Results for: naturopath

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...

/ April 28, 2015

Dr. David Villarreal’s “Holistic Dentistry:” Full of Holes?

I get a lot of e-mails from publicists offering suggestions for articles and interviews with their clients. I quickly delete most of them, but one recently caught my eye. It said that patients travel from as far as Europe and Africa to have California “holistic dentist” Dr. David Villarreal remove the old silver fillings that are damaging their health. He has removed...

/ April 21, 2015

Cancer Centers and Advertising Practices

You have probably seen the TV commercials or other ads for Cancer Treatment Centers of America. They make it sound like “the place to go” if you have cancer. They claim to be “different,” to combine the best cancer technologies with natural therapies in a humane, patient-centered approach that helps you fight the disease and maintain your quality of life. They offer...

/ April 14, 2015

Wikipedia vs Quackery – Standards vs Chaos

Wikipedia, an online open-source encyclopedia, can boast 470 million visitors each month, making it one of the most popular websites on the internet. It is an incredibly useful resource – I think it’s fair to say it is the online reference of record. For that reason people care how topics important to them are represented in Wikipedia. Wikipedia, in fact, has become...

/ April 8, 2015

How should the FDA regulate homeopathic remedies?

The FDA announced recently that it is holding a public hearing on April 21 and 22, to obtain information and comments from stakeholders about the current use of human drug and biological products labeled as homeopathic, as well as the Agency’s regulatory framework for such products. These products include prescription drugs and biological products labeled as homeopathic and over-the-counter (OTC) drugs labeled...

/ April 2, 2015

Angelina Jolie, surgical strategies for cancer prevention, and genetics denialism (revisited)

Sometimes, weird things happen when I’m at meetings. For example, I just got home from the Society of Surgical Oncology (SSO) meeting in Houston over the weekend. Now, one thing I like about this meeting is that, unlike so many other meetings these days—cough, cough, ASCO, I’m looking at you—at the SSO there wasn’t a single talk I could find about “complementary...

/ March 30, 2015

Lyme: Two Worlds Compared and Contrasted

The practice of infectious disease (ID) is both easy and difficult. If you read my ID blog on Medscape you are aware of my trials and tribulations in diagnosing and treating infections. ID is easy since, at least in theory, diseases have patterns and an infecting organism has a predictable epidemiology and life cycle. So if you can recognize the pattern and...

/ March 20, 2015

The DC as PCP? Drug Wars Resume

Chiropractors are once again engaged in intra-fraternal warfare over the chiropractic scope of practice, a saga we’ve chronicled before on SBM. (See the references at end of this post.) Every time it looks like the warring factions have buried their differences, they come rising to the surface like zombies. The International Chiropractors Association (ICA), representing the “straight” faction, wants chiropractic to continue...

/ March 19, 2015

ND Confession, Part 1: Clinical training inside and out

Despite claims to the contrary, a naturopathic education is not comparable to that of a physician, and the biggest gap is in clinical training after classroom instruction ends.

/ March 13, 2015

Mind Over Matter: The Brain’s Way of Healing

In 2008 I wrote about neuroplasticity as presented in Norman Doidge’s book The Brain That Changes Itself. I urge you to click on the link and read what I wrote there before you continue. The science is fascinating. The brain is far more malleable than we once thought. Areas of the cortex devoted to a sensory input shrink when that input is...

/ March 10, 2015