Results for: acupuncture
The 2nd Yale Research Symposium on Complementary and Integrative Medicine. Part I
March 4, 2010 Today I went to the one-day, 2nd Yale Research Symposium on Complementary and Integrative Medicine. Many of you will recall that the first version of this conference occurred in April, 2008. According to Yale’s Continuing Medical Education website, the first conference “featured presentations from experts in CAM/IM from Yale and other leading medical institutions and drew national and international...
Science-based Chiropractic: An Oxymoron?
I spent 43 years in private practice as a “science-based” chiropractor and a critic of the chiropractic vertebral subluxation theory. I am often asked how I justified practicing as a chiropractor while renouncing the basic tenets of chiropractic. My answer has always been: I was able to offer manipulation in combination with physical therapy modalities as a treatment for mechanical-type back pain—a...
On the “individualization” of treatments in “alternative medicine”
One of the claims most frequently made by “alternative medicine” advocates regarding why alt-med is supposedly superior (or at least equal) to “conventional” medicine and should not be dismissed, regardless of how scientifically improbable any individual alt-med modality may be, is that the treatments are, if you believe many of the practitioners touting them, highly “individualized.” In other words, the “entire patient”...
You. You. Who are you calling a You You?
The YOU Docs, for those of you (YOU?) who are unaware, are Doctors Mehmet Oz and Mike Roizen, authors of books about YOU and a weekly newspaper column called The YOU Docs. It’s all about YOU. There are two areas of the knowledge where I have more than passing understanding: infectious diseases and sCAMs. It always concerns me when I read nonsense...
Be careful what you wish for, Dr. Dossey, you just might get it
If there’s one thing about the so-called “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) movement that I’ve emphasized time and time again, it’s that its adherents have a definite love-hate relationship with science. They hate it because it is the single greatest threat to their beliefs system and the pseudoscience that underlies it. At the same time, they crave the legitimacy that science confers....
Causation and Hill’s Criteria
Causation is not so simple to determine as one would think. A mantra at SBM is ‘association is not causation’ and much of the belief in the efficacy of a variety of quack nostrums occurs because improvement occurs after use of a nostrum, therefore improvement occurs because of use of a nostrum. It is why vaccines as a cause of autism are...
The Graston Technique – Inducing Microtrauma with Instruments
The Graston Technique® is a modification of traditional hands-on soft tissue mobilization that uses specifically designed instruments to allow the therapist to introduce a controlled amount of microtrauma into an area of excessive scar and/or soft tissue fibrosis. The hope is that this will invoke an inflammatory response that will augment the healing process. It is also intended to reduce the stress...
Medical Fun with Christmas Carols
Warning: If you are offended by humor that depends on psychiatric and medical diagnoses, read no further. Disclaimer: Before anyone complains (and in this age of exaggerated political correctness, someone surely will), let me make it clear that I mean no disrespect to people suffering from the illnesses mentioned below. I have the greatest empathy for sick people, and I have encountered...
Evidence in Medicine: Experimental Studies
Several weeks ago I wrote the first in a brief series of posts discussing the different types of evidence used in medicine. In that post I discussed the role of correlation in determining cause and effect. In this post I will discuss the basic features of an experimental study, which can sere as a check-list in evaluating the quality of a clinical...