A great day for science!
The British Chiro Association tried to take down Simon for criticising their quackery and they lost. Let’s hope they pay through the nose.
[size=130]Science writer Simon Singh wins bitter libel battle[/size]
After reading all these post I wanted to post my own experience.
I was personally afraid of seeing a chiropractor. I DID NOT WANT TO DO IT. But I had done EVERYTHING else. And I mean everything. There was nothing that I had not tried before I went and saw my chrio AND NOTHING WORKED for me. I took an obscene amount of medicine which lowered my blood pressure, made me tired, and almost no functioning. The only thing that has given me even a little relief has been going to see a Chiropractor and the suggestions that he has given me - which are being organic, being more RAW than anything else and getting rid of wheat/gluten. And he and I did have a TOXIN talk and believe you me, I went on a detox for a short time and was so toxic that I broke out in a rash getting the toxins out of my skin. I am currently on no meds except for Klonopin during a bad attack and am doing better than I have in 3 years. So I believe what others have said here - that their are good Chiropractors and bad ones, you just have to make sure you are with a good one that goes out of their way to help you. MIne is now a personal friend of mine and I would recommend him to anyone.
Scott, I beg to differ with your global statement about “all scientists,” unless we redefine “scientist” away from the generally accepted meaning. I say this, I believe, without conflating curiosity with open-mindedness, which hath its limits.
Victoria, I gotta say, I have a reasonable amount of scientific training (MS/MEd, couple-three minor scholarly pubs, etc) but I also have a foot firmly in the “alternative” field. I have both given and received benefit–and I don’t seem to respond particularly strongly to placebo interventions–from a number of them.
Many, many years ago, I fixed a problem by either drinking the tea or breathing the steam (I forget which) from some foul Chinese herbs, prescribed by a trad Chinese med practitioner whom I went to after unsuccessfully trying both OTC and prescription drugs, followed by a stab at acupuncture, for some damn thing or other;
I have benefited and provided benefit from a variety of relatively standard massage techniques, particularly effleurage and pandiculation;
Ditto cranio-sacral therapy;
Ditto Structural Integration, Ida Rolf’s legacy.
I’ve benefited from Yoga and Tai Chi (Qi Gong, though, clangs my BS detector);
and lots more. I even spent four years training in neo-Reichian therapy, on top of mainstream counseling and coursework in Family Systems. (I personally explored all manner of cockamamie psychotherapeutic interventions, to various degrees of benefit–including–and this one’s extremely logical–a great first experience at downhill skiing.)
David
Hi David,
I would think that most scientists are curious and wanting to delve into the unknown, especially those that work in labs. Of course I can’t speak for every single person who declares themselves a scientist. The whole point of being a scientist is to explore the unknown using experimentation/ clinical trials to work out what’s really going on and/ or what actually works.
I also have a foot firmly in the “alternative” field. I have both given and received benefit–and I don’t seem to respond particularly strongly to placebo interventions–from a number of them.
How do you know that you did not respond to the placebo effect? We all respond in some way to placebo no matter what the education level is. The great thing about treatments that actually work is that we get both an effective treatment AND a placebo effect. A double whammy. I still fail to understand why people love the word “alternative”. It’s not logical. If something works it becomes medicine and a real treatment. Most of these “alternatives” have been put to the test and perform no better than placebo. As Victoria has said, we don’t fly on planes with an alternative pilot in the cockpit or seek out the advice of an alternative mechanic when the first guy doesn’t get it right with an engine tune-up. It makes absolutely no sense.
I have no doubt you felt better from some of the therapies you listed. Yoga, Tai Chi and meditation for example make perfect sense in making for a healthier stronger body. Nothing woo about these modalities in making a difference to strength and health and increasing threshold for migraine attacks. But when we start heading into things like cranio-sacral, that’s woo country to me. I’m sure it feels nice and is very enjoyable but I would put any benefit down to relaxation and placebo for something like that until evidence proves otherwise. Never heard of Reichian therapy.
Scott
Hi David,
I’ve been off the board for a couple of days. I’m not sure what you mean by/what triggered your comment to me here:
Victoria, I gotta say, I have a reasonable amount of scientific training (MS/MEd, couple-three minor scholarly pubs, etc) but I also have a foot firmly in the “alternative” field. I have both given and received benefit–and I don’t seem to respond particularly strongly to placebo interventions–from a number of them.
Cheers
Vic
Hi, Vic.
I believe I was responding to
"I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - you wouldn’t trust your car to an ‘alternative’ mechanic so why would you trust your body with some un (or self) accredited ‘alternative’ therapist? "
Of course, chiropractors do have their own accreditation. And osteopathic manipulation is not practiced uniformly. For instance, for a number of years, I’ve patronized Stephen Blood, who’s probably the most reputable DO in the D.C. metro area, someone whose practice serves as a regular rotation for students. He does not begin a session with massage. Now and again, moreover, he has manipulated my neck, in the chiro sense. (Not one of my favorite things, either.)
And then . . . I’ve sure suffered misdiagnosis and bloody useless treatments at the hands of reputable MDs, as well. How many members of this board who achieved reasonable success following migraine regimens had first been diagnosed with or treated as having Meniere’s or something else?
I’m certainly not claiming that I can’t be hoodwinked by quacks; I know I have been. However, I think that it’s the evidence of effectiveness that ultimately matters. Certainly I and various docs were convinced when a neurotologist asserted that I must have Meniere’s because here are the test results showing elevated inner ear pressure.
Scott, I agree that everyone may be subject to placebo response. (Have you read The Mighty Placebo?) All I know is that I have been fully convinced that treatment x, y, or z will work and then observed zero benefit.
Hi David,
This is really an interesting area for discussion - it’s getting me thinking, which is a good thing (or not, depending on your point of view :lol: ).
