You keep citing that acupuncture study. In response I'd quote Dr. Edzard Ernst: “The differences between the results obtained with real and sham acupuncture are small and not clinically relevant. Crucially, they are probably due to residual bias in these studies. Several investigations have shown that the verbal or non-verbal communication between the patient and the therapist is more important than the actual needling. If such factors would be accounted for, the effect of acupuncture on chronic pain might disappear completely.”
+AdrenalineStew I didn't think you could either, but there was a bbc study where they managed to make a double blind study with fake needles. it was really interesting. I think you can find the whole thing on RUclips. It's about an hour long.
+spacebetweennumbers iirc that study found that there was no difference between real acupuncture and false acupuncture where the needles were inserted in the wrong places. They found that sham acupuncture, poking people with wooden toothpicks in the wrong places, was actually the most effective. i.e. neither the use of needles, nor the places on the body that acupuncture is concerned with had any noticeable benefit. Of course as soon as the results were in, the excuses started coming from the acupuncturists who had helped design the study and said had that it was a fair test.
+SarthorS It could be that the tiny wounds created by needles, or toothpicks, release hormones to combat pain, despite the sensations of the pricking being too small for humans to pick up on. That would mean it's sort of an anti-inflammatory response but on a tiny scale.
Thank you so much for this. I had a huge argument with my mother because she wanted to try bloodletting, as in let a non-doctor make various gashes in her body to let out the "dirty blood". Worse was she wanted to have it done on my 85 year old grandmother with circulation problems. I gave nearly the same argument as you, but they won't listen to scientific evidence because "doctors get it wrong all the time" and "this is healing, not medicine" or "it has been done for centuries, it is a tradition". I tried to point out that my grandmother would probably never heal from the wounds (she still has bruises from months ago). Nothing worked except me crying infront of her in complete powerlessness. I give this story to point out how severely dangerous some of these practices are, and how these people take advantage of people's spirituality and ignorance. I'm in Turkey and we still have bloodletting.
Hey, nice video! I have a question about big pharmaceutical companies bribing and paying Doctors to give out drugs that they produce. How big of a problem is that in the U.S.
I would add a third category to your final quote. There is scientifically proven medicine, unproven medicine, and scientifically disproved medicine. There is a difference between something like homeopathy and something that we just don't know enough about yet.
Could you possibly do a full video on carpal tunnel and other wrist issues? It's a very common thing, and I have seen a lot of people giving lots of advice that conflicts and so on, it would be interesting to see a video on that from this channel, and possibly helpful for many.
I'll also throw in the fact that studies now show that in a 5 year follow up between patients who get surgery for lower back pain, or knee pain, there is no statistical significance between those who had no treatment and those who had surgery. yet we still spend tens of thousands of dollars per treatment. it is exactly as you say it. we are simply used to accepting what we are used to.
Cite on the acupuncture study because it wasn't provided in the description: "In the primary analysis including all eligible trials, acupuncture was superior to both sham and no acupuncture control for each pain condition (all p
Studies show things like improved patient teaching reduces readmission, but "conventional medicine" isn't geared to charge for teaching so they don't give nurses time to do it. Research shows having doulas/midwives assisting with births improves outcomes, yet again- insurance has not mechanism for payment so people don't get them.
The terms that matter are proven, not-proven, and disproven. You can trust science over anecdote and tradition every time. Are we getting an infographic of this episode?
too bad medicine has very little in the way of scientific basis. when your so-called medical science does nothing but fail, people look for reports of results. a few find the truth that sets them free of the cause of their illness, a cause medicine is totally blind to.
The proliferation of "alternative medicine" might be partially a result of the fact that few doctors do their own research, as was more common in the past. Also, in your opinion, are doctors influenced by the pharmaceutical industry? I have had general practitioners refuse to consider some methods that actually have been tested. I don't disparage doctors in general, yet they are human. Some percentage of them must be lazy.
I am a medicine student in an university in Spain, and this year I am being taught ob-gyn. In the class about breech birth our teacher brought up the topic of moxibustion and showed us articles that both saying it is usefull and that it´s not, so I wouldn´t think it is that clear that it actually works, but as many of my teachers say: medicine is an almost exact science Articles doubting of the usefullness of moxibustion: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20168104 www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22592693
we have discussed the world of alternative medicines, complementary, traditions, and holistic and about benefits and risks involved in the practices including alternative medicines.
You raise some good points here, but leave a couple important ones out. First, western medical tradition offers very little in the way of nutrition education during a typical medical program. I have heard the statistic that 3 in 4 doctors don't take a single class specializing in nutrition and in these doctors education would be limited to a few hours of instruction in a survey course. This means that most doctors likely get their nutrition information from the same place that "normal" people get it. Second, there is no "broccoli lobby" advocating the benefits of healthy diet and exercise over drugs. Since 1980 (and the Reagan Revolution), the NIH has had to work with a budget that is lower every year as a percentage of the overall economy, meaning that a greater and greater percentage of funding for medicine has been for the patent-able type. Most consumers seem to be quite happy with the fact that their favorite product has "unscientific support" rather than "scientific support" but the people who are standing up for the scientific version seem unwilling to put a foot in the political arena by saying "We actually don't know the answer to that, and here's why." If the evidence-based team could unite behind a global medical initiative to create a world-wide data collection organisation combined with New Deal funding levels for validating industry trials and investigating unpatentable medicines they would be performing a valuable service to both mankind and their industry.
I think the widespread belief is that the majority of US doctors will prescribe one of the following things for any health problem: 1. healthier diet & more exercise 2. prescription medicine 3. surgery That is what most people think of when you say "conventional medicine." You can say that yoga and mediation shouldn't be considered alternative medicine because they have scientific studies that show they have benefits, but until the majority of doctors recognize those benefits and prescribe them as treatment for the appropriate conditions (and the general public is aware that doctors will prescribe such things instead of relying on drugs and surgery) they will remain alternative medicine because they are an alternative to what is usually prescribed. I certainly agree that many - probably most - forms of alternative medicine don't work, but technically they are still medicine because they are treatment for a health condition. (An ineffective treatment is still a kind of treatment.)
+Madee Hornsey There is always science behind everything. Even behind things that don't work. Said science can explain why people believe in this bullshit, and it can explain why the thing itself is bullshit, etc.
Is that acupuncture study looking at straight acupuncture, or the kind where they apply a weak electrical current as well (transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation, or TENS)? I was under the impression that there is some evidence suggesting that TENS might have some effect on pain, but plain old acupuncture does not. But acupuncture proponents love to conflate the two, point at TENS studies and say "See? It's the meridians, I tell you!"
if you get an acupuncture therapist who knows what they're doing, it helps with pain (sore muscles type of pain). when i was in korea, one student's father did an acupuncture session for me, and holy cow was it amazing. turns out he is considered the best therapist in korea. a lot of acupuncturists are quacks though.
jbenvenga Ah, but you'll notice that the success stories are always symptoms like pain, which are highly subjective, depend on self-reporting, and are prone to all kinds of cognitive biases.
Dr. Carroll, could you refrain from referring to all Advanced Life Support as unnecessary or harmful when you actually mean ALS in cardiac arrests specifically? Paramedics provide ALS to a wide variety of emergencies, and I am not aware of studies casting doubt on their necessity in most other circumstances.
Video topic request: what have medicine studies shown about the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of chiropractors? My belief (and some personal experience) is that chiropractors can be effective for treating some neck and back problems, but most of them make ridiculous and lofty claims about being able to cure or at least effectively treat darn near everything. I'm curious to see what the studies say they are actually capable of.
on what basis do you suppose they are effective for only neck and back problems? you have no clue what actual chiropractic is about. it is no more limited to those symptoms than is the nervous system in control of just those areas. get a basic physiology book and learn some fundamentals of how the body works.
As an add-on to your comment about Acupuncture, there has since been follow up studies showing sham acupuncture, while was "pretty good" in the short run, in a 6th month follow up, the statistical significance of real acupuncture was clear, real acupuncture had a much higher rate of pain relief over extended periods of time. Yet people pick and choose which studies they read, which add to the problem of moving more and more well proven modalities such as acupuncture into mainstream acceptance.
