SfSBM Blog
I was consulted recently for a patient with advanced HIV disease who was admitted with pneumonia. She is stable with her disease, but her immune system is suboptimal. The CD4's, for those of you in the know, are hovering around 100. Her father and husband developed an upper respiratory infection and she had to take care of them both
She knew that she needed to protect herself from acquiring their illness so she took Airborne.
THE POWERLESSNESS OF POSITIVE THINKING. "According to a great deal of research, positive fantasies may lessen your chances of succeeding."
Pa. couple sent to prison for 2nd prayer death of child " A couple who believed in faith-healing were sentenced Wednesday to 3½ to seven years in prison in the death of a second child who was sick but didn't see a doctor."
Chiropractic Webinar Will Revel (sic, maybe not) How You Can Steal Your Competitors Patients Legally. I would wonder about those who offer it and those who would sign up.
I like to refer to Portland (Oregon, not Maine) and its environs is the great Pacific NW. Seattle, of course, is excluded in that designation. Just need to be clear. Over the years Oregon has been a leader in environmental issues and great beer, two of the many reasons I like to live here.
Unfortunately, Oregon is also at the top of the list for unvaccinated Kindergartners. It is a sobering graphic with more than 6% of Oregonian exempt from vaccine for non-medical reasons. You can see what the rates are for your state and gloat accordingly.
This entry does not address an issue related to pseudo-medicine, but will likely inform future decisions related to the site and how it will be run.
Anyone who spends time on the web is aware that there are some, well, interesting people who excel at disrupting conversations. We call them trolls and one will probably descend on this site in the future.
I have numerous alerts set up to see what is new each day in the world of complementary and alternative pseudo-medicines. There some patterns I think I see, but have not investigated in a rigorous manner, so could all be bias. Chiropractic practice building seems more common than Chiropractic research, at least considering what Google alerts serves up.
Lists are popular as well, although I tend to run across those on my Zite feed. As an example, 5 Unique Wellness Tips From Other Cultures. It was number 5 that peaked by curiosity: Earthing/Grounding.
Medical trials are complicated. There is not only the treatment being evaluated, but there is the complex, dare I say it, biopsychosocial components of the interaction that can make efficacy difficult to determine. Interactions between the patient and the medical-industrial complex can all sorts of benefits and detriments even when there is no change in the underlying physiology.
People will usually perceive themselves as improved after a positive intervention with a provider. At its core it is probably no different than when a parent kisses an injury to make it better.
It is in part why we do placebo controlled clinical trials. They are not treatment vrs placebo/sham treatment. They are the entirety of the medical experience plus treatment vrs the entirety of the medical experience plus placebo/sham.
CVS, the second biggest pharmacy chain in the US, is no longer selling tobacco products as of October 1. They will lose 2 billion a year in sales as a result.
That’s a good thing for an industry that is ostensibly in health care.
“As the delivery of healthcare evolves with an emphasis on better health outcomes, reducing chronic disease and controlling costs, CVS Caremark is playing an expanded role in providing care,” Larry J. Merlo, the president and chief executive officer, said in a statement. “Put simply, the sale of tobacco products is inconsistent with our purpose.”
and
“Making cigarettes available in pharmacies in essence ‘renormalizes’ the product by sending the subtle message that it cannot be all that unhealthy if it is available for purchase where medicines are sold,” the company’s chief medical officer, Dr. Troyen Brennan, wrote in a new article in the Journal of the American Medical Assn.
And yet.
“There is really no such thing as alternative medicine, just medicine that works and medicine that doesn’t.”
So much of the alternative medicine world can be almost be dismissed out of hand on the basis of prior plausibility. Rieki, Homeopathy, Reflexology, Chromatotherapy are not based on reality and should not have any effect once bias is removed. Other interventions are simply forms of exercise that are called alternative medicine, like tai-chi.
There is one intervention that is neither intrinsically ludicrous nor a rebranding of a standard practices: botanicals. While the provenance as to why a given botanical is recommended for a given problem can be sketchy, plants often have valuable and effective chemicals to fight many diseases and improve life. Like coffee and caffeine.
Chiropractic ranks second on ‘Forbes’ magazine list. "In yet another indication that the profession is poised for continued success, chiropractic offices were recently second on a Forbes magazine list of the “20 most-profitable industries and their pretax margins.”" Although chiropractors have highest student loan default rate of any first profession health care field, the actual rate is quite small, at about 1.1%.
Public editor: Homeopath’s advice needs to be balanced. I might suggest that given homeopathy is not reality based, there is no need for balance, any more than you need astrologers in an astronomy report or alchemists in a story on chemistry.
Homeopath develops treatment based on personality. Given what is in homeopathy, it is only used on people with no personality?
Peasant Woman: Well, how’d you become a doctor, then? King Arthur: The Homeopathic Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur. That is why I am your doctor. Dennis the Peasant: Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of medicine. Supreme medical power derives from scientific inquiry, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony. Arthur: Be quiet! Dennis the Peasant: You can’t expect to wield medical power just ’cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!
Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Sort of.
Good satire can be indistinguishable from reality. The Onion does it all the time and sometimes their articles show up in my feed and I think they are legitimate.
When I saw the headline “Prince Charles tells skeptics “Be more scientific except homeopathy” at first I thought it was legit. It wasn’t. But it close enough to reality that it could have been.
Interesting headline: 80-Year-Old Man Paralyzes Women with Acupuncture, Molests Them. It continues:
Seo is also accused of taking off A’s panties and molesting her after paralyzing her with acupuncture needles in the foot, he got access to A after promising to treat her uterus. Another victim, a 22-year-old employee, was also molested after receiving paralyzing acupuncture from Seo.
As one commentator said
I thought paralysis acupuncture was only possible in movies.