Again, this is assuming the radon is *not* the cause.

I could hypothetically imagine that entirely apart from the radon, the act of pausing one's life, driving an hour out of town to a spa area, and giving yourself an hour of enforced rest in a calming environment like a cave- and doing this regularly on a schedule for an extended period- could for some people have the effect of reducing their overall stress levels, which could have an effect on their perceived level of pain. When I meditate, I feel that the primary benefit I get from it is the structure of the meditation session is forcing me to take a break where I am still, calm, and not focused on the normally hectic schedule of my life. But something that to my understanding *does* have better scientific support in aiding with chronic pain is stress reduction. Meditation is another thing that has been claimed to (but has *not*, to my understanding, been proven to) help with chronic pain. In other words the tunnel treatment seems structurally similar to me to meditation.

In addition to the radon, the Germany tunnel is imposing on the lives of the patients a structure where for an extended period they must make time in their lives to regularly spend one hour being still and in a calming place. And you must go there many times, on a regular schedule. It makes me think of a wine cave I visited once. One thing I notice is that the radon cave just. So if we *assume* solely for the sake of argument that (1) the claim of 85% subjective effectiveness in the Germany tunnel is legitimate (2) there is no physical mechanism of action for radon to work- if both those things turned out to be true, I would be curious what it was the Germany tunnel was doing to produce such good results anyway. One thing I wonder about is- the effectiveness claimed by the radon tunnel is quite high, compared to effectiveness I see for more obviously placebo-like treatments. I am not qualified to analyse their quality and conflicts of interest, so in this case, departing from my usual policy, I'm leaving that exploration as an exercise for the reader! Location camera: Moritz Janisch Producer: Marcel Fenchel Editor for Bad Kreuznach footage: Isla McTear I'm at on Twitter at tomscott on Facebook at tomscott and on Instagram as tomscottgo A Google Scholar search will rapidly send you down a rabbit hole of 'this seems like it works' papers, followed by 'this study had a very small sample size' or 'this study had flaws' meta-analysis. There are a LOT of papers about this, and about radiation hormesis. As mentioned in the video, they claim no conflict of interest but some of the funding does ultimately come from the radon therapy industry. Thanks to the team at the Radonstollen in Bad Kreuznach: you can find out more about them at SOURCES: The paper I reference in the video is 'Radon Exposure-Therapeutic Effect and Cancer Risk' by Maier et al, doi.org/10.3390/ijms22010316 - it is, as far as I can tell, the most comprehensive analysis of all the studies so far, and I recommend reading not just the paper but also the extensive bibliography. In some places, though, it's so accepted that it's prescribed by doctors and covered by health insurance. In most of the world, inhaling radon for pain relief sounds like a bizarre idea.

Comprehensive meta analysis video