The chiropractor can help, but people look to him to fix a problem that is caused by an unhealthy lifestyle.
Sorry, I don't get what the argument here is or if this is an argument. Because a doctor is there to fix the problems of an unhealthy lifestyle, it is the same thing. But a naturopath is usually (at least good ones) trying to fix the unhealthy lifestyle rather than treat the disease that may be caused by the unhealthy lifestyle. The biggest problem in North America is an unhealthy lifestyle hands down.
I'm not saying one is better than the other, and if I had to choose for myself I would you conventional treatments in combination with alternatives (such as nutritionalists, ND's, etc).
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It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
- Aristotle
Pre-med is nothing, it's like pre-law, it's just an undergraduate degree. I don't even think you need a Bsc to get into med-school as long as you have certain pre-reqs.
Second, I totally agree with Vlad, at the end of the day if nothing is working for someone, they go to a naturopath, get sugar pills and feel better, who cares. Sure it costs a little money, but they are happy.
Speaking of which, I went to get a massage the other day, and while I was talking with the masseuse they were telling me they just got certified for some type of massage therapy where they don't actually touch you, they just move your body's energy around. WTF? How is this not the same thing as fortune telling. How can you "give me a massage" without actually massaging my muscles. There should be some sort of disclaimer that the massage is only for entertainment purposes.
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LOL pre-med is not even a requirement, I guarantee anyone with a fat wallet qualifies to peddle their quackery.
As a high School dropout I qualify for two major Naturiopath and Homeopath Colleges in Canada.
from 'The School of Homeopathy':
There are no high level academic entry requirements for joining our courses, rather we ask that you to come with vocational aptitude and an open mind and heart. Healing talents, commitment and life experience count for a lot. That you be as free of prejudice as possible, is also desirable, because fixed attitudes obscure not only another’s truth (your patient’s for example) but also your capacity to absorb new ideas.
1. You must be 23 years of age or over.
2. You must be able to read and write English or French fluently.
3. You must have a high school, college or university level degree or have a life experience judged to be sufficient and appropriate for the chosen program.
4. Have taken or committed to following a Human Anatomy & Physiology course.
5. You must submit a completed Registration Form with a resume, a passport photo, a hand-written letter explaining your wish to register, your first payment including the registration fee, copies of all certificates, diplomas or documents relating to conditions 1 – 4.
Just to add, a few years back I was having really bad issues with fatigue and sleeping disorders. Someone I know suggested I see a local naturopath, a very well known and expensive one at that. Whatever, I was desperate. Anyway he went so far to suggest I may be overly sensitive to the recent chemtrail activity by the airlines. I said "I don't think this is right for me." Put my tinfoil hat back on, and left. It turns out less pizza and Xbox live was the answer.
Why do doctors need pre-med ? and why would they spend a few years getting it ?
Sorry I should clarify, it's ANY undergraduate degree. Pre-med isn't an actual program. you can't sign up at the University for "Pre-Med" at least not at UofC or any other school I'm aware of in Canada.
One thing I think main stream medicine should do is perscibe more placebo's.
A lot of Naturopaths / alternative medicines work percisely because of the placebo effect. Science has proven that the placebo effect is very powerful yet main stream medicine seems to have an issue with perscribing sugar pills as a cure.
A Doctor will tell you they don't have a treatment for you or don't know the cause and just deal with it or recomend somethings to help diagnose it. This makes peoples problems worse as they go to the internet and diagnose themselves and make their symtoms worse. Then they go to a naturopath and are told they have XXX and take this and you will feel better. Placebo effect kicks in and the person believes they have been cured and that naturopathy works.
I am however a big Chiro fan. They do a good job at relieving immediate pain. However their are far to many quacks in the chiro field it makes finding a good one difficult.
You guys know so much about all this medical stuff we should just start a thread for medical advice.
Does one need to be a doctor to know subluxations don't exist? Or that aligning your chackras with magic massage is baloney? Or that the water with zero molecules of any active ingredient is just water?
