Nobody knows why some people need blood. Why they need to consume it regularly or suffer serious physical and mental ill effects. It doesn’t make sense. Yet, we’ve experienced it again, and again, no matter how hard we try to ignore it. This thing is there, it’s real, and it’s affecting our lives significantly.

Still, we don’t know why. And this should be repeated often. People who claim to have a definitive answer to that question, are probably wrong.

However, there are a lot of explanations for why some people are afflicted with this need for blood: They range from tentative, physiological and psychological explanations to wholly spiritual theories with anything in between, from wildly extravagant pseudo-science to crazy ideas about hellish demon-angel hybrid possessions.

But because we don’t know, that doesn’t mean all theories are equal.

Just because there isn’t a good answer at the moment, it doesn’t mean you’re right about demon-angels from the 5th dimension causing people to crave blood. And similarly, because something can’t be disproved, it doesn’t mean it’s true, or even probable.

Think about migraines:  While we’ve done a lot of progress over the past decade, we’re still not quite sure what cause them. And until recently, we didn’t quite understand the mechanisms involved in migraine episodes.

One could have said (and actually they do say) that migraines are caused by a disturbance in the sufferer’s energy system or other things of the sort. None of those explanations can be disproved.

But migraines are a physiological phenomenon causing pain, and neurological disturbances. These things can be examined and studied, scientifically and medically. And that’s why we’re now investigating them as the result of a complex inflammatory disorder. That’s also why we’re finding more and more genes linked to different types of migraines.

While it’s still possible that metaphysical phenomenon is involved in migraines, looking at it this way is not giving us consistent, efficacious new ways to treat them, and it’s not expanding our knowledge on them.

A very surprisingly high number of people propose that the sanguivorous condition (or other things that cause people to drink blood) is a purely metaphysical thing, caused by an imbalance in the subtle body requiring that the person draw metaphysical energy from an external source (in the form of blood)….or that is is the consequence of the attachment of an ethereal vampiric parasite…or even that it is due by a fundamental difference in the nature of the soul of the person. Possibilities are endless. Every single of these explanations could be true. None can be disproved.

But as with migraine sufferers, sanguivores suffer from real physiological consequences of blood deprivation. Blood is physical. It makes sense to study this the only way we can. Through what may give us relief, and an understanding of what this is, or what it isn’t. That’s why we need to reach out of the medical field to explore it rigorously and scientifically. That’s why nobody should be satisfied with just saying “we don’t know“.
People with this, are handicapped in their personal and professional life if they do not have access to blood. It’s not benign.

There seems to be this false dichotomy of this thing being entirely physiological or entirely supernatural. But why should it be? How is this any more metaphysical than migraines?

This false dichotomy is also what makes people overlook all too quickly the potential psychological and psycho-somatic aspects of sanguivory. While I personally am not inclined to think this condition is entirely psycho-somatic, I do not doubt that there are elements of somatisation or that there might be co-morbid mental disorders. These can be thoroughly investigated and they should be.

It is entirely a part of a pragmatic, medical approach, which is hindered, not by considering alternative explanations, but by focusing on them. All explanations aren’t equal.

Because we don’t know the exact processes involved in the appearance of the first organisms, should we consider the theory of abiogenesis and the idea that God made it happen are equally probable? If we did, people wouldn’t be actively looking at how the very first replicating bits of primitive RNA might have formed and how they might have formed primitive cells. And we wouldn’t have the knowledge we have now, nor paved the way for the future discoveries of the decade.

So no, because we don’t know, that doesn’t mean anything goes. “We don’t know” shouldn’t be the end of it and it shouldn’t be a way to stop the conversation; with everyone staying satisfied with their own idea. It should be what drives research and investigation.

You are free to consider all possibilities, but I refuse to teach the controversy.