Results for: non-specific effects
The Placebo Gene?
A study recently published in PLOS one (Catechol-O-Methyltransferase val158met Polymorphism Predicts Placebo Effect in Irritable Bowel Syndrome) purports to have found a gene variant that correlates strongly with a placebo response in irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). The study is small and preliminary, but the results are interesting and do raise important questions about placebo responses. Researchers are increasingly trying to tease apart...
Iron supplements for fatigue
How are you feeling today? Tired? Is it your active lifestyle wearing you down? Or is it a sign of something more serious? Complaints about fatigue seem ubiquitous. Perhaps it’s a product of a culture with little downtime. Yet from a medical perspective, fatigue can’t be dismissed with a simple instruction to “get more sleep”. When approached in the pharmacy, I take...
Therapy or Injury? Your Tax Dollars at Work.
The U.S. Army Medical Command recently announced a job opening in the Interdisciplinary Pain Management Center at the San Antonio Military Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston, Texas. Two GS-12 positions were advertised for acupuncturists at a salary of $68,809 to $89,450. As a licensed acupuncturist, a candidate would be expected to offer a full array of the most current and emerging evidenced based...
NCCAM manipulates spinal manipulation
“Complementary and alternative medicine,” as pediatrician and fellow blogger John Snyder aptly stated in a recent journal article on CAM and children, is a term used to describe a disparate, poorly defined set of practices and treatment modalities presumed to be distinct from so-called ‘conventional medicine’. As we have discussed here at Science-Based Medicine, this amorphous concept facilitates a convenient fluidity in delineating...
Systemic Enzyme Therapy
One of the recurrent themes in alternative medicine is the practice of simplifying complex medical conditions, and then offering up equally simple solutions which are positioned as still being within the realm of science. This approach allows the practitioner to ignore all of the complexity and difficulty of practicing real medicine, yet offer nostrums that, on first glance, can sound legitimate. Science-y,...
The Marino Center for Integrative Health: Hooey Galore
Two weeks ago I promised that I would discuss the Marino Center for Integrative Health, identified in the recent Bravewell report as having a “hospital affiliation” with the Newton-Wellesley Hospital (NWH) in Newton, Massachusetts, which is where I work. I also promised in that post that I’d provide examples of ‘integrative medicine’ practitioners offering false information about the methods that they endorse. I’d...
Is gluten the new Candida?
Celiac disease and non-celiac gluten sensitivity are very different things. The former has a large, visible, well-understood scientific foundation that is lacking in the latter.
What Is Traditional Chinese Medicine?
Traditional Chinese Medicine is not actual medicine, and should not be treated as such. It has more in common with Galen's theory of the four humors than anything a doctor would recognize today.
Acupuncture, the Navy, and Faulty Thinking
A Navy neurologist, Capt. Elwood Hopkins, has posted a 3-part article on “The Power of Acupuncture” on Navy Medicine Live, the official blog of Navy and Marine Corps Health Care. It can serve as a useful lesson in how not to think about medicine. It is a prime example of how an intelligent, educated doctor can be fooled and can fool himself...
Strains, sprains and pains
What do you think would happen if you gave a bunch of “complementary and alternative medicine” practitioners access to a big pot of money — say, up to $10,000 per patient — and let them treat patients virtually without restriction, hampered only by a fee schedule. No utilization review, no refusal based on a treatment being “experimental” — none of the usual...