If a profession is based on ideas that have zero evidence, if they happen to actually do some good it's more by accident than design.
If you are saying this to try and undermine the arguments against this stuff then it isn't a valid argument, try again.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pinner
Think of all the money teams and athletes spend on Chiropractics, Naturopathy and dietitians, what a waste.
Why do you throw dieticians in there? Changing what you eat will have a definite impact on you.
But for the rest, yes it might be a waste of money (depending on specifics, again for example a chiro that focuses on the lower back is fine, one that does neck manipulation to fix asthma isn't). You think just because someone happens to be an athlete or a sports team they're all of a sudden different and never get drawn in by things like that?
This isn't a valid response against the arguments against this stuff either.
__________________ Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position.
But certainty is an absurd one.
Something for the skeptics (with regard to energy-related and 'alternative' healing practices in general, not specifically naturopathy) to consider would be something like healing touch -- a practice which could be seen as one of those "touchless massage" types of things.
The training program for healing touch was initiated by an RN in the states and is taken/studied by many RNs as part of their required professional training 'upkeep'. It's also used in many hospitals around N.A. (and the world) as a therapy, in conjunction with traditional Western medicine. Because of its presence in the medical community, they're pretty big on research as well -- including studies conducted by researchers at Stanford, Vanderbilt and various state universities.
Healing touch has been debunked more often than I care to remember, and the fact RN's are involved doesn't help its case any as they are just like normal people in the fact they can fall for something just as easily as your everyday people.
Also there is a dark side to believing in such nonsense, its that most people who might spend a $100 a year for a placebo affect aren't the issue, its the people that put so much trust in these alternative med foo foo that they discount modern medicine and put themselves or worse, their children in the fate of snake oil salesmen.
This is faith healing gone wrong, but its still about putting faith over reason when it comes to healing, something that can and does go horribly wrong all over the world where people have strong beliefs in this junk.
Oregon faith-healing parents fight to get baby back, face criminal charges
Quote:
OREGON CITY -- A Beavercreek couple who left their infant daughter's fate to God rather than seek medical treatment for a mass that grew over her left eye will face charges of first-degree criminal mistreatment.
At the same time, you've got peer-reviewed journal articles and studies -- published by those scientists that others in this thread are holding to such a high standard -- saying things like this:
Quote:
Abstract: Background Biofield therapies (such as Reiki, therapeutic touch, and healing touch) are complementary medicine modalities that remain controversial and are utilized by a significant number of patients, with little information regarding their efficacy. Purpose: This systematic review examines 66 clinical studies with a variety of biofield therapies in different patient populations. Method: We conducted a quality assessment as well as a best evidence synthesis approach to examine evidence for biofield therapies in relevant outcomes for different clinical populations. Results: Studies overall are of medium quality, and generally meet minimum standards for validity of inferences. Biofield therapies show strong evidence for reducing pain intensity in pain populations, and moderate evidence for reducing pain intensity hospitalized and cancer populations. There is moderate evidence for decreasing negative behavioral symptoms in dementia and moderate evidence for decreasing anxiety for hospitalized populations. There is equivocal evidence for biofield therapies' effects on fatigue and quality of life for cancer patients, as well as for comprehensive pain outcomes and affect in pain patients, and for decreasing anxiety in cardiovascular patients. Conclusion: There is a need for further high-quality studies in this area. PDF of full paper on Springerlink
Basically an evaluation of studies (conducted by researches at UCLA and the U of California) says 'it seems like these practices are good for some things, average for others, and potentially ineffective for yet others. So we need to study them more.' Certainly not an outright dismissal.
Now, of course that's not a guarantee of anything. I guess I'm just proposing that not all research so unequivocally shows that such therapies are 'bunk'. At least some studies demonstrate that they have value. In my mind, it' s a double standard to point to studies that say they don't work as 'proof', but to ignore the ones that indicate they very well may. In other words -- the 'jury' is still out. But that's getting off track a bit from the initial direction of the thread, and will leave it at that /shrug
.... and thats the problem with homeopathy evidence... its all anecdotal.
