I'm right there with you on that one, Chuck.

It seems shoving a hose up your ass and flooding your bowels with water doesn’t have any practical health benefits at all.  Not only that, but according to the study done at Georgetown University, it could have a number of adverse health effects ranging from minor . . . → Read More: New study concludes that “colonic irrigation” does not work and could be damaging.]]>

I'm right there with you on that one, Chuck.

It seems shoving a hose up your ass and flooding your bowels with water doesn’t have any practical health benefits at all.  Not only that, but according to the study done at Georgetown University, it could have a number of adverse health effects ranging from minor stuff like nausea, cramping, and bloating all the way up to renal failure and possibly even death:

Lead author Dr. Ranit Mishori, a physician at the university, said, “There can be serious consequences for those who engage in colon cleansing whether they have the procedure done at a spa or perform it at home.”

She added, “Colon cleansing products in the form of laxatives, teas, powders and capsules … tout benefits that don’t exist.”

The report, which looked at 20 previous studies on colonic irrigation published in medical literature over the past decade, said that as well as no evidence of any benefits, the spas and clinics administering the treatment have no significant medical training.

via Colonic irrigation does not work, US scientists say | Herald Sun.

Of course this really shouldn’t be news. The idea of showering the inside of your shitter stretches all the way back to the ancient Egyptians and it maintained a certain level of popularity among the medical community right up until the early 20th century. Around 1919 a publication in the Journal of the American Medical Association dismissed the theory of “auto-intoxication” — which colonics were supposed to be a treatment for — as being full of shit. Colonics soon fell out of favor with most people with the exception of fans of some very kinky fetish porn. There is one situation in which a colonic is still performed by the medical industry today and that’s usually just prior to a colonoscopy, but the idea of doing it to cleanse the body of “toxins” is pure [bull]shit.

Which, of course, means it’s enjoying a comeback among proponents of “alternative medicine” hence why the folks at Georgetown University felt the need to take another look at the research done on it. And that is at best a waste of time as the Alties are unlikely to be swayed by a report from scientists that disputes anything they hold dear.

Still, it never hurts to try and talk sense to the woo-beholden among us. Every once and a while one of them might listen.

Researchers are warning that popular herbs and supplements, including St. John’s wort and even garlic and ginger, do not mix well with common heart drugs and can also . . . → Read More: New study warns that herbal supplements and medicines don’t always mix well.]]> What’s the harm, the question goes, if herbal supplements don’t actually help cure anything? Well, they could kill you if you’re on certain types of real medications:

Researchers are warning that popular herbs and supplements, including St. John’s wort and even garlic and ginger, do not mix well with common heart drugs and can also be dangerous for patients taking statins, blood thinners and blood pressure medications.

St. John’s wort raises blood pressure and heart rate, and garlic and ginger increase the risk of bleeding in patients on blood thinners, the researchers said. Even grapefruit juice can be risky, increasing the effects of calcium-channel blockers and statins, they said.

via Vital Signs – Study Warns That Some Supplements and Medicine Do Not Mix – NYTimes.com.

People don’t tend to think of herbs as being a type of chemical, but they are and they can have an impact on any other chemicals you might be taking:

The paper includes a list of more than two dozen herbal products that patients should approach with caution, as well as a list of common drug-herb interactions. Among the products listed are ginkgo biloba, ginseng and echinacea, as well as some surprises like soy milk and green tea — both of which can decrease the effectiveness of warfarin — and even aloe vera and licorice.

The abstract to the paper will get your attention:

More than 15 million people in the U.S. consume herbal remedies or high-dose vitamins. The number of visits to providers of complementary and alternative medicine exceeds those to primary care physicians, for annual out-of-pocket costs of $30 billion. Use of herbal products forms the bulk of treatments, particularly by elderly people who also consume multiple prescription medications for comorbid conditions, which increases the risk of adverse herb-drug-disease interactions. Despite the paucity of scientific evidence supporting the safety or efficacy of herbal products, their widespread promotion in the popular media and the unsubstantiated health care claims about their efficacy drive consumer demand. In this review, we highlight commonly used herbs and their interactions with cardiovascular drugs. We also discuss health-related issues of herbal products and suggest ways to improve their safety to better protect the public from untoward effects.

Visits to so-called complementary and alternative medicine practitioners exceeds those to primary care physicians? Really? Have we all gone that nuts? The $30 billion a year in money wasted doesn’t surprise me that much, we’ve been a nation willing to waste tons of money on shit that doesn’t work for quite a while now, but the fact that the woo-woo practitioners are seeing more people simply shocks me.

