Category: Reality Is the Best Medicine

When I first started looking into chiropractic, I read about one of its continuing medical education (CME) offerings. CME for physicians is intended to update their knowledge so they can treat patients more effectively. This chiropractic CME course didn’t try to inform chiropractors about new knowledge from recent studies (there isn’t much new chiropractic research) …

In 1747, one of the first controlled clinical trials in the history of medical science involved vitamin C, though the researcher had no idea what a vitamin was; the vitamin wasn’t discovered until 1912. Scurvy, a disease caused by vitamin C deficiency, was rampant in the British Royal Navy, disabling and killing more sailors than …

Animals can be hazardous to human health. When asked to name the most dangerous animal, many people will give the wrong answer. Sharks have captured the attention of the public, and other animals that kill people may come to mind, such as black widow spiders, rabid dogs, and venomous snakes. And don’t forget the human …

Some animals (such as hydras and some jellyfish) can apparently live forever, but we humans are all going to die. Longevity is desirable, but aging—a slow process of deterioration—is not. Hearing declines (half of those older than seventy-five have disabling hearing loss), as does visual acuity (by age eighty, 70 percent of white Americans have …

Medical research studies can be divided into two types: observational and experimental. Observational studies simply observe the effect of a variable in a population. They can assess the strength of a relationship, for instance between dietary factors and disease. Are vegetarians less likely to develop cancer? Are patients treated with a new diabetes drug less …

Disease vs. Illness The words disease and illness are often used interchangeably, but their meanings are very different. Diseases are biomedical entities that cause impairment of the normal functioning of the body, while illness refers to the way a patient experiences a sickness. There can be disease without illness and illness without disease. Diseases may …

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention named community water fluoridation one of the ten greatest public health achievements of the twentieth century. In a recent statement, the American Dental Association (ADA) stressed that it is “committed to fluoridation of public water supplies as the single most effective public health measure to help prevent tooth …

Is hypnosis for real? Do people actually go into a trance, or is it just a matter of imagination and role playing? Some people swear by it. One website proclaims that your mind power is limitless: The highly focused, yet deeply relaxed state of mind achieved via hypnosis yields many great benefits, digging to the …

Alternative medicine includes modalities such as acupuncture and chiropractic that are widely accepted despite the evidence for their effectiveness being far from convincing. It also includes lesser known systems of treatment. In the United States, the practice of Ayurveda is not licensed or regulated by any state, although Deepak Chopra has done much to publicize …

We are seeing a lot of pushback on government restrictions imposed to limit the spread of COVID-19. Many people refuse to wear masks or practice social distancing. Some claim that the disease has been conquered, pointing to improvement in survival rates, and manage to ignore the increasing number of new infections and hospitalizations. Some continue …

Big Pharma is not a misnomer; pharmaceutical drugs are big business. The United States is the world leader in producing new drugs and is responsible for nearly half of the new molecular entities (NMEs) that come on the market (Lowe 2010). Americans spend well over $300 billion yearly on prescription drugs (The American Academy of …

As fears of the new coronavirus disease (COVID-19) spread, alternative medicine was quick to provide false reassurance in the form of misinformation and bogus remedies. A recurring theme in complementary and alternative medicine—and a common mantra of those who make questionable health claims—has long been “boosting the immune system.” In fact, this wrong-headed idea is …

Kinesiology is the scientific study of movement. Applied kinesiology is a bogus muscle-testing technique most commonly used by chiropractors but also by some other health care practitioners. It is neither scientific nor valid but instead based on a delusion. One commenter said, “It is denounced as an absurd and dishonest parlour trick by anyone else …

There is an old joke about a patient who had high praise for her new doctor. She had headaches for years, and no one was ever able to explain why. The cause remained uncertain. But the uncertainty ended when her wonderful new doctor promptly diagnosed her with cephalalgia. The joke is that cephalalgia is not …

It sounds like the script of a science fiction/fantasy movie: The class dunce takes a pill and suddenly becomes smarter than everyone in the class, including the teacher. An elderly Alzheimer’s patient takes a pill and his memory is instantly restored—Alzheimer’s dementia cured! Don’t you wish? If only that sort of story could be true! …

Chiropractic has come a long way since its creation in 1895, but where is it going? Its inventor, Daniel David Palmer, was a grocer and magnetic healer who didn’t have the benefit of X-rays and didn’t know about the germ theory of disease. Based on pseudoscientific and metaphysical ideas, chiropractic has been trying to establish …

Opium, a dried latex collected from the opium poppy, was the original “wonder drug.” It effectively relieved pain and had other medicinal effects—and incidentally produced both euphoria and addiction. There is archaeological evidence that it was used as early as 5700 BC. It was the active ingredient in laudanum and paregoric. For decades, these opiates …

One definition of alternative medicine is medicine that is not supported by good enough evidence to have earned a place in mainstream medicine. Comedian Tim Minchin asked, “What do you call alternative medicine that works? Medicine.” That’s a simplistic answer good for laughs, but the truth is a bit more complicated. Alternative medicine embraces many …

Doctors order too many tests. Some are useless, some are harmless (except for the cost), but some can lead to serious bodily harm. Misconceptions about Tests Many people, including doctors, tend to think of tests as giving consistent and reliable yes or no answers. They think a test can make a diagnosis, but that’s not …

One of my biggest pet peeves is advertisements for bogus health-related products deceptively presented as news stories. These appear regularly in many newspapers, including my own local paper the Tacoma News Tribune, and they typically fill a half page. They usually include the words advertisement or paid advertisement in small print that is easy to …

When I first heard of acupuncture in medical school in the late 1960s, I became convinced that it worked.

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