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Accreditation - this on its own doesn’t impress me. For example, I have a friend who studied for several years to become (and now is) an officially accredited homeopath. Does all this study and accreditation mean that Homeopathy actually works? No, it doesn’t. Ditto Irridology, Bach flower rememdies etc. All the accreditation means is that the person is accredited - accreditation doesn’t confer validity on the treatment itself. Now, for Chiropractic the same applies - except that Chiropractic can actually help; with back problems. An accredited Chiropractor, no matter how good they are or how reputable the accreditation is cannot cure (or assist in the management of) asthma, colic, eating disorders, colds and flu, eczma, brain tumours, cancer or pretty much anything not connected with back problems.
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Quality of the MD. Of course there are good and bad doctors, like in any profession. But this shouldn’t make us dismiss medicine itself. Just because one or two mechanics couldn’t fix my car doesn’t mean I dismiss motor mechanics in general and instead turn to chiropractic mechanics or chakra wheel aligment. In the same way it would be foolish to say “well, Doctors X and Y coudln’t help me so clearly ‘Medicine’ is not the answer and I will instead get some Reflexology as that worked for my neighbour’s uncle when he felt queer and had a nasty turn”.
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Diagnosis. Given how weird MAV and migraine is I am not at all surprised that people get misdiagnosed all the time. In fact, I’d suggest that the majority of people on this board spent a long time (many years for many of us) being seen by a range of health professionals before getting a diagnosis. I don’t blame the medical profession for this - I blame migraine. I’d be very surprised if CAM practitioners had any better success in diagnosis for MAV and migraine.
In summary, the fact is migraine is a very varied and mysterious illness. It is incredibly frustrating for those of us who suffer with it to spend so long getting a correct diagnosis and so long getting effective treatment. I don’t think any of that however means that medicine has ‘failed’ or is somehow at fault. Medical science is fully aware that it does not have all the answers which is why they need to keep researching (and do). I am openly skeptical about any CAM therapies which claim to have answers which medicine doesn’t have, which come from ‘ancient wisdom’, centuries of confirmation bias and/or anecdote or were dreamed up by someone a couple of hundred years ago.
Bottom line, if someone gets Acupuncture, Irridology, Chiropractic, takes a pill, sees a doctor or whatever and walks out feeling better than when they walked in then I say happy days all round. Where it concerns me is when people (either patients or practitioners) get evangelical about a particular treatment and insist it is ‘The Way’. If that were really true then boards like this would not exist. There’d be no threads like “Anyone had success with Topamax?” or “Which foods should I avoid?” or “Good results after titrating to 150mg on Prothiaden”. I think we all have to accept that there just is no one easy answer for migraine/MAV - not because Medicine has failed but because everyone’s brain, triggers and so on are different. We need customised care. I have in my mind a picture of a sound engineer tinkering with one of those mixing desks - you know - about 50 different buttons all of which have to be endlessly adjusted to get just the right sound.
Yours in a crazy mixed up migraine world,
Vic
Vic, there are people subjecting this bushwa to serious scientific study. For example, the craniosacral possible hokum that I enjoyed and studied was looked at here: clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT0 … ral&rank=3 with osteos performing the treatment. No paper as yet, but I believe it is not the first NCCAM-funded study of craniosacral motility/manipulation.
David,
It doesn’t look like a very strong study with just 20 subjects and being single-blinded (impossible to be double-blinded). No published results yet. There is no end in sight for studies popping up testing some of these modalities over an over again. Acupuncture is still being examined and with better study design and greater numbers of subjects lately. It is quite clear that is just a placebo effect yet the studies will continue. I wish these people would just realise and accept what the effect is (placebo/relaxation) and move on to something new.
Scott
ps I can see that perhaps walking ability might improve in these subjects just as physiotherapy might achieve the same results but not in improving lung function. There’s no plausibilty in that secondary outcome unless we buy into subluxation theory IMO.
Walking, . . but not lung function? Ah, there’s (you should forgive the expression) the rub. When I don’t walk freely it’s harder to breathe freely & vv.
Hi David,
I’m no expert and this is just off the top of my head (i.e I’m not even part way through my first cup of tea for the day) but I think there’s a difference between lung function and lung constriction. Lung function sits with the lungs themselves and is affected by things like level of aerobic fitness, smoking, asthma, bronchitis etc whereas lung constriction would be as a result of “external” factors such as a back (and therefore ribs) being “out”.
But as I say, not properly caffienated yet…
Vic
Sounds plausible, if indirectly related. F’rinstance, having started on the road back to aerobic fitness, I notice my posture improving. I do work hard at balancing my exercise; last night I figured out two ways to swim backwards, and I may add them to my pool routine, in addition to alternating front/back, left/right and scissor/flutter/(some)butterfly.
Your first cuppa! Mmmm. Lucky devil. Even bancha, the lowest-caffeine of the greens, still is a bit much for me.
Hi David,
The caffeine thing with me is weird. During my final year of high school I started drinking coffee as a study aid (I didn’t particularly like the taste) but got more migraines so stopped. I had no interest in any hot drinks until a few years ago when I took up drinking soup and tea (not at the same time). I still don’t drink coffee but every morning I have about four big, strong (Texas crude consistency) cups of tea. And that’s just before I leave the house. It doesn’t appear to affect my migraine-ness. I say this not to gloat (Scott for example has said, through gritted teeth “you practically bathe in migraine food triggers” - cheese, nuts, smoked meats, you name it) but just to indicate how weird and unpredictable migraine is. Put me in front of a flickering light though and you’ll have me running for cover.
Vic
Okay, Victoria, I won’t put you in front of a flickering light. (Besides, it would make my sweetie unhappy if I tried to get you under the covers.)
It is weird how different people’s responses are.