Given that they’re talking about health effects from supplements made from a single herb, consider what that means when you take something like (We-Can’t-Say-It-Cures-Colds-Anymore-But-It-Kinda-Does-Wink-Wink) Airborne which contains a shit load of herbs and vitamins. According to the official site it has the following in it: Vitamins A, C, and E, Zinc, Selenium, Manganese, Magneisum, Riboflavin, Amino Acids, and a proprietary herbal blend that includes Lonicera, Forsythia, Schizonepeta, Ginger, Chinese Vitex, Isatis and Echinacea.

That’s quite the mix and you have no idea what the dosages are for most of the ingredients. Consider that it contains 5,000 units of Vitamin A per tablet and you are encouraged to take five tablets a day or more. Did I mention that taking more than 10,000 units of Vitamin A a day is considered unsafe? Not to mention that it also contains high doses of Vitamin C which can lead to kidney stones, among other problems. Combine that with the fact that several of its components are known to interact with legit medicines and you could be doing quite a bit of harm by taking it.

But hey, it was created by a school teacher and they know better than any stupid old doctor what’s best to put in your body, right?

He tried yoga, hypnotherapy, acupuncture, pickled . . . → Read More: All the world’s woo-woo couldn’t cure man of his hiccups.]]> As if we needed yet more proof that homeopathy, acupuncture, and all the rest of the woo-woo “alternative” medicines don’t really help, here’s a story about a man who suffered from the hiccups for years until he was finally cured after doctors removed a tumor from his brain stem:

He tried yoga, hypnotherapy, acupuncture, pickled plums, mustard, vinegar and every single way you could imagine to drink water but now Chris Sands, the man who suffered hiccups for over two and a half years, has finally been cured.

[...] Mr Sands, who is an aspiring musician and lives in Timberland near Woodhall Spa in Lincolnshire, first got the hiccups in September 2006 and, after a few days, began searching for a diagnosis.

After finding that hiccups could be linked to brain tumours, he went to visit a doctor.

“They said, ‘don’t worry about it, it’s probably just linked to your heartburn, here’s some Gaviscon’,” he said.

The hiccups went away but returned for good in February 2007.

What followed was a two-year search for something to stop the hiccups that took him to the other side of the world.

“When you first tell people about the hiccups they do laugh straight away and I suppose they don’t think about how debilitating it is.

“It has ruined my life pretty much.”

I’ve boldfaced an important bit of text in the quote above. It’s important because Mr. Sands’ initial concern that it might be brain tumor ultimately turned out to be correct. When the hiccups returned in 2007 he should have gone back his doctor’s office and asked that they do a more in-depth examination.

Instead he decided to try just about every form of “alternative” medicine he could find and made a few TV appearances along the way. One show in Japan invited him back after their initial story about him generated some 500 suggested cures from viewers. It was during that visit that his true problem was found:

Straight off the plane, his first day was spent with a hiccup specialist who had been studying the condition for years.

It was there that he underwent the MRI scan that revealed the tumour.

The man who diagnosed Mr Sands in Japan, Dr Condo, said: “CT scans are extremely poor at detecting in this area – unless you use an MRI scan you won’t be able to detect it.

“If they had done an MRI scan in England, they probably would have found it.”

But Chris is not angry about the way he way was treated.

In fact, despite being offered the opportunity to have the operation in Japan, he chose to return to England.

“Everyone else seems to mean harm to the NHS for various reasons but I really don’t.

“They probably should have done [an MRI exam] but it just never happened.

“I don’t blame anyone and I got treated well no matter where I went.”

Think on that for a moment. Two years of constant hiccuping and trying all manner of oddball treatments and a simple MRI scan was all it took to find the problem. A tumor that, had it continued to go untreated, likely would’ve killed him before too much longer.

Mr. Sands underwent surgery that removed most of the tumor and his hiccups have largely subsided, though he still gets occasional bouts from time to time. His doctor’s made a mistake in not taking the condition seriously in the beginning, but Mr. Sands made a mistake in not insisting they take it seriously and opting to try any ridiculous idea that came along. I can only imagine the desperation he must have felt that probably drove him to trying anything he could, but two years is a long time to suffer for want of insisting your doctor refer you to a specialist. Stick to the stuff that’s been shown to work. The “alternatives” are a waste of time and money.

Echinacea for colds. Ginkgo biloba for memory. Glucosamine and chondroitin for arthritis. Black cohosh . . . → Read More: Ten years and $2.5 billion shows “alternative” medicines don’t cure jack shit.]]> In news that will likely fail to dissuade folks who buy into the whole alternative medicine nonsense, the report from the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine says that just about every alternative treatment they tried failed to produce results:

Echinacea for colds. Ginkgo biloba for memory. Glucosamine and chondroitin for arthritis. Black cohosh for menopausal hot flashes. Saw palmetto for prostate problems. Shark cartilage for cancer. All proved no better than dummy pills in big studies funded by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. The lone exception: ginger capsules may help chemotherapy nausea.

