Viti

So Franc....could you show me these studies done on Lortab? What I am saying is it still comes down to someone hurting on not which cannot be objectivly measured.

Francois Tremblay

I don't even know what "Lortab" is. What is the relevance of this with acupuncture or chiropracty ? What a silly red herring (you could have done it less blatantly, for one).

Viti

Less blatantly?? You have accused those of us who have experienced true pain relief as being no better than believers in faith healing!

Lortab (or equivalent ) is the most commonly prescribed painkiller on the market for chronic pain(another brand name is Vicodin, ever heard of it?), its generic name is hydrocodone, it is a mix of codeine and acetaminophen. As with all opiates, it is highly addictive and often abused. Acetaminophen has been PROVEN to cause liver damage.

For someone who demands so much proof and is so anti-alternative medicine you sure don't know much about traditional medicine.

[ February 27, 2002: Message edited by: LadyShea ]</p>

Do not wish to be associated w/ II

I'm not getting embroiled in this topic- don't have the time-

But small point- we do have objective measures of pain- more kinda objective-by-proxy- we measure BP, Pulse, respiratory rate- basically anything that shows sympathetic arousal.

To measure subjective pain we use the 'visual analogue scale' where patients mark on a 10cm line roughly where the pain they are experiencing lies, from 0 (no pain at all) at one end to 10 (the worst pain imaginable). Kids have trouble understanding this concept so they invented the visual analogue scale with pictures of faces with very happy ones at one end and screaming unhappy ones at the other. At Yorkhill, the hospital where I am currently studying paeds for a bit, they discovered that after quite a while of using this 'new and improved' scale with the kids that the kids still didn't quite grasp the concept and were just picking the 'face' they liked best! OOps! That should highlight one of the difficulties in using proxy measurements, at least in the clinical setting.

As for the rest of the topic- There is tons I could say, tons I want to say, but nothing that can convince me to sit here and bump my gums trotting out the same stuff again and again- if someone wants to go alternative and it works for them- then good for them- there is a saying involving a type of person and their money. Apparently they are easily parted. I also hear the same type of person gets into 'alternative health care' courses quite easily, whilst the brighter ones go to a proper medical school The ivory towers teach us the magical art of scientific reasoning. Very arcane, very esoteric, but ultimately quite enjoyable.

Do not wish to be associated w/ II

Oh and I think I should mention that quite a lot of 'traditional medicine' is not especially scientific. Most of it is- but a lot of it isn't.

I think that one of the main reasons that 'alternative therapies' 'work' is more to do with the approach of the 'healer'. A GP can do everything by the clinical guidelines and still have very unhappy patients e.g. "He didn't even examine me properly. yada yada yada"

pulpyboy

As I stated before, there is no such word as chiropracty. Perhaps Franc28 missed my earlier post.
British Medical Journal Volume 303 5 October1991
Where is the Wisdom...? The poverty of medical evidence by Richard Smith Editor BMJ
"Yet only about 15% of medical interventions are supported by solid scientific evidence,David Eddy, professor of health policy and management at Duke University, North Carolins, told a conference in Manchester last week. This is partly because only 1% of the articles in medical journals are scientifically sound and partly because many treatments have never been assessed at all."
I guess this questions that most of modern medicine is actually scientific by strict definition.

Actually my favorite anecdotal cases are the patients who are scheduled for surgery who respond to care and then are told that they were going to get better anyway.

The following is copied from the Deepak Chopra thread that I referenced earlier.

The following are research articles already published or in the process of being written that describe the ideal spinal model. These studies are being done on a research budget of about $50,000 per year raised mostly by donations from individual D.C.s such as myself.

Spinal Modeling
1. Harrison DD, Janik TJ, Troyanovich SJ, Holland B. Comparisons of Lordotic Cervical Spine Curvatures to a Theoretical Ideal Model of the Static Sagittal Cervical Spine. Spine 1996;21(6):667-675.

2. Harrison DD, Janik TJ, Troyanovich SJ, Harrison DE, Colloca CJ. Evaluations of the Assumptions Used to Derive an Ideal Normal Cervical Spine Model. J Manipulative Physiol Ther 1997; 20(4): 246-256.

3. Troyanovich SJ, Cailliet R, Janik TJ, Harrison DD, Harrison DE. Radiographic Mensuration Characteristics of the Sagittal Lumbar Spine From A Normal Population with a Method to Synthesize Prior Studies of Lordosis. J Spinal Disord 1997;10(5): 380-386.

4. Harrison DD, Cailliet R, Janik TJ, Troyanovich SJ, Harrison DE, Holland B. Elliptical Modeling of the Sagittal Lumbar Lordosis and Segmental Rotation Angles as a Method to Discriminate Between Normal and Low Back Pain Subjects. J Spinal Disord 1998;11(5): 430-439.

5. Janik TJ, Harrison DD, Cailliet R, Troyanovich SJ, Harrison DE. Can the Sagittal Lumbar Curvature be Closely Approximated by an Ellipse? J Orthop Res 1998; 16(6): 766-770.