What would you call ubiquinone/CoQ10? In Japan, it's approved to treat heart failure, but nowhere else. What about alpha lipoic acid? Approved to treat liver failure in Germany, but nowhere else.
to quote Tim minchin, alternative medicine has either not been proved to work or proved not to work. do you know what we call alternative medicine that has been proved to work? medicine. IMO, we shouldn't be talking about medicine vs alternative medicine, it sound be medicine vs not medicine.
Except people who practice medicine don't always accept things that work soon enough for it to BE medicine. Or other things stand in the way like racist governments whom make stupid laws stopping research before we can find out if something can BE medicine.
Considering the fact that "conventional" medicine is the third leading cause of death in this country, I think making the distinction between conventional and alternative is most useful. People intuitively understand that alternative practitioners aren't likely to kill them.
I'm in DBT and it really helps. But I know I need medication to help with my mental illness. I have rapid cycling bipolar disorder. When I'm manic, I have auditory and visual hallucinations. If I felt comfortable not taking meds, I'd be all for it. But I know what happens when I don't take them. Psych ward visits happen. And I'd rather not deal with that again.
In order: 1) Naturalistic fallacy (ask them to define "natural" and watch the chiropractor or supplement pusher squirm when trying to justify how what they do is "natural" 2) Argument from antiquity (it's really old therefore... wait, no, if anything that makes a medicine MORE LIKELY to be bogus) 3) Argument from popularity (lots of people believe they've been abducted by aliens, too)
Medicine can be divided in to three simple categories - proven to work, unproven to work and disproven to work. By the way, acupuncture is BS. The control groups were crap because the false acupuncture was easy to detect by the patients in many studies. Also the person applying acupuncture knew which was which. This goes to the old saying that "You are not even wrong." However, I think one test could put a hammer on acupuncture and that would simply be puncturing in the wrong points. Acupuncture claims that putting needles at certain points can have a certain effect. So let's mix the points up.
by the way, you're full of b.s.. are you so ignorant that you assume sticking needles into nerves doesn't produce any effect, idiot? the fundamental problem is that like medicine in all it's forms, it doesn't correct the cause, but at least it won't kill you from liver and kidney failure. it was discovered by people far smarter than your medical heroes and certainly far smarter than you.
Whenever people go on about the wonders of Chinese medicine, I always mention the bizarre world of Taoist sexual practices. Not all traditional Chinese medicine is bullshit, but by looking at what _was_ believed you get a sense of the superstitious context in which many practices developed. Then trusting your health to 'a 1000 years of tradition' is much less appealing.
Let food be thy medicine and medicine be that food. So much of what I teach my client is about this very thing, and yet the mindset to switch away from what they have been told is monumental. One person at a time, it will get better!
But this is not true. Therapies with scientific backing is often considered alternative because some doctors find it too alternative. Fibromyalgia is often being diagnosed before testing patients for vitamin D deficiency even though this is known to worsen or be the cause of chronic pain. Vitamin D is hardly controversial, but try to get a vitamin D test in Canada, you'll have to go to a naturopathic doctor or self-pay.
+polyanthesis I could go on. I see a neurologist for headaches, and I have a Magnesium IV monthly. IV magnesium is known to reduce the incidence of migraines, but it's considered alternative. So I pay about 20 bucks a month for this. Magnesium is known to relax muscles .. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC295901/ yet my family doctor thought this was not evidence-based.
here's a wildcard: never, under any circumstances market and/or advertise alt med as a replacement to proper med. what we should do instead is to figure out how to trigger the placebo effect and THEN use alt med as replacement to those cases where no medication should even be prescribed but patient still wants "something". this soothes the patient who now feels he/she is getting care, but in reality, he/she isn't using actual medicine,and no harm is done. i can't figure out how moving away from baseless over-medication would be a bad thing. then again, i'm just a random internet-derp
Oh man, I strayed for a while there and wasn't keeping up on watching Heath Care Triage episodes. But a few minutes into this episode, it was so clear what kept me here in the first place. I love how much legitimate scientific work is cited in these videos. I mean, Scishow and that are great and all, but I noticed that a lot of their sources are secondary at best. The way you explain topics with research findings is somewhat consoling :)
I'd add that many acupuncture studies use electro-acupuncture which makes the results clinically useless as that's not the treatment most get in acupuncture sessions. However, I'm happy to tell people about the lack of evidence for arthroscopic knee surgery and other things you've mentioned. I really respect your willingness to call out procedures for which the evidence is actually weak. I strive to keep an open mind and simply rely on evidence and not the origin of the treatment.
are you fed up with the bombardment we face on television for the latest, greatest concoction; "ask your doctor if kwzssliile is right for you"..i prefer to let my doctor determine what medication i need, thank you. then there's the ambulance chasers offering "millions" because of "side effects" caused by the "latest, greatest" drugs from a decade ago. when half of a 30 second commercial is devoted to the possible side effects warnings, something is very wrong.
@thomas m. tordel jr - I take offense to your comment. I take 500mg of kwzssliile everyday. My doctor said it was right for me. And I personally enjoy the life threatening side effects, tHaNK YoU!!
I do agree with the overarching points made in this video. While I remain very skeptical of acupuncture, I think mindfulness and meditation has some very convincing research behind it and I meditate occasionally.
+Marcus Helmer I deal with chronic neuropathic pain from a spinal cord injury and acupuncture was the only thing that worked well. It wasn't a one time thing though I have to go a few times a month. When I first started I had to go more often. With some pain it does work. I can attest to that.
+Marcus Helmer It's a placebo effect. Placebos are fine. What isn't fine is that placebos only effect symptoms, not underlying causes. If you have pain due to cancer, you can go to a homeopathic charlatan for some pain relief, but that isn't going to help your cancer. All it will do is stop or delay you from going to a doctor, thus ensuring a much more difficult time treating it or ensuring your death by diagnosed cancer. I had sudden double vision a couple months ago. I (if I was an idiot) could have gone to a chiropractor, and I would think that his/her treatment worked miracles because the double vision went away after a few hours. But what I wouldn't have known is that not only did I have a TIA, but some time in the past I had a silent stroke that actually caused damage. I wouldn't be mitigating those risks and I'd be at a higher chance for having another stroke. Alternative medicine (aka bullshit) causes far more harm than people realize.
+FrigginRights A sugar pill, a phone call from a loved one, a saline injection, or any number of other placebo inducing actions would have worked just as well.
For certain pain conditions accupuncture is acknowledged by the WHO as treatment - it works better than placebos - the problem with creating a sham treatment regime is that even short preassure that causes a degree of pain will help the body release the endorfines that accupuncture or acupressure helps stimulating the release of! This isn't a defence of TCM but merely an explanation of why we with sound science can defend some therapeutical interventions. It is also very important to understand that placebo isn't just one effect but numerous different effects caused by just as many parameters... It is easy to just say that something is just placebo, but we also need to understand that even the placebos has to be caused! You don't get the relief of having a doctor ensure you everything is fine, if you don't go to the doctor! It is still important to understand what is and what isn't placebos - but we shouldn't dismiss everything entirely just due to it having placebo related effects...
I have a question for a future episode (.. is this an appropriate way to submit a question?) Does burnt food cause cancer? My mom will not let me eat barbequed goods. Life without charred bits.
+Adrianne L The answer is yes... and no. While I am no medical professional, all the sources I have found point to there being minuscule amounts of carcinogenic compounds in charred food. While there are carcinogens, the amount consumed in a normal barbecue is not enough to significantly increase your risk of cancers.
+Adrianne L They've talked about this here i believe and on the Misconceptions videos on the Mental Floss youtube channel. Despite the above moment, no. They don't - without the yes first. No one should eat any part of their food that's become nothing but char, bc that's simply not edible, food, or even a little bit nutritious. But you should be able to eat all the BBQ you want. Get your mama to do some real research and no believe everything she sees on her FB feed.
Vin Sad Yes. She asked specifically if charred food can give you cancer. And they don't. Carcinogens can and do cause cancer, sure. A significant amount would be required to do this. The amount in charred food is insignificant. Therefore - charred foods can't and don't give you cancer. ....not to be confused with charred foods *have* carcinogens so they couuuuuuuld - theoretically. Nope. Not even theoretically.
While adherents of conventional medicine can be pretty blind (read any book on medical history and that becomes frighteningly clear), the main difference is that, at minimal, there is an internal process for correcting canon. The alternative community on the other hand seems to lack any such mechanism other than charismatic orators.
