The CAM Thread

[thesummerqueen]

Who will offer 'Chiropractic' solutions to her problems...
Is she interested in Yoga?? Hatha yoga in particular?

silly Rhythm what do you think a good chiropractor is?? "Medical science" is just woo woo. imho. BUT having said that you can get a very good medical practitioner who has enough experience and expertise to help you sort out your health issues. Then again you are just as likely to get one that only diagnoses from the pharmaceutical catalogues. meh

And NO medical practitioner or "medical science" has found a cure for Cancer or any of the myriad of 'Terminal diseases' that afflict mankind. There are only 'band-aid' solutions until you die from the pain-killer overdoses.

Kichi –

There’s a lot I want to address about CAM that will have to wait for another time. The forums seem to be giving both of my computers a lot of grief (yes, IT nerds, I’ve already cleared out caches and Adrian has done a few connection tests so we’re not sure what it is) so my answers will be few and far between as it’s hard enough to try and get online even to make a quick mod-ly perusal.

I’m going to start with Chiropractic, as it’s the thing being discussed at the moment.

Before we go any further, I’d like to direct everyone’s attention to two articles. There are several others, some far better and more indepth, but I think these do the trick explaining in the most concise ways where Chiro came from and what it’s principles are. Both are also fully sourced, which is much more than you will find on many CAM websites.

http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4042

http://www.skepdic.com/chiro.html

As far as I can tell, while there seem to be a few benefits associated with chiro, they are all similar to what you would receive under a licensed physical therapist. I seem to be reading that these chiropractors do not have to meet the same medical licenses and standards that PT’s and massage therapists do. That sends up red flags to me, as many different types of CAM also do not have to be put under a medical board because they’re not real medicine. Just because there are some similar benefits does not make it “ok” – whatever you think of EBM (evidence-based medicine, as we like to call it), there most certainly ARE rules and regulations in place so that if someone commits malpractice they can be taken to task for it and lose their license. This is not true in CAM. This allows chiropractors to call their work whatever they want, to base it on whatever they want, and you will thrive or suffer solely on whether or not the treatments they make happen to coincide with *good* health practices or not. This, as compared to EBM, where trials HAVE to be made to show that there is effectiveness before it gets used on humans, then mass-marketed.

The worst thing I have ever heard is that chiropractors will work on babies. Babies do not even have fully formed bones, and you are cracking them? What for?

The main problem seems to be that you mistrust modern medicine, which, while I love you, is crap.

Yes, doctors are over-worked. I stated an example as to why, but with increasing populations and ever-increasing technology, those who must keep up with tech (be it equipment or pharmaceuticals) must also work harder than ever, and they are only human. They also have to deal with humans – and we rabble can be frustrating and ignorant. How would you feel if someone brought you or Zen a sick plant or bike and you said it was an easy common sense fix but they kept coming up with bullshit claims or denying your advice?

To complain that medical science is woo-woo is to denigrate all of the vaccines and antibiotics people are developing, and worrying about developing, because they actually WANT to do good on this earth. It means complaining about all of the people who do research – including cancer research! – to fix today’s and tomorrow’s problems. Saying that it hasn’t cured cancer yet must be some sort of fallacy, and I can’t think of which right now. It’s like complaining back in the day that medicine shouldn’t have progressed in a scientific manner because they couldn’t figure out small pox. Wtf? So because the killer of our time hasn’t been cured yet, we should flip off the good they ARE doing? Should we have stayed at the height of medicine in the colonial period? Cancer is not one sort of disease to pin down and understand. There are no simple answers.

Personal rant: to everyone who passes along those messages to raise breast cancer awareness by making ambiguously lewd status messages along the lines of the “bra color” status that reached the news:

That does not raise awareness. Nor does buying pink ribbons or pink colored desk crap or pink-boxed cereal. Send your money to an actual cancer research facility (don’t buy another tchotchke) and set up a support network with your friends to remind each other to check for lumps monthly. Make it a party even – that way everyone’s actually feeling their breasts up; not giggling over how they might have confused a few guys by posting shoe sizes on Facebook.