I'm glad you're skeptical!

Ha, yes I could have explained myself better from the get go but it really does take me a long time to articulate my thoughts. I see how "this treatment is weird so this research is interesting" left a lot of guess work for the reader. Having said that I'm also happy it creates a conversation starter without to much effort on my part because that would have been a mess.

That is where a lot of the issue lies for me too. I hear people say things can be "cured" and I feel like that can be really dangerous. When I've met people I know a lot of them view these things as "complimentary treatment" and I do think that is a much more responsible way of phrasing things. Like for example my neighbor did everything the doctors had him do but just tried out some things on the side to help out. However, he also had all these medical expenses covered which is something many others don't have. So I don't necessarily think other patients will be so easy in that respect.

perhaps we should be looking toward why placebo treatments work, even temporarily, for some people

I definitely agree with you here I always find the general sentiment is something like "pfft, that's just a placebo effect" and I get to thinking like, ya, just the brains magical ability to heal itself how lame. (a tad dramatic for effect but you get the idea) Maybe I'm just not looking in the right places but everywhere I look people really look down on the placebo effect. Maybe that's because we really don't understand it which is fair because we hardly understand the brain at all but I would definitely like to see some more research in that. I think the best case scenario is if we are able to figure out what's going on in those scenarios and apply it in a better way.

What I tend to tell people is that if they want to try something and it won't harm them then go for it but not to replace modern medicine with it. I think I'll stick to that through out my career because I don't feel good totally advocating for these treatments but I also get why people go that route. Even massage therapy is consider BS by some because although we have theories as to why it works we don't really know for sure. Typing this out was helpful.