I definitely agree on this, especially because good natural remedies can end up getting mixed up with a bunch of mundo jumbo spirit stuff all under the umbrella “alternative medicine”. But at the same time herbal like medicine should be differentiated from big hospital medicine like pills and such, just because they are so different.
I have neuropathic pain from a sci injury and acupuncture was the only thing that worked well. Although I do understand what you are talking about between western vs eastern medical practices.
My understanding of Functional Medicine vs Conventional Medicine is that FM looks at the bigger picture (how each of the systems function/what's needed for them to function properly/how to naturally assist the body with its natural ability to heal itself), while CM is based around the claim that nutrition has very little if any affect when treating diseases, cancer, etc. CM looks at symptoms as diseases and treats the symptoms with synthetic pharmaceuticals that SUPPRESS the bodies ability to function properly (example: anticonvulsant drugs block electrolytes from entering the neural pathways in the brain to prevent excess electrical activity from occurring ie seizure)(the problem with this is that the reason for the excess electrical activity is because of an imbalance of the electrolytes (too much sodium, too much calcium, etc)(the brain is like a circuit board: electrolytes are electrically charged minerals that interact positively and negatively in the neural pathways depending on a balance: when 1 electrolyte attempts to pass through a cell wall (neural pathway wall) it will need to exchange places with another electrolyte to keep the balance, if there's an imbalance to begin with then there will be more of the electrolyte in the pathway than outside--this could cause a higher electrical activity when that electrolyte interacts with another along the same pathway. Whether the electrolytes are out of balance or not there is electrical activity occurring in the neural pathways--if your low on any of the electrolytes you'll experience symptoms like cognitive impairment, brain fog, memory loss, and SEIZURES. If you have too much of any electrolytes you will experience symptoms like headaches, anxiety, and SEIZURES. If you think about it it makes sense, insufficient electrical activity will cause a computer to under perform/excess electrical activity can cause the computer to over perform. There was a study done by John's Hopkins that found that more than 50% of the epileptic patients that participated in the study had been misdiagnosed (they didn't have epilepsy) they actually had a poor ability to control stressful situations. This goes back to how the body works and the importance of nutrition for the bodies ability to function properly (Magnesium deficiency very common in USA--Magnesium participates in over 300 different functions in the body one of which is in regulating stress, when a person experiences anxiety the Magnesium isn't able to regulate it. Anxiety/Chronic Anxiety will deplete the electrolyte Magnesium causing a deficiency--a Magnesium deficiency symptom is seizures. Doctors and physicians of Conventional Medicine won't usually test a patients micronutrients for deficiencies (all micronutrients not just a few) unless your missing half of your colon. This is because most insurance companies won't pay the $2000 bill for the test and if a doctor/physician orders the test without approval from the insurance company the Dr/Physician will be held accountable for the bill by law. All pharmaceuticals are a "band-aid" they treat the symptoms but not the cause. The symptoms will return if the patient stops taking the pharmaceuticals unless the cure the cause first. The patient will also get sicker-more symptoms/ailments will show up if the cause isn't cured.
My dog had acupuncture sessions (yes, there is acupuncture for animals) because we took him to the Vet and she said he needed a very expensive surgery, which we couldn't afford, so then she told us acupuncture could help with his pain. We hired a dog acupuncturist and since the sessions have started he got better and feeling less pain (but of course, he isn't cured). Sounds crazy, right?
Not crazy. Your dog has been watching too many youtube videos on placebo and that has enabled the placebo response to work in your dog! The denialists here would suggest other things. Like 'magic' 'woo' ?
the requirement of this world is a integrative medicine where practices of the one system of medicine which is useful is combined with the other system which is helpful in others, but this can only be done by rigorous scientific research and number based statistics.
So accociation between acupuncture practice and pain relief was observed in the study you mentioned? Correlation doesn't equate causation doc, I know you have used the phrase so many times that if you take the study for granted, you would come out hypocritical.
+OurPeanutGallerie I think the new title is more in-line with the general thesis of the video, since he spends a lot of time on the terms rather than the "alternative medicine" treatments.
I'm not saying that acupuncture works: obviously I don't know that, and I have grave doubts as well. but anytime I hear about a study that tested, "acupuncture," I think somebody, somewhere, has no idea what acupuncture is.
A common misconception is that traditional medicine deals only with artificial substances, things produced in labs or other forms of technology while alternative medicine is natural remedies. Although this hold a little truth to it, traditional medicine is not all laboratory findings and artificially produced drugs. Many doctors who use technological treatments of such also have recommended certain therapies, acupuncture and other more 'natural' treatments. This goes to show that these two categories of medicine are not black and white. In fact, there is an extremely large grey area in which they overlap. Conventional medicine still utilizes many natural things. Supporters, however are often blind to the disadvantages of each of the types of medicine they support. In actuality through, medicine is proven through many studies, so I am skeptical that "alternative medicine" should even really be considered medicine.
You should do a video on B. Caapi vine and Syrian Rue seeds (they contain reversible MAOI's and in both plants (most noteaby caapi) they contain Harmine and Harmala which was tested and found to produce pancreatic beta cells. Some pharmacologists are trying to make new drugs that can be patented out of these substances. I'm curious about whether or not they are effective at treating other conditions in which MAOI's are prescribed, like depression.
I've always been an advocate of western medicine. Healthcare treatments need to studied and researched vigorously. They have looked at side effects and long-term effects of treatments. Studies have shown that natural treatments bear no more relief than conventional medicine. I know that a lot of medications are plant based but they also have been studied a lot. We know their effects. Alternative medicine is not evidence based.
apparently despite it's obvious failure to get sick well, you still believe in it. wake up. use your common sense instead of being impressed by medical b.s..
Yes, yes. I know how you feel about supplements BUT is anything legit on any of the wildly popular ones? Turmeric? Coenzyme q10 (is it true you need that if you take a statin)? Green tea? What about dhea? I have heard of endocrinologist even recommending that. Cinnamon? ALA? I also am strongly interested in a full episode that explores fish oils. Thanks!
The combination of Eastern and Western = the best Cuz my fd got a serious headache and he went to hospital for several times , it’s no use still awful headache. But then he went to Chinese medicine clinic and did some treatments and it works, finally he does not feel any pains and he gets 100% well.👏🏼👍🏼 OMG that’s so magical😳 Thank you Chinese medical doctor helps my fd 😭😭👩⚕️ I gradually love eastern medicine and I wanna learn the eastern medical treatments That’s good thank you TCM
Er... It seems you sort of forgot to make your point. Is it ethical and smart to be teaching this subject, does the subject have any merit, and does the school retain any credibility and dignity henceforth?
an evaluation of the specific meta-analysis you reference in the episode: "The Vickers acupuncture meta-analysis, despite the authors’ claims, does not reveal anything new about the acupuncture literature, and does not provide support for use of acupuncture as a legitimate medical intervention. The data show that there is a large difference in outcome when an unblinded comparison is made between treatment and no treatment - an unsurprising result that is of no clinical relevance and says nothing about acupuncture itself. The comparison between true acupuncture and sham acupuncture shows only a small difference, which is likely not clinically significant or perceptible. More importantly, this small difference is well within the degree of bias and noise that are inherent to clinical trials. Researcher bias, publication bias, outlying effects, and researcher degrees of freedom are more than enough to explain such a small difference. In other words - this data is insufficient to reject the null hypothesis, even if we don’t consider the high implausibility of acupuncture. Further, meta-analysis itself is an imperfect tool that often does not predict the results of large, rigorous, definitive clinical trials. The best acupuncture trials, those that are well-blinded and include placebo acupuncture, show no specific effects." www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/an-acupuncture-meta-analysis/
0:56 _"I talk to patients all the time about diet and exercise."_ I have Crohn's, and when I was first getting diagnosed I asked the gastroenterologist about dietary recommendations. he looked at me like I was crazy. he literally had nothing to say about it, and couldn't understand why I would even ask. meanwhile, in Japan (where I live now), a good proportion of the basic Crohn's intervention strategy is based on diet. the doctor's reaction ended up pushing me _way, _*_far_*_ away_ from just taking the medicine I needed to be taking, and led to all kinds of problems, including a surgery that I probably could have avoided if he had been more of a human.