As for therapies, acupuncture has been shown to help certain conditions, and yoga, massage, meditation and other relaxation methods may relieve symptoms like pain, anxiety and fatigue.

All it took was ten years and $2.5 billion in taxpayer money despite the fact that many other independent studies have already shown this to be the case. So will the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, which I still have a hard time believing is a government run organization, shut down and admit that there’s nothing to this nonsense? Of course not. They plan to spend even more money studying even more ridiculous claims:

However, the government also is funding studies of purported energy fields, distance healing and other approaches that have little if any biological plausibility or scientific evidence.

Taxpayers are bankrolling studies of whether pressing various spots on your head can help with weight loss, whether brain waves emitted from a special “master” can help break cocaine addiction, and whether wearing magnets can help the painful wrist problem, carpal tunnel syndrome.

The acupressure weight-loss technique won a $2 million grant even though a small trial of it on 60 people found no statistically significant benefit — only an encouraging trend that could have occurred by chance. The researcher says the pilot study was just to see if the technique was feasible.

What the fuck? Why are we wasting money on crap that has no basis in science?

“You expect scientific thinking” at a federal science agency, said R. Barker Bausell, author of “Snake Oil Science” and a research methods expert at the University of Maryland, one of the agency’s top-funded research sites. “It’s become politically correct to investigate nonsense.”

Oh, that’s why.

Look, I’m all for testing of “alternative” medicines and therapies that could plausibly have some scientific basis. Echinacea for colds is a good example. Asprin comes from willow bark so it was entirely possible there might have been something in echinacea that could affect colds. We tested it. It doesn’t do squat. Put it aside and move on. But brain waves being emitted by a “master” to cure cocaine addiction? Fuck me, but that’s stupid.

“There’s not all the money in the world and you have to choose” what most deserves tax support, said Barrie Cassileth, integrative medicine chief at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

“Many of the studies that have been funded I would not have funded because they seem irrational and foolish — studies on distant healing by prayer and energy healing, studies that are based on precepts and ideas that are contrary to what is known in terms of human physiology and disease,” she said.

Exactly! Let’s apply a little of the scientific knowledge we already have on how the universe works and prioritize based on how plausible a particular treatment might be. The further away from established theories a proposed treatment is the lower on the priority list it should be when it comes time to test.

So why are we wasting time and money on the implausible shit? Because the board that runs this agency is well populated with people who buy into the alternative medicine bullshit. Not only are they in control, but even when a study shows something doesn’t work they refused to state that fact plainly preferring to hide behind the “more research is needed” cop out:

However, critics say that unlike private companies that face bottom-line pressure to abandon a drug that flops, the federal center is reluctant to admit a supplement may lack merit — despite a strategic plan pledging not to equivocate in the face of negative findings.

Echinacea is an example. After a large study by a top virologist found it didn’t help colds, its fans said the wrong one of the plant’s nine species had been tested. Federal officials agreed that more research was needed, even though they had approved the type used in the study.

“There’s been a deliberate policy of never saying something doesn’t work. It’s as though you can only speak in one direction,” and say a different version or dose might give different results, said Dr. Stephen Barrett, a retired physician who runs Quackwatch, a web site on medical scams.

Critics also say the federal center’s research agenda is shaped by an advisory board loaded with alternative medicine practitioners. They account for at least nine of the board’s 18 members, as required by its government charter. Many studies they approve for funding are done by alternative therapy providers; grants have gone to board members, too.

“It’s the fox guarding the chicken coop,” said Dr. Joseph Jacobs, who headed the Office of Alternative Medicine, a smaller federal agency that preceded the center’s creation. “This is not science, it’s ideology on the part of the advocates.”

Basically it’s the practitioners of woo-woo nonsense making more than a few bucks on the taxpayer’s dime while they busy themselves with shifting the goalposts so as to never have to say it doesn’t work. The rest of the article goes on to list off defenses by the foxes guarding the chickens, but it’s all bullshit. Not only have there been many independent studies that show this stuff doesn’t work, but even with 10 years these guys have yet to come up with anything that is clearly beneficial. There are several studies that show taking herbal supplements can interfere with legitimate drugs such as those used by cancer patients. Additionally the actual contents of a particular supplement can vary wildly between different manufacturers and can contain all sorts of potentially harmful contaminates.

This agency needs to be revamped. Get rid of the True Believers™ and staff it with qualified people capable of running proper studies and then prioritize based on the plausibility of a particular treatment. Do the study, release the results, and move on to the next one. Line ‘em up and knock ‘em down and then start putting the pushers of the shit that doesn’t work out of business. If a particular treatment shows some applicability in some area (e.g. ginger to treat nausea, which has been pretty well established) then that’s great! Use it for that purpose and stop selling it as a cure-all.