversations recently.  Questions like, what makes some practitioners more effective than others?  Is it the technique used?  Is it the skill with which the technique is applied?  How much does the belief system contribute?  What role does the defense system play?

With so many treatments available today, how do you evaluate which is best?   I take the approach “first do no harm.”  Then I make sure permanent, irreversible changes are last (like cutting something out, a permanent tattoo for example).   Next I ask myself, what can I personally do to make it better?  I try to find cost-effective treatment with a good success rate and minimal side effects requiring a reasonable amount of effort.

Probably first and foremost for any treatment to be effective, a person has to be willing to receive it and believe it will be effective.  If the person doesn’t want the treatment or has serious doubts he will benefit from it, it won't work.  The person’s defense system will be on high alert and won’t allow anything in.  This applies to learning new ideas as well as receiving advice or help. 

You must first agree to receive treatment and acknowledge it is okay to get it from a certain person.  In this way the door opens, defenses go down and an exchange can transpire. The practitioner must also believe he can help the patient.  If presented with two practitioners of equal training, the one with more confidence in his ability to help will be most effective.

This explains the effectiveness of a placebo.  The television show MASH had an episode where pain medication was gone, so they gave sugar pills to soldiers in extreme pain and told them the pill would greatly ease their pain.  In most cases, pain levels went down and patients were able to sleep.  The medical staff expressed confidence in the efficacy of treatment and patients were willing to receive the pills and confident they would work. 

From an Eastern (and some Western) perspectives, 70% of all disease is attributable to problems in the message system.  Some call this mind-body illness or psychosomatic illness.  Stress-related diseases such as heart disease and cancer fit this category.  In the book “The Secret Life of Your Cells” which talks about the experiments of a CIA polygraph (lie detector) tester, cells taken from a person's body and placed miles away from him will still react the same when that person is stressed.  This led the experimenter to conclude your mental attitude affects each and every cell of your body. Thus, thinking healthy thoughts can lead to healthy cells, which leads to a healthy body.

Perhaps the message system is most important.  The treatment or pill may only be the vehicle bringing the message to the body, but it is the message itself that does the magic of healing.