I suffered ravaging diarrhea - irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) from October 2002 to 2014 August 1. Concurrent with my severe rheumatoid arthritis (RA). My IBS was completely independent of my diet. FYI: I have been vegan for animal rights since 1980, the only one of two logical reasons to be vegan, the other being to reduce climate change. It did not matter what I ate or did not eat. My IBS raged. The one thing that SEEMED to stop it, and it came to a dead stop, 2014 August 1, almost as quickly as it had begun, was when I started on new RA pill Xeljanz. The Xeljanz stopped it cold. So, no. Diet is NOT important to everyone.
Regardless of your opinions about the effectiveness of acupuncture (as difficult as it is for me to write such a thing), how can you claim it is not complementary medicine? Its efficacy is as well established as the efficacy of chocolate to treat depression. Yeah, you might be able to find some evidence out there, but that doesn't make it a widely accepted or mainstream treatment. The evidence for the efficacy of acupuncture is approximately as strong as the evidence for ESP. In both cases, numerous studies have been performed with at best unclear results.
I have family members who believe in homeopathy and it drives me crazy when they try to force it on me. It is true that certain alternative medicine works. Many of the drugs currently on the market are alkaloids derived from plants that make up the crux of eastern medicine. Homeopathy, however, is utter nonsense. Homeopathy is thought to work by water memory, the idea that water can have some kind of memory of its solute and replicate its properties, which defies what we know about physical chemistry, and the one study that actually received positive results suggesting that this may be the case has never been able to be replicated. Okay, fine, technically water does have a memory. It lasts 50 femtoseconds (the time it takes for water to redistribute its bonds). Real curative properties there huh? Beyond that though, another fundamental tenet of homeopathy is that the more dilute a medicine is, the more potent it is. This is just completely absurd. By that logic we should all be chugging pure water and living eternally. Some of these medicines are so diluted that they don't even have a single molecule of the active ingredient, and, again, water has no effective memory. But fine. What if this isn't the way homeopathy works? After all, its just a hypothesis. Well, as pointed out in the video, homeopathic drugs have never outperformed placebos in a statistically significant way in all well-designed studies on the matter. I can stipulate that sometimes scientists get things wrong, but results don't lie. I have nothing against placebos whatsoever, but, if you tell me that I can't have actual medicine and make me take a placebo instead (which I know is a placebo, thereby significantly diminishes its therapeutic effects) I will not take kindly to that, and that is precisely what has happened to me in the past as I was told not to consume certain foods or medications that had actual therapeutic properties because they would cancel out the effects of the homeopathic medicine I had been given.
We do it because the public is becoming more and more aware of the long term effects of lab produced medicines . I've actually lived what you're talking about and although point understood you're all in it to win it and the new kid on the block is organic and natural based products. Now its worth money . It's in demand and why miss this grand opportunity to take from small mom and pop businesses niw that they have paved the way for tajeover.
#Nmethyltransferase I have family members who believe in homeopathy and it drives me crazy when they try to force it on me. It is true that certain alternative medicine works. Many of the drugs currently on the market are alkaloids derived from plants that make up the crux of eastern medicine. Homeopathy, however, is utter nonsense. Homeopathy is thought to work by water memory, the idea that water can have some kind of memory of its solute and replicate its properties, which defies what we know about physical chemistry, and the one study that actually received positive results suggesting that this may be the case has never been able to be replicated. Okay, fine, technically water does have a memory. It lasts 50 femtoseconds (the time it takes for water to redistribute its bonds). Real curative properties there huh? Beyond that though, another fundamental tenet of homeopathy is that the more dilute a medicine is, the more potent it is. This is just completely absurd. By that logic we should all be chugging pure water and living eternally. Some of these medicines are so diluted that they don't even have a single molecule of the active ingredient, and, again, water has no effective memory. But fine. What if this isn't the way homeopathy works? After all, its just a hypothesis. Well, as pointed out in the video, homeopathic drugs have never outperformed placebos in a statistically significant way in all well-designed studies on the matter. I can stipulate that sometimes scientists get things wrong, but results don't lie. I have nothing against placebos whatsoever, but, if you tell me that I can't have actual medicine and make me take a placebo instead (which I know is a placebo, thereby significantly diminishes its therapeutic effects) I will not take kindly to that, and that is precisely what has happened to me in the past as I was told not to consume certain foods or medications that had actual therapeutic properties because they would cancel out the effects of the homeopathic medicine I had been given. @Nmethyltransferase Find out more view our pagewww.chministries.org/default.aspx?mem=198541
The Singapore Govt allows Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) to be practised and accredited under the TCM Act (2000). However, this may be a cunning move that is specific to a society like Singapore. Singapore has a ethnic Chinese majority, and a significant percentage of the Chinese population believe in the efficacy of TCM. BUT, the efficacy of TCM has not been proven. The Singapore Govt is not soft-headed. So why did it recognise and allow TCM to be practised with official sanction? Short answer: politics. Longer answer: Recognising TCM would score political points with the traditional Chinese who believe in TCM. Also, while the efficacy of TCM is not proven, it is also unlikely to be harmful. And in the best case scenario, there is the placebo effect. So the net effect is that there is no harm, the patient feels better because of placebo effect (maybe), and some patients are diverted from the national healthcare system to TCM. The lines at the national healthcare polyclinics are shorter, and people are happier (or at least less unhappy), and this is political points for the govt. Well, that is the cynical view. Q: Would TCM be right for your city/state/country? A: would any of the advantages in the longer answer apply to your city/state/country?
As Tim Minchin said..
"What do you call alternative medicine that's been proven to work?
.. Medicine"
+alaman321 Exactly. It's like, you want to use something _alternative_ to medicine? So..._not_ medicine, then?
Damn, beat me to it. As soon as I saw the title I instantly scrolled to the comments to add this one and saw yours.
+Ed Gloss Same :)
Also the warning label for unproven or debunked Supplements, Complementary and Alternative Medicine should be S.C.A.M.
I came to the comments to note how happy I was that he paraphrased the Minchin Declaration.
+J. van der Linden ugh I love that video!
You keep citing that acupuncture study. In response I'd quote Dr. Edzard Ernst: “The differences between the results obtained with real and sham acupuncture are small and not clinically relevant. Crucially, they are probably due to residual bias in these studies. Several investigations have shown that the verbal or non-verbal communication between the patient and the therapist is more important than the actual needling. If such factors would be accounted for, the effect of acupuncture on chronic pain might disappear completely.”
+Marcus Helmer Yeah, you can't really do a blind study of Acupuncture. Controlling the dialog is the best you could do.
But that study would seem to indicate that acupuncture - real or sham - causes a noticeable benefit?
+AdrenalineStew I didn't think you could either, but there was a bbc study where they managed to make a double blind study with fake needles. it was really interesting. I think you can find the whole thing on RUclips. It's about an hour long.
+spacebetweennumbers iirc that study found that there was no difference between real acupuncture and false acupuncture where the needles were inserted in the wrong places. They found that sham acupuncture, poking people with wooden toothpicks in the wrong places, was actually the most effective. i.e. neither the use of needles, nor the places on the body that acupuncture is concerned with had any noticeable benefit. Of course as soon as the results were in, the excuses started coming from the acupuncturists who had helped design the study and said had that it was a fair test.
+SarthorS It could be that the tiny wounds created by needles, or toothpicks, release hormones to combat pain, despite the sensations of the pricking being too small for humans to pick up on. That would mean it's sort of an anti-inflammatory response but on a tiny scale.
Now you're just hating on homeopathy. Homeopathy is great for the wallets of those who sell homeopathic treatments.
+Jason Brown
It's good for dehydration
Great for dehydrating wallets of suckers.
Bruh he’s not hating he’s just presenting information. Don’t get offended by facts.
@@Ara-wo5ho I think you've missed the fact he was making a joke...
Homeopathy works. It can cure malnutrition and dehydration if taken in sufficient amount.
Sure. Let's reframe the issue. The new labels are "Working Medicine" and "Waste of Time and Money".
That should clear things up.
Thank you so much for this. I had a huge argument with my mother because she wanted to try bloodletting, as in let a non-doctor make various gashes in her body to let out the "dirty blood". Worse was she wanted to have it done on my 85 year old grandmother with circulation problems. I gave nearly the same argument as you, but they won't listen to scientific evidence because "doctors get it wrong all the time" and "this is healing, not medicine" or "it has been done for centuries, it is a tradition". I tried to point out that my grandmother would probably never heal from the wounds (she still has bruises from months ago). Nothing worked except me crying infront of her in complete powerlessness.