Not Available:

6. Harrison DE, Harrison DD, Cailliet R, Janik TJ, Harmon S. A Statistically Averaged Normal Model of the Thoracic Kyphosis. (Being written)

7. Harrison DE, Harrison DD, Cailliet R, Janik TJ, Harmon S. An Ideal Anthropometric Model of the Thoracic Kyphosis. (Being written)

8. Janik TJ, Harrison DD, Harrison DE. The Harrison Spinal Model: Evaluation of the Slope, Shear, and Bending Moments at the Points of Inflection. (Being written)

I would think that some of the above information would indicate that there are some chiropractors who embrace the scientific model and welcome the research of their profession. Your continuing reliance on quoting from chirobase.org which is editorially biased against chiropractic is getting somewhat tiring. What I have cited above are all studies published in journals listed in the index medicus. Most of chirobase.org is editorial in content or cites outdated references.
Again I will state that there are quacks in my profession that make chiropractic almost a religious experience. I do believe that while these people may be vocal, they make up the minority of chiropractic.

Gee, until I read the above, I always had thought of myself as a bright person.
It is true that there are lower admission standards to chiropractic college. Until the early 1980's, there was no financial aid available. The schools were not supported by the government at all unlike medical schools. Therefore, they were run more like a private business with the more business the better. Unfortunately, most of them are still run the same way.
Respectfully,
Michael

Do not wish to be associated w/ II

Maybe if you even read my post you'd see I hadn't quoted Chirobase at all.
Side note:
I do have a problem with the 'great organised traditional medicine conspiracy' that many users of alternative health care have. "Drug companies are in it for the money" is what they screech- well D'uh! Who would have thought that big business wanted to make a profit? Indeed if the therapies were any good then you can bet your bottom dollar they'd be all over them with patents like a rash. Oddly enough Pfizer hasn't yet taken a patent out on "nux vom" or "eye of newt".

Note to Michael- why don't you apply to a proper medical school if you are so bright?

Viti

Hi Thomas! Long time no posts read from you my love.

I know this is a weird topic...I know that some of this shit shouldn't work...but I am sitting here pain free without surgery or drugs that I don't get along well with. I have X-rays that show my inverted vertabrae, damn, anyone can feel my spine and KNOW that's it ain't right. I have been diagnosed with TMJ by dentists....yet I function.

Do you think it's all placebo? I am asking you because I respect your opinion...should I let someone open me up?

Keep in mind I am donating a kidney because "medical professionals" failed to acknowledge the fact they were destroying my friend's renal function for three years.

Do not wish to be associated w/ II

Hi LadyShea,

The placebo effect is real. It clearly has some physiological background. After all pain is a biochemical reaction- on many levels, from the site of trauma itself to the neurons in the brain that alert you to the fact.

So I do not doubt for a microsecond that you are pain free. I do not even doubt that the person who did the work for you was responsible. I am also even less convinced that this pain relief was due to some purely cerebral chemical reaction. My main opposition to 'alternative health care' is that it isn't subject to scientific investigation, and indeed any attempt to do such a thing is often seen as contrary to the therapy in question. As Michael demonstrated above it is excellent that chiropractors are submitting to scientific enquiry. My reply to Michael was a bit terse unfortunately.

Your example above with your assistant also developing a similar problem and the care she received highlights another major problem in medicine. First off- how do we know that two people presenting with similar symptoms have the same condition? How do we rate the severity of their conditions? How do we know our proposed therapy was actually responsible for any benefit? How do we measure the benefit (what is our 'end point'?)? To an extent the first question is really a matter of scale. For example the clinical entity we know as Cystic Fibrosis is actually heterogeneous, with hundreds of different mutations all being identified- but all affecting the CFTR protein. The mutations can dramatically alter the clinical picture, e.g. some patients will develop pancreatic insufficiency within days of birth, others not at all, or very little. So what unifies all of these conditions together into 'cystic fibrosis'? It could be argued that nothing does, only the convenience of grouping like with like. The term remains useful though. If tomorrow we discovered a group of people who all had a mutation in the same protein but with totally different presentations then the diagnostic term 'cystic fibrosis' would have to be couched in different terms, e.g. have 'specifiers' added. This is seen particularly in psychiatry, where the terminology is updated frequently- new terms will be proposed and tested to see if they are valid or even useful. If they are then they will be retained, if not they are discarded.

I do not know the background to your friend's impaired renal function. I would be surprised though if the doctors were unaware that the risk existed. Indeed one of the drugs s/he will receive when your kidney is in place is reknowned for being toxic to the kidneys (but it is a damn good immunosuppresant- cyclosporin is the drug I am talking about). Most of medicine is a risk/benefit scenario. Take oral steroids for example. They are marvellous at treating a condition called temporal arteritis and can prevent blindness- but they can also cause horrendous side effects. On balance however it is reckoned that the risk of the side effects is balanced by the maintenance of good sight. This is just one example of many.

Francois Tremblay

No, I have accused you of relying on singular cases instead of proper experiments. Listen to people when they're talking, you quack.


When have I said I was anti-alternative medecine ? I demand objective evidence, just like I do for everything else. If you have a problem with reason, go talk it up with reality, I don't care.

There is no more scientific evidence (either for the cause or effect) associated with chiropracty or acupuncture than there is for the Flood or the idea that evolution is restricted to "biblical kinds".

[ February 27, 2002: Message edited by: Franc28 ]</p>