What are you saying? Are you saying that it didn't happen because it was not done under a proper study? The facts are right there. In this case the woman got positive results. Why deny them? Who cares why she got the positive results. But she started to get them after seeing the person. Case closed.
If I had some kind of medical issue and I went to a bunch of doctors with no results and then I went to somebody else and I got better. Who the heck cares if science says it works. The fact is I am better. Sounds like some of you think that I should deny feeling better because it has not been proven. I don't get it.
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It's funny how the more open minded posters are talking about lifestyle and dietary changes and Chiropractors cracking someones back/pelvis back into alignment.
The skeptics are talking about all kinds of crazy hoakie stuff like faith healing and airliner's with chem trails, subluxations therapeutic touch etc. LoL and that's from just this page.
Like I said earlier, my liver is my concern and prescription drugs are well documented to be very hard on your liver, Tylenol will destroy your liver FYI, even in small amounts.
My thinking is a Naturopathic doctor is much more experienced with diet and lifestyle then a traditional western doctor.
I don't think I'm the only person that has noticed we are a society that has a pharmaceutical for everything.
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^Good post, Pinner. There seems to be a lot of misconceptions about what a ND will do to help you. Not saying that some of what people think isn't true, but I think it definitely opens your eyes once you give their sessions a try.
The problem isnīt that I am against NDīs, its assumed I am it seems. But that Iīm all for options for health treatments as long as its proven, and can truly help people. We need NDs to be a real solid option for people to help remove some of the burden to our health care systems.
The problem is when we have NDs who use real common sense help on nutrition, lifestyle changes and then add on something totally unproven and blur the line between what is going to help you and what isnīt.
I think weīve all agreed the placebo affect is something NDs can truly offer up as real help to people, but why are people so willing to accept things that simply have no basis in reality with regards to the claims made?
In order for this field to be taken seriously they have to regulate and work towards legitimizing themselves and distancing themselves from homeopaths, healing touch practitioners, etc..
At the same time, you've got peer-reviewed journal articles and studies -- published by those scientists that others in this thread are holding to such a high standard -- saying things like this:
Basically an evaluation of studies (conducted by researches at UCLA and the U of California) says 'it seems like these practices are good for some things, average for others, and potentially ineffective for yet others. So we need to study them more.' Certainly not an outright dismissal.
Now, of course that's not a guarantee of anything. I guess I'm just proposing that not all research so unequivocally shows that such therapies are 'bunk'. At least some studies demonstrate that they have value. In my mind, it' s a double standard to point to studies that say they don't work as 'proof', but to ignore the ones that indicate they very well may. In other words -- the 'jury' is still out. But that's getting off track a bit from the initial direction of the thread, and will leave it at that /shrug
That's exactly the type of rather poor publication that alt-med practitioners use to justify their beliefs. However, if you actually look at the paper it's pretty meaningless. They score a bunch of studies based on how well they were designed; the highest scoring any study got was 12/16 and most had scores around 4 or 5 (and given their scoring system, any decent study should have got close to 16/16). I then searched the paper for the highest-scoring studies - they were all negative (i.e. didn't show an effect). So basically the paper is saying most of the studies are badly designed, and the better ones don't show any benefit from these methods. Then the authors somehow come up with a different conclusion.
When I looked up the authors, they are both alt-med practitioners themselves, and one is also the associate editor of the journal that published the paper, perhaps explaining how such a flawed paper was actually published (and people complain about conflicts of interest from pharmaceutical companies funding studies - it works both ways).
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Fair enough, I'm more than happy to admit that I didn't give more than a cursory glance at the paper. And trust me -- I'm totally with you that there are a lot of quacks out there that 'use' such practices to little or no avail (and yes, sometimes to detriment). I'm just not prepared to throw them out entirely; as has been mentioned, while anecdotal evidence isn't worth much, there are people who believe they've been helped by such practitioners. Their experience has to be worth something, even if only to them. Placebo effect or not :-)
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/shrug
