9 Quotes by Ted Kaptchuk

To some extent, placebos are about the effect of the human imagination.

It may be that it is the act of applying the needles that is important.

It's upside down research. We investigated whether a sham acupuncture device has a greater placebo effect than an inert pill.

These findings suggest the medical ritual of a device can deliver an enhanced placebo effect beyond that of a placebo pill. There are many conditions in which ritual is irrelevant when compared with drugs, such as in treatment of a bacterial infection, but the other extreme may also be true: In some cases, the ritual may be the critical component.

The Non-Corporeal Soul increases tolerance and acceptance of the pain sensation, which paradoxically automatically reduces pain’s noxiousness and intolerableness. The more room for pain, the less it hurts. For the Non-Corporeal Soul, pain and suffering are not something to flee, but a catalyst for the authentication of humanity and the generation of human kindness.

To Western medicine, understanding an illness means uncovering a distinct entity that is separate from the patient’s being; to Chinese medicine, understanding means perceiving the relationships among all the patient’s signs and symptoms in the context of his or her life.

People resist being put into categories.

Chinese medicine considers important certain aspects of the human body and personality that are not significant to Western medicine.

The Chinese physician, in contrast, directs his or her attention to the complete physiological and psychological individual. All relevant information, including the symptom as well as the patient’s other general characteristics, is gathered and woven together until it forms what Chinese medicine calls a “pattern of disharmony.” This pattern of disharmony describes a situation of “imbalance” in a patient’s body.