I give this story to point out how severely dangerous some of these practices are, and how these people take advantage of people's spirituality and ignorance. I'm in Turkey and we still have bloodletting.
If bloodletting worked, kids who cut themselves would be the healthiest kids out there.
Hey, nice video! I have a question about big pharmaceutical companies bribing and paying Doctors to give out drugs that they produce. How big of a problem is that in the U.S.
I would add a third category to your final quote. There is scientifically proven medicine, unproven medicine, and scientifically disproved medicine. There is a difference between something like homeopathy and something that we just don't know enough about yet.
Agreed, am interested in herbal medicines and performing clinical trials to detriment their effectiveness
Could you possibly do a full video on carpal tunnel and other wrist issues? It's a very common thing, and I have seen a lot of people giving lots of advice that conflicts and so on, it would be interesting to see a video on that from this channel, and possibly helpful for many.
I'll also throw in the fact that studies now show that in a 5 year follow up between patients who get surgery for lower back pain, or knee pain, there is no statistical significance between those who had no treatment and those who had surgery. yet we still spend tens of thousands of dollars per treatment.
it is exactly as you say it. we are simply used to accepting what we are used to.
Cite on the acupuncture study because it wasn't provided in the description:
"In the primary analysis including all eligible trials, acupuncture was superior to both sham and no acupuncture control for each pain condition (all p
Herbal remedies have been studied yet most doctors dont seem to know anything about them or their use. Why is that?
I put a punch of vitamins in water then diluted it till it was all gone. Drank it and now I’m a being of pure light energy.
Studies show things like improved patient teaching reduces readmission, but "conventional medicine" isn't geared to charge for teaching so they don't give nurses time to do it. Research shows having doulas/midwives assisting with births improves outcomes, yet again- insurance has not mechanism for payment so people don't get them.
The terms that matter are proven, not-proven, and disproven. You can trust science over anecdote and tradition every time. Are we getting an infographic of this episode?
too bad medicine has very little in the way of scientific basis. when your so-called medical science does nothing but fail, people look for reports of results. a few find the truth that sets them free of the cause of their illness, a cause medicine is totally blind to.
The study on accupuncture really compares different forms of placebo and tell us that some placebos are stronger than others
Remember the old joke: do you know what they call alternative medicine that works? Medicine
Have there been any studies done on Ayurvedic medicine?
The proliferation of "alternative medicine" might be partially a result of the fact that few doctors do their own research, as was more common in the past. Also, in your opinion, are doctors influenced by the pharmaceutical industry? I have had general practitioners refuse to consider some methods that actually have been tested. I don't disparage doctors in general, yet they are human. Some percentage of them must be lazy.
Next time on Heathcare Triage: Water is wet.
I am a medicine student in an university in Spain, and this year I am being taught ob-gyn. In the class about breech birth our teacher brought up the topic of moxibustion and showed us articles that both saying it is usefull and that it´s not, so I wouldn´t think it is that clear that it actually works, but as many of my teachers say: medicine is an almost exact science
Articles doubting of the usefullness of moxibustion: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20168104 www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22592693
My problem with that study about homeopathy is that it ignores side effects
I like the way Tim Minchin put it in his poem 'Storm', "You know what they call alternative medicine that's been proven to work? Medicine."
we have discussed the world of alternative medicines, complementary, traditions, and holistic and about benefits and risks involved in the practices including alternative medicines.
How about "results oriented medicine"?
To summarize. It's not about conventional vs alternative medicine. It's about effective medicine vs ineffective medicine.
You raise some good points here, but leave a couple important ones out.
First, western medical tradition offers very little in the way of nutrition education during a typical medical program. I have heard the statistic that 3 in 4 doctors don't take a single class specializing in nutrition and in these doctors education would be limited to a few hours of instruction in a survey course. This means that most doctors likely get their nutrition information from the same place that "normal" people get it.
Second, there is no "broccoli lobby" advocating the benefits of healthy diet and exercise over drugs. Since 1980 (and the Reagan Revolution), the NIH has had to work with a budget that is lower every year as a percentage of the overall economy, meaning that a greater and greater percentage of funding for medicine has been for the patent-able type. Most consumers seem to be quite happy with the fact that their favorite product has "unscientific support" rather than "scientific support" but the people who are standing up for the scientific version seem unwilling to put a foot in the political arena by saying "We actually don't know the answer to that, and here's why."
If the evidence-based team could unite behind a global medical initiative to create a world-wide data collection organisation combined with New Deal funding levels for validating industry trials and investigating unpatentable medicines they would be performing a valuable service to both mankind and their industry.
I was coming down with a cold one day and my mother told me to take a vitamin c. So I ate an orange.
I think the widespread belief is that the majority of US doctors will prescribe one of the following things for any health problem:
1. healthier diet & more exercise
2. prescription medicine
3. surgery
That is what most people think of when you say "conventional medicine."
You can say that yoga and mediation shouldn't be considered alternative medicine because they have scientific studies that show they have benefits, but until the majority of doctors recognize those benefits and prescribe them as treatment for the appropriate conditions (and the general public is aware that doctors will prescribe such things instead of relying on drugs and surgery) they will remain alternative medicine because they are an alternative to what is usually prescribed. I certainly agree that many - probably most - forms of alternative medicine don't work, but technically they are still medicine because they are treatment for a health condition. (An ineffective treatment is still a kind of treatment.)
+jliller my doctor told me to do yoga, I ate that crap for 2 weeks and I didnt fell any better
are there any unbiased books on the science behind alternative medicine?
+stitch davis Probably not because there really isn't any.
+Madee Hornsey
There is always science behind everything. Even behind things that don't work. Said science can explain why people believe in this bullshit, and it can explain why the thing itself is bullshit, etc.
Is that acupuncture study looking at straight acupuncture, or the kind where they apply a weak electrical current as well (transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation, or TENS)? I was under the impression that there is some evidence suggesting that TENS might have some effect on pain, but plain old acupuncture does not. But acupuncture proponents love to conflate the two, point at TENS studies and say "See? It's the meridians, I tell you!"
if you get an acupuncture therapist who knows what they're doing, it helps with pain (sore muscles type of pain). when i was in korea, one student's father did an acupuncture session for me, and holy cow was it amazing. turns out he is considered the best therapist in korea.
a lot of acupuncturists are quacks though.
jbenvenga
Ah, but you'll notice that the success stories are always symptoms like pain, which are highly subjective, depend on self-reporting, and are prone to all kinds of cognitive biases.
stupid person who knows nothing. try educating yourself.
Dr. Carroll, could you refrain from referring to all Advanced Life Support as unnecessary or harmful when you actually mean ALS in cardiac arrests specifically? Paramedics provide ALS to a wide variety of emergencies, and I am not aware of studies casting doubt on their necessity in most other circumstances.
Is there a 'list' somewhere of all the known plant-based drugs and their effects?
Marijuana also does not help with glaucoma.
Video topic request: what have medicine studies shown about the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of chiropractors? My belief (and some personal experience) is that chiropractors can be effective for treating some neck and back problems, but most of them make ridiculous and lofty claims about being able to cure or at least effectively treat darn near everything. I'm curious to see what the studies say they are actually capable of.
on what basis do you suppose they are effective for only neck and back problems? you have no clue what actual chiropractic is about. it is no more limited to those symptoms than is the nervous system in control of just those areas. get a basic physiology book and learn some fundamentals of how the body works.
Long overdue but thank you so much for adressing this issue!
As an add-on to your comment about Acupuncture, there has since been follow up studies showing sham acupuncture, while was "pretty good" in the short run, in a 6th month follow up, the statistical significance of real acupuncture was clear, real acupuncture had a much higher rate of pain relief over extended periods of time. Yet people pick and choose which studies they read, which add to the problem of moving more and more well proven modalities such as acupuncture into mainstream acceptance.
Citation please
I'm interested to know what your take on Benzodiazepines are.
What would you call ubiquinone/CoQ10? In Japan, it's approved to treat heart failure, but nowhere else. What about alpha lipoic acid? Approved to treat liver failure in Germany, but nowhere else.
to quote Tim minchin, alternative medicine has either not been proved to work or proved not to work. do you know what we call alternative medicine that has been proved to work? medicine. IMO, we shouldn't be talking about medicine vs alternative medicine, it sound be medicine vs not medicine.
