The wording for the fad diet section bothered me. If benefits of calorie restriction and fasting aren’t scientifically supported, why are their Wikipedia pages full of scientific research regarding their benefits?

Things like the actual uses of aromatherapy make me wonder what to call them. Maybe the word placebo applies, but I feel that there’s a certain level of arbitrariness needed for that specific word.

There’s something about aromas and the soft gestures of reiki that are pleasurable to us in a more objective sense. We don’t like them simply because we’ve been told they’re good for us; we like them because we like them. A waterfall will make most people feel good even you don’t tell them it’s good for them, so I don’t feel it can be called a placebo effect. What is the term for a thing which isn’t directly a medicine, but is medically beneficial by promoting a sense of wellbeing?

I don’t think that laughter should be considered medicine in a literal sense because it would make the term too broad, but also because these things are at least somewhat subject to taste rather than the truly objective effects of drugs. A given drug might effect two people differently, but the difference is a matter of chemistry rather than the subject’s opinion.

(Maybe it will all be the same someday when we’ve dialed in how everybody’s brains work in exact detail and tailor treatments more specifically. Maybe we’ll actually prescribe touching grass instead of suggesting it.)