Hypnotherapy For Pain and Other Conditions
Hypnotherapy is the use of hypnosis as a medical intervention, usually for the treatment of pain and other subjective symptoms. It remains controversial, primarily because the evidence for its efficacy is not yet compelling, but also because it is poorly understood. This situation is not helped by the fact that it is often characterized as an “alternative” therapy, a label that can...
The Skeptical Clinician
All scientists should be skeptics. Serious problems arise when a less-than-skeptical approach is taking to the task of discovery. Typically the result is flawed science, and for those significantly lacking in skepticism this can descend to pseudoscience and crankery. With the applied sciences, such as the clinical sciences of medicine and mental therapy, there are potentially immediate and practical implications as well....
Herbal Medicine and Aristolochic Acid Nephropathy
Herbs are little more than dirty drugs, with uncertain dosing, potency, and often-unrecognized side effects. Aristolochic acid, which is present in the Aristolochia genus of plants often used in Traditional Chinese Medicine for many uses. Used in the West as a weight loss aid, Aristolochia is a case study in the unrecognized dangers of herbal medicine; it is a powerful nephrotoxin, and...
Whooping Cough Epidemic
The Washington State Department of Health has released a statement stating that they are in the midst of a whooping cough epidemic, which will likely reach its highest levels in decades. So far this year there have been 640 cases, compared to 94 cases over the same time period last year. This is a dramatic increase. Whooping cough is a vaccine preventable...
A Universal Anti-Cancer Drug?
We frequently deal with fraud and quackery on this blog, because part of our mission is to inform the public about such things, and also they are great examples for explaining the difference between legitimate and dubious medical claims. It is always our goal not just to give a pronouncement about this or that therapy, but to work through the logic and...
Disparities in Regional Health Care Costs
In 2009, during the “Obamacare” debate that was dominating the news, Atul Gawande wrote an article in the New Yorker that was widely praised and cited, including by president Obama himself. The article is a thought-provoking discussion of why some communities in the US have much higher health care costs than other regions. I took two main conclusions from the article. The...
Acupuncture for Migraine
A recent study looking at acupuncture for the prevention of migraine attacks demonstrates all of the problems with acupuncture and acupuncture research that we have touched on over the years at SBM. Migraine is one indication for which there seems to be some support among mainstream practitioners. In fact the American Headache Society recently recommended acupuncture for migraines. Yet, the evidence is...
Anti-Smoking Laws – The Proof of the Pudding
One consistent theme of SBM is that the application of science to medicine is not easy. We are often dealing with a complex set of conflicting information about a complex system that is difficult to predict. That is precisely why we need to take a thorough and rigorous approach to information in order to make reliable decisions. The same is true when...
Pyroluria and Orthomolecular Psychiatry
I have previously written about psychomotor patterning – an alleged treatment for developmental delay that was developed in the 1960s. The idea has its roots in the notion of ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, that as we develop we progress through evolutionary stages. This idea, now largely discredited, was extended to the hypothesis that in children who are developmentally delayed their neurological development could...
Social Anxiety – There’s An App for That?
When I first heard about studies using smartphones to treat anxiety with cognitive therapy I was intrigued, to say the least. However, I had a misconception about what that actually meant. My assumption was that the smartphone app would be automating some basic cognitive therapy, a virtual therapist that could give some reflective feedback and also give basic cognitive tools to deal...