Except people who practice medicine don't always accept things that work soon enough for it to BE medicine. Or other things stand in the way like racist governments whom make stupid laws stopping research before we can find out if something can BE medicine.
parroting the same brainless and false line. try using your brain and coming up with an original thought.
Do I see the flag of Macau on 2:23?
Considering the fact that "conventional" medicine is the third leading cause of death in this country, I think making the distinction between conventional and alternative is most useful. People intuitively understand that alternative practitioners aren't likely to kill them.
Hey healthtriage! Great channel. Can yall provide links for these sources? Not doubting your honesty, just want em
I'm in DBT and it really helps. But I know I need medication to help with my mental illness. I have rapid cycling bipolar disorder. When I'm manic, I have auditory and visual hallucinations. If I felt comfortable not taking meds, I'd be all for it. But I know what happens when I don't take them. Psych ward visits happen. And I'd rather not deal with that again.
In order:
1) Naturalistic fallacy (ask them to define "natural" and watch the chiropractor or supplement pusher squirm when trying to justify how what they do is "natural"
2) Argument from antiquity (it's really old therefore... wait, no, if anything that makes a medicine MORE LIKELY to be bogus)
3) Argument from popularity (lots of people believe they've been abducted by aliens, too)
no, imbecile, getting adjusted isn't natural, but then, neither is setting a broken bone, which is no proof either isn't needed.
Yeah. Nothing new there. But some people inevitably are hearing this for the first time.
Great episode! Could you talk more about the science behind mindfulness?
No mindfulness isn’t measurable therefore there’s no place for it in medicine
Medicine can be divided in to three simple categories - proven to work, unproven to work and disproven to work. By the way, acupuncture is BS. The control groups were crap because the false acupuncture was easy to detect by the patients in many studies. Also the person applying acupuncture knew which was which. This goes to the old saying that "You are not even wrong." However, I think one test could put a hammer on acupuncture and that would simply be puncturing in the wrong points. Acupuncture claims that putting needles at certain points can have a certain effect. So let's mix the points up.
by the way, you're full of b.s.. are you so ignorant that you assume sticking needles into nerves doesn't produce any effect, idiot? the fundamental problem is that like medicine in all it's forms, it doesn't correct the cause, but at least it won't kill you from liver and kidney failure. it was discovered by people far smarter than your medical heroes and certainly far smarter than you.
Whenever people go on about the wonders of Chinese medicine, I always mention the bizarre world of Taoist sexual practices. Not all traditional Chinese medicine is bullshit, but by looking at what _was_ believed you get a sense of the superstitious context in which many practices developed. Then trusting your health to 'a 1000 years of tradition' is much less appealing.
Let food be thy medicine and medicine be that food. So much of what I teach my client is about this very thing, and yet the mindset to switch away from what they have been told is monumental. One person at a time, it will get better!
But this is not true. Therapies with scientific backing is often considered alternative because some doctors find it too alternative. Fibromyalgia is often being diagnosed before testing patients for vitamin D deficiency even though this is known to worsen or be the cause of chronic pain. Vitamin D is hardly controversial, but try to get a vitamin D test in Canada, you'll have to go to a naturopathic doctor or self-pay.
+polyanthesis I could go on. I see a neurologist for headaches, and I have a Magnesium IV monthly. IV magnesium is known to reduce the incidence of migraines, but it's considered alternative. So I pay about 20 bucks a month for this. Magnesium is known to relax muscles .. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC295901/ yet my family doctor thought this was not evidence-based.
Wait which plant is good for hayfever? I wanna try
here's a wildcard: never, under any circumstances market and/or advertise alt med as a replacement to proper med. what we should do instead is to figure out how to trigger the placebo effect and THEN use alt med as replacement to those cases where no medication should even be prescribed but patient still wants "something".
this soothes the patient who now feels he/she is getting care, but in reality, he/she isn't using actual medicine,and no harm is done. i can't figure out how moving away from baseless over-medication would be a bad thing.
then again, i'm just a random internet-derp
So... the ad that leads into this is an alt-med ad that promotes "natural" things
Oh man, I strayed for a while there and wasn't keeping up on watching Heath Care Triage episodes. But a few minutes into this episode, it was so clear what kept me here in the first place. I love how much legitimate scientific work is cited in these videos. I mean, Scishow and that are great and all, but I noticed that a lot of their sources are secondary at best. The way you explain topics with research findings is somewhat consoling :)
Hi, how about the phytotherapy? Does WHO recommends it? Have them been studied? I'd love to see a video about it!
You do a great service to the medical community, Dr. Carroll.
I'd add that many acupuncture studies use electro-acupuncture which makes the results clinically useless as that's not the treatment most get in acupuncture sessions. However, I'm happy to tell people about the lack of evidence for arthroscopic knee surgery and other things you've mentioned. I really respect your willingness to call out procedures for which the evidence is actually weak. I strive to keep an open mind and simply rely on evidence and not the origin of the treatment.
are you fed up with the bombardment we face on television for the latest, greatest concoction; "ask your doctor if kwzssliile is right for you"..i prefer to let my doctor determine what medication i need, thank you. then there's the ambulance chasers offering "millions" because of "side effects" caused by the "latest, greatest" drugs from a decade ago. when half of a 30 second commercial is devoted to the possible side effects warnings, something is very wrong.
heresy! how dare you use your own common sense to question the wisdom of the omniscient pseudoscientific cult known as modern medicine!
@thomas m. tordel jr - I take offense to your comment. I take 500mg of kwzssliile everyday. My doctor said it was right for me. And I personally enjoy the life threatening side effects,
tHaNK YoU!!
@@PeaceNinja007 lol
I do agree with the overarching points made in this video. While I remain very skeptical of acupuncture, I think mindfulness and meditation has some very convincing research behind it and I meditate occasionally.
+Marcus Helmer I deal with chronic neuropathic pain from a spinal cord injury and acupuncture was the only thing that worked well. It wasn't a one time thing though I have to go a few times a month. When I first started I had to go more often. With some pain it does work. I can attest to that.
+Marcus Helmer
It's a placebo effect. Placebos are fine. What isn't fine is that placebos only effect symptoms, not underlying causes. If you have pain due to cancer, you can go to a homeopathic charlatan for some pain relief, but that isn't going to help your cancer.
All it will do is stop or delay you from going to a doctor, thus ensuring a much more difficult time treating it or ensuring your death by diagnosed cancer.
I had sudden double vision a couple months ago. I (if I was an idiot) could have gone to a chiropractor, and I would think that his/her treatment worked miracles because the double vision went away after a few hours. But what I wouldn't have known is that not only did I have a TIA, but some time in the past I had a silent stroke that actually caused damage. I wouldn't be mitigating those risks and I'd be at a higher chance for having another stroke.
Alternative medicine (aka bullshit) causes far more harm than people realize.
+FrigginRights
A sugar pill, a phone call from a loved one, a saline injection, or any number of other placebo inducing actions would have worked just as well.
+Kemanorel Kin k
For certain pain conditions accupuncture is acknowledged by the WHO as treatment - it works better than placebos - the problem with creating a sham treatment regime is that even short preassure that causes a degree of pain will help the body release the endorfines that accupuncture or acupressure helps stimulating the release of!
This isn't a defence of TCM but merely an explanation of why we with sound science can defend some therapeutical interventions.
It is also very important to understand that placebo isn't just one effect but numerous different effects caused by just as many parameters...
It is easy to just say that something is just placebo, but we also need to understand that even the placebos has to be caused!
You don't get the relief of having a doctor ensure you everything is fine, if you don't go to the doctor!
It is still important to understand what is and what isn't placebos - but we shouldn't dismiss everything entirely just due to it having placebo related effects...
I have a question for a future episode (.. is this an appropriate way to submit a question?) Does burnt food cause cancer? My mom will not let me eat barbequed goods. Life without charred bits.
+Adrianne L The answer is yes... and no. While I am no medical professional, all the sources I have found point to there being minuscule amounts of carcinogenic compounds in charred food. While there are carcinogens, the amount consumed in a normal barbecue is not enough to significantly increase your risk of cancers.
