However, the general concepts that it discusses are crucial to understanding all kinds of medical research. Ethical dilemmas Case reports If there is a hole in holistic medicine, it is the lack of enough well-controlled research to support the claims of its proponents. Instead, there has been an overreliance on anecdote. The truth is, while stories of an individual's dramatic recovery from disease may be inspiring, the results can't be generalized to the rest of us. The traditional antidote to too much anecdote is the experimental study, in which a scientist changes only certain variables in a given situation to see what the outcome will be.
Epidemiology is the study of populations to seek the causes of health and disease.
In the context of mind-body medicine, such research shows what associations exist between particular emotions or beliefs and certain diseases in the population at large. Once such associations have been identified, the next logical step is to explain why they occur. Physiological research explores biological and biochemical connections between the brain and the body's systems in the search for causal mechanisms. Knowledge gleaned from the two pervious kinds of research is often applied to the development of mind-body techniques for treating or preventing disease. The effectiveness of such approaches can be assessed in clinical trials, in which an experimental group receives the treatment under investigation.