Results for: Chakras
Massage Therapy rubs me the wrong way
Back in my days of practicing law, one of my escapes from reality was a good massage. It was a great treat, exchanging the high-octane atmosphere of the law office for the soothing music, subdued voices and pastel tones of the treatment room. I could have stayed on that table for hours. Little did I know just how much an escape from...
The “Healing Codes” of Alex Loyd: Energy Healing with Words and Finger Exercises
Alex Loyd’s concept of “Healing Codes” is one of the most bizarre, ridiculous offshoots of so-called energy medicine. Loyd is a naturopath who has been criticized by “Dr. Joe” Schwarcz for recycling old bunk for profit. He claims that illness is due to disturbances in the human energy field and that the cells of our body store destructive energy patterns and all...
Full of Energy
Want to know what a craniosacral treatment is actually like? How about reiki? What about Eden energy medicine – do you even know what that is? Read on, because this past Sunday afternoon I experienced all three. But first, the why and where. The local Healing Arts Alliance of the Big Bend (which is what they call the area of Florida I...
Integrative Medicine Invades the U.S. Military: Part One
Integrative medicine proponents claim superiority over physicians practicing “conventional” medicine. (Which I will refer to as “medicine” so as not to buy into integrative medicine’s implied claim that medicine can be practiced with two separate standards.) While conceding that medicine is good for treating conditions like broken arms and heart attacks, physicians who purport to practice integrative medicine argue it ignores “the...
The regulation of nonsense
The most meticulous regulation of nonsense must still result in nonsense. — Edzard Ernst, M.D., PhD., professor, Complementary Medicine, Peninsula Medical School, University of Exeter, UK One necessity of licensing so-called “complementary and alternative,” or “CAM,” practitioners is to spell out exactly what is encompassed in the CAM scope of practice. This is unfortunate for the practitioners because it forces an exposé...
Adventures in defending science-based medicine in cancer journals: Energy chelation
My co-bloggers and I have spent considerable time and effort over the last four years writing posts for this blog (and I for my not-so-super-secret other blog) bemoaning the infiltration of quackademic medicine into what once were bastions of evidence- and science-based medicine. We’ve discussed at considerable length reasons for why this steady infiltration of pseudoscience into medical academia has been occurring....
Christiane Northrup: more bad medicine
A question popped up on facebook the other day about Dr. Christiane Northrup, an OB/GYN who has been a frequent guest on Oprah. I hadn’t heard much about her for a while, but a foul taste still lingered from previous encounters with her work. So I went over to her website to see what fare she’s currently dishing up. It isn’t pretty....
Pseudoscience In Medical News at the Huffington Post
As many have pointed out, we are in the midst of a transformation in the way news is created, distributed, and monetized – all brought on by the internet. Access to information has dramatically increased, while the traditional news outlets are fading away. The new internet-based outlets that are cropping up are often hybrids that do not fit into any existing definition....
Touch – a Trojan Horse
Touch – Ouch. here they are again. I had planned to post contents of a letter written a decade ago to a Washington Post reporter on why med schools would entertain associating with quacky methods and their advocates. But an article in the SF Chronicle intruded on May 25 on a research project at Stanford on “Healing Touch” (HT). The project is...
Christiane Northrup, MD: Science Tainted with Strange Beliefs
After her daughter left for college, Christiane Northrup, MD, went for a morning walk one day. About halfway through her walk she developed an ache in her throat radiating up into her jaw. It felt like a fist was squeezing her esophagus. It persisted even after she returned home. What would you have done? I think even the average layperson knows that...