+Adrianne L They've talked about this here i believe and on the Misconceptions videos on the Mental Floss youtube channel. Despite the above moment, no. They don't - without the yes first. No one should eat any part of their food that's become nothing but char, bc that's simply not edible, food, or even a little bit nutritious. But you should be able to eat all the BBQ you want. Get your mama to do some real research and no believe everything she sees on her FB feed.
+OurPeanutGallerie Charred food contain carcinogenic compounds, most infamously PAHs. But the amount you ingest isn't going to give you cancer.
Vin Sad Yes. She asked specifically if charred food can give you cancer. And they don't.
Carcinogens can and do cause cancer, sure. A significant amount would be required to do this. The amount in charred food is insignificant. Therefore - charred foods can't and don't give you cancer.
....not to be confused with charred foods *have* carcinogens so they couuuuuuuld - theoretically. Nope. Not even theoretically.
+OurPeanutGallerie If you ate a gratuitous amount of charred food, it could.
While adherents of conventional medicine can be pretty blind (read any book on medical history and that becomes frighteningly clear), the main difference is that, at minimal, there is an internal process for correcting canon. The alternative community on the other hand seems to lack any such mechanism other than charismatic orators.
My doctor recommended green tea and foods with garlic for my fatty liver, it worked.
I definitely agree on this, especially because good natural remedies can end up getting mixed up with a bunch of mundo jumbo spirit stuff all under the umbrella “alternative medicine”. But at the same time herbal like medicine should be differentiated from big hospital medicine like pills and such, just because they are so different.
What do they call alternative medicine that works?
MEDICINE
Alternative Dentistry.
This sounds like a necessary exploration for you based on your username.
I have neuropathic pain from a sci injury and acupuncture was the only thing that worked well. Although I do understand what you are talking about between western vs eastern medical practices.
My understanding of Functional Medicine vs Conventional Medicine is that FM looks at the bigger picture (how each of the systems function/what's needed for them to function properly/how to naturally assist the body with its natural ability to heal itself), while CM is based around the claim that nutrition has very little if any affect when treating diseases, cancer, etc. CM looks at symptoms as diseases and treats the symptoms with synthetic pharmaceuticals that SUPPRESS the bodies ability to function properly (example: anticonvulsant drugs block electrolytes from entering the neural pathways in the brain to prevent excess electrical activity from occurring ie seizure)(the problem with this is that the reason for the excess electrical activity is because of an imbalance of the electrolytes (too much sodium, too much calcium, etc)(the brain is like a circuit board: electrolytes are electrically charged minerals that interact positively and negatively in the neural pathways depending on a balance: when 1 electrolyte attempts to pass through a cell wall (neural pathway wall) it will need to exchange places with another electrolyte to keep the balance, if there's an imbalance to begin with then there will be more of the electrolyte in the pathway than outside--this could cause a higher electrical activity when that electrolyte interacts with another along the same pathway. Whether the electrolytes are out of balance or not there is electrical activity occurring in the neural pathways--if your low on any of the electrolytes you'll experience symptoms like cognitive impairment, brain fog, memory loss, and SEIZURES. If you have too much of any electrolytes you will experience symptoms like headaches, anxiety, and SEIZURES. If you think about it it makes sense, insufficient electrical activity will cause a computer to under perform/excess electrical activity can cause the computer to over perform. There was a study done by John's Hopkins that found that more than 50% of the epileptic patients that participated in the study had been misdiagnosed (they didn't have epilepsy) they actually had a poor ability to control stressful situations. This goes back to how the body works and the importance of nutrition for the bodies ability to function properly (Magnesium deficiency very common in USA--Magnesium participates in over 300 different functions in the body one of which is in regulating stress, when a person experiences anxiety the Magnesium isn't able to regulate it. Anxiety/Chronic Anxiety will deplete the electrolyte Magnesium causing a deficiency--a Magnesium deficiency symptom is seizures. Doctors and physicians of Conventional Medicine won't usually test a patients micronutrients for deficiencies (all micronutrients not just a few) unless your missing half of your colon. This is because most insurance companies won't pay the $2000 bill for the test and if a doctor/physician orders the test without approval from the insurance company the Dr/Physician will be held accountable for the bill by law. All pharmaceuticals are a "band-aid" they treat the symptoms but not the cause. The symptoms will return if the patient stops taking the pharmaceuticals unless the cure the cause first. The patient will also get sicker-more symptoms/ailments will show up if the cause isn't cured.
Me about 30-45 seconds into this video:
"Space people make our drugs!"
+Isles of Scion of course they do, we need all that space radiation, earth radiation is poisonous but cosmic rays are good!
My dog had acupuncture sessions (yes, there is acupuncture for animals) because we took him to the Vet and she said he needed a very expensive surgery, which we couldn't afford, so then she told us acupuncture could help with his pain. We hired a dog acupuncturist and since the sessions have started he got better and feeling less pain (but of course, he isn't cured). Sounds crazy, right?
Not crazy. Your dog has been watching too many youtube videos on placebo and that has
enabled the placebo response to work in your dog! The denialists here would suggest
other things. Like 'magic' 'woo' ?
the requirement of this world is a integrative medicine where practices of the one system of medicine which is useful is combined with the other system which is helpful in others, but this can only be done by rigorous scientific research and number based statistics.
So accociation between acupuncture practice and pain relief was observed in the study you mentioned?
Correlation doesn't equate causation doc, I know you have used the phrase so many times that if you take the study for granted, you would come out hypocritical.
Is there a reason you guys changed the title from " Alternative Medicine. Does it Work? Sometimes." to what it is now?
+OurPeanutGallerie I think the new title is more in-line with the general thesis of the video, since he spends a lot of time on the terms rather than the "alternative medicine" treatments.
I agree. I was just interested when they chose that change :)
I'm not saying that acupuncture works: obviously I don't know that, and I have grave doubts as well. but anytime I hear about a study that tested, "acupuncture," I think somebody, somewhere, has no idea what acupuncture is.
A common misconception is that traditional medicine deals only with artificial substances, things produced in labs or other forms of technology while alternative medicine is natural remedies. Although this hold a little truth to it, traditional medicine is not all laboratory findings and artificially produced drugs. Many doctors who use technological treatments of such also have recommended certain therapies, acupuncture and other more 'natural' treatments. This goes to show that these two categories of medicine are not black and white. In fact, there is an extremely large grey area in which they overlap. Conventional medicine still utilizes many natural things. Supporters, however are often blind to the disadvantages of each of the types of medicine they support. In actuality through, medicine is proven through many studies, so I am skeptical that "alternative medicine" should even really be considered medicine.
All depends upon the results after rigorously double-blind testing.
My university is playing this right now at a symposium for Master student's research :D
You should do a video on B. Caapi vine and Syrian Rue seeds (they contain reversible MAOI's and in both plants (most noteaby caapi) they contain Harmine and Harmala which was tested and found to produce pancreatic beta cells. Some pharmacologists are trying to make new drugs that can be patented out of these substances. I'm curious about whether or not they are effective at treating other conditions in which MAOI's are prescribed, like depression.
What you said about vitamin C lacks context and doesn't credit Native American traditional healers. They saved British sailors with citrus.
Evidence based medicine, please!
We should care about what is proved to work, not what the origins are of the treatment.
can you do an acupuncture video?
+unitus thecreatorofspacetime c0nc0rdance has done a good one
I've always been an advocate of western medicine. Healthcare treatments need to studied and researched vigorously. They have looked at side effects and long-term effects of treatments. Studies have shown that natural treatments bear no more relief than conventional medicine. I know that a lot of medications are plant based but they also have been studied a lot. We know their effects. Alternative medicine is not evidence based.
apparently despite it's obvious failure to get sick well, you still believe in it. wake up. use your common sense instead of being impressed by medical b.s..
Yes, yes. I know how you feel about supplements BUT is anything legit on any of the wildly popular ones? Turmeric? Coenzyme q10 (is it true you need that if you take a statin)? Green tea? What about dhea? I have heard of endocrinologist even recommending that. Cinnamon? ALA? I also am strongly interested in a full episode that explores fish oils. Thanks!
No one wants to pay for these trials if the companies are not making any money
Science doesn’t pretend to know things that it doesn’t. Alternative medicine always has a solution.
The combination of Eastern and Western = the best
Cuz my fd got a serious headache and he went to hospital for several times , it’s no use still awful headache.
But then he went to Chinese medicine clinic and did some treatments and it works, finally he does not feel any pains and he gets 100% well.👏🏼👍🏼
OMG that’s so magical😳
Thank you Chinese medical doctor helps my fd 😭😭👩⚕️ I gradually love eastern medicine and I wanna learn the eastern medical treatments
That’s good thank you TCM
ngl TCM is just unproven medicine, i bet you there are many amazing cures and their potential side effects waiting for discovery
Er... It seems you sort of forgot to make your point. Is it ethical and smart to be teaching this subject, does the subject have any merit, and does the school retain any credibility and dignity henceforth?
Aaron, do you consider yourself a "skeptic"? Have you heard of The Skeptics Guide to the Universe? It's a podcast I think you might enjoy. Cheers!
an evaluation of the specific meta-analysis you reference in the episode:
"The Vickers acupuncture meta-analysis, despite the authors’ claims, does not reveal anything new about the acupuncture literature, and does not provide support for use of acupuncture as a legitimate medical intervention. The data show that there is a large difference in outcome when an unblinded comparison is made between treatment and no treatment - an unsurprising result that is of no clinical relevance and says nothing about acupuncture itself.
The comparison between true acupuncture and sham acupuncture shows only a small difference, which is likely not clinically significant or perceptible. More importantly, this small difference is well within the degree of bias and noise that are inherent to clinical trials. Researcher bias, publication bias, outlying effects, and researcher degrees of freedom are more than enough to explain such a small difference. In other words - this data is insufficient to reject the null hypothesis, even if we don’t consider the high implausibility of acupuncture.
Further, meta-analysis itself is an imperfect tool that often does not predict the results of large, rigorous, definitive clinical trials. The best acupuncture trials, those that are well-blinded and include placebo acupuncture, show no specific effects."
www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/an-acupuncture-meta-analysis/
0:56 _"I talk to patients all the time about diet and exercise."_
I have Crohn's, and when I was first getting diagnosed I asked the gastroenterologist about dietary recommendations. he looked at me like I was crazy. he literally had nothing to say about it, and couldn't understand why I would even ask.
meanwhile, in Japan (where I live now), a good proportion of the basic Crohn's intervention strategy is based on diet.
the doctor's reaction ended up pushing me _way, _*_far_*_ away_ from just taking the medicine I needed to be taking, and led to all kinds of problems, including a surgery that I probably could have avoided if he had been more of a human.
I suffered ravaging diarrhea - irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) from October 2002 to 2014 August 1.
Concurrent with my severe rheumatoid arthritis (RA). My IBS was completely independent of my diet.
FYI: I have been vegan for animal rights since 1980, the only one of two logical reasons to be vegan,
the other being to reduce climate change. It did not matter what I ate or did not eat. My IBS raged.
The one thing that SEEMED to stop it, and it came to a dead stop, 2014 August 1, almost as quickly as
it had begun, was when I started on new RA pill Xeljanz. The Xeljanz stopped it cold.
So, no. Diet is NOT important to everyone.
Regardless of your opinions about the effectiveness of acupuncture (as difficult as it is for me to write such a thing), how can you claim it is not complementary medicine? Its efficacy is as well established as the efficacy of chocolate to treat depression. Yeah, you might be able to find some evidence out there, but that doesn't make it a widely accepted or mainstream treatment. The evidence for the efficacy of acupuncture is approximately as strong as the evidence for ESP. In both cases, numerous studies have been performed with at best unclear results.
I have family members who believe in homeopathy and it drives me crazy when they try to force it on me.
It is true that certain alternative medicine works. Many of the drugs currently on the market are alkaloids derived from plants that make up the crux of eastern medicine. Homeopathy, however, is utter nonsense. Homeopathy is thought to work by water memory, the idea that water can have some kind of memory of its solute and replicate its properties, which defies what we know about physical chemistry, and the one study that actually received positive results suggesting that this may be the case has never been able to be replicated. Okay, fine, technically water does have a memory. It lasts 50 femtoseconds (the time it takes for water to redistribute its bonds). Real curative properties there huh? Beyond that though, another fundamental tenet of homeopathy is that the more dilute a medicine is, the more potent it is. This is just completely absurd. By that logic we should all be chugging pure water and living eternally. Some of these medicines are so diluted that they don't even have a single molecule of the active ingredient, and, again, water has no effective memory.
But fine. What if this isn't the way homeopathy works? After all, its just a hypothesis. Well, as pointed out in the video, homeopathic drugs have never outperformed placebos in a statistically significant way in all well-designed studies on the matter. I can stipulate that sometimes scientists get things wrong, but results don't lie.
I have nothing against placebos whatsoever, but, if you tell me that I can't have actual medicine and make me take a placebo instead (which I know is a placebo, thereby significantly diminishes its therapeutic effects) I will not take kindly to that, and that is precisely what has happened to me in the past as I was told not to consume certain foods or medications that had actual therapeutic properties because they would cancel out the effects of the homeopathic medicine I had been given.
thank U sir☝🏾☝🏾☝🏾💥💥💥. western medicine victimized me for a short period..... i escaped 🙏🏾😵💫😵💫
Placebo is one hell of a drug!
.....And drug medication does cause huge iatregenics 💥💥💥💥💥 so much distraction
I'm really glad this episode was made :)
And it was really well done too.
this is a great video. Really important stuff, thanks
We do it because the public is becoming more and more aware of the long term effects of lab produced medicines . I've actually lived what you're talking about and although point understood you're all in it to win it and the new kid on the block is organic and natural based products. Now its worth money . It's in demand and why miss this grand opportunity to take from small mom and pop businesses niw that they have paved the way for tajeover.
#Nmethyltransferase I have family members who believe in homeopathy and it drives me crazy when they try to force it on me.
It is true that certain alternative medicine works. Many of the drugs currently on the market are alkaloids derived from plants that make up the crux of eastern medicine. Homeopathy, however, is utter nonsense. Homeopathy is thought to work by water memory, the idea that water can have some kind of memory of its solute and replicate its properties, which defies what we know about physical chemistry, and the one study that actually received positive results suggesting that this may be the case has never been able to be replicated. Okay, fine, technically water does have a memory. It lasts 50 femtoseconds (the time it takes for water to redistribute its bonds). Real curative properties there huh? Beyond that though, another fundamental tenet of homeopathy is that the more dilute a medicine is, the more potent it is. This is just completely absurd. By that logic we should all be chugging pure water and living eternally. Some of these medicines are so diluted that they don't even have a single molecule of the active ingredient, and, again, water has no effective memory.
But fine. What if this isn't the way homeopathy works? After all, its just a hypothesis. Well, as pointed out in the video, homeopathic drugs have never outperformed placebos in a statistically significant way in all well-designed studies on the matter. I can stipulate that sometimes scientists get things wrong, but results don't lie.
I have nothing against placebos whatsoever, but, if you tell me that I can't have actual medicine and make me take a placebo instead (which I know is a placebo, thereby significantly diminishes its therapeutic effects) I will not take kindly to that, and that is precisely what has happened to me in the past as I was told not to consume certain foods or medications that had actual therapeutic properties because they would cancel out the effects of the homeopathic medicine I had been given. @Nmethyltransferase
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The Singapore Govt allows Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) to be practised and accredited under the TCM Act (2000). However, this may be a cunning move that is specific to a society like Singapore.
Singapore has a ethnic Chinese majority, and a significant percentage of the Chinese population believe in the efficacy of TCM.
BUT, the efficacy of TCM has not been proven. The Singapore Govt is not soft-headed. So why did it recognise and allow TCM to be practised with official sanction?
Short answer: politics.
Longer answer: Recognising TCM would score political points with the traditional Chinese who believe in TCM. Also, while the efficacy of TCM is not proven, it is also unlikely to be harmful. And in the best case scenario, there is the placebo effect. So the net effect is that there is no harm, the patient feels better because of placebo effect (maybe), and some patients are diverted from the national healthcare system to TCM. The lines at the national healthcare polyclinics are shorter, and people are happier (or at least less unhappy), and this is political points for the govt.
Well, that is the cynical view.
Q: Would TCM be right for your city/state/country?
A: would any of the advantages in the longer answer apply to your city/state/country?
You just found yourself a new subscriber, sir!
Homeopathy is a proven treatment for at least one problem. If your wallet is feeling bloated and just too full homeopathy will help with that.
If alternative or complimentary medicine worked it would just be called medicine.