Archive for category Alternative medicine
Herbs : Liver damage
Posted by admin in Alternative medicine, DIETS, Herbalism on April 6th, 2012
In spite of being a user of calendula cream for many years and having an interest in the medically active ingredients in plants, I remain very sceptical when herbal products are promoted. Mostly they are used by practitioners of alternative medicine.
Herbal preparations are not well regulated and can sometimes do harm.
A paper is due to be published in “Internal and Emergency Medicine,” the official journal of the Italian Society of Internal Medicine warning of the dangers of damage to the liver by some products. As yet only the abstract is available. The full article will, when published require subscription to the journal.
HERBAL HEPATOTOXICITY : A HIDDEN EPIDEMIC
COUNTRY : ITALY
“Abstract
Complementary and alternative therapies, including herbal products, have become increasingly popular in the general population and among patients and physicians. Regulations and pharmacovigilance regarding herbal drugs are still incomplete and need to be improved. In fact, herbals are commonly marketed on the Internet, and in many countries they are sold as food supplements, which are beyond the control of drug regulatory agencies. In Europe and the U.S., reports of hepatotoxicity from these products, including those advertised for liver diseases, are accumulating. Many herbal drugs are also commonly used in children, and in women during pregnancy and lactation, because they are believed to be “natural” and, therefore, “harmless.” One emerging problem is people preferring herbal-based slimming aids to conventional dietary and physical activity. In Italy, the use of non-conventional therapies has been reported for 13.6 % of the population, and 3.7 % freely use herbal drugs, unaware of the risks associated with a potential interaction with prescription drugs. In our review, we discuss the problem of the lack of standardization of herbal drugs, the lack of randomized clinical trials regarding the majority of these products, the unawareness of risks by the patients who buy and use them, and, further, the problem of underreporting. For the most commonly used herbal products and slimming aids, we describe their potential hepatotoxicity mechanisms, the causality assessment necessary for a correct diagnosis, and the clinical patterns for which these products seem to be responsible.”
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The Quack Doctor
Posted by admin in Alternative medicine, ICONS - Green Apple, Placebos on February 25th, 2012
I couldn’t make up my mind to whether to categorise this post under the Old Books Icon or the Green Apple Icon, but the green apple won.
I discovered The Quack Doctor recently. It is a wonderful site tapping into all the weird remedies that have been used in the past for various ailments. Illustrations come from old newspapers, posters etc.
COUNTRY : NOT SURE
It is site that uses historical marketing for entertainment and none of the products mentioned should be taken seriously.
They say:
Welcome to The Quack Doctor, a collection of panacean powders, pills, potions, procedures and pamphlets, as advertised in historical newspapers.
This history of medicine blog is intended for research and entertainment purposes and is not a source of medical advice, nor is it possible to buy any of the products described.
So, why have I chosen to label it with the green apple icon rather than the ancient books indicating it is a medical history site?
Well, its because there are still Quack Doctors about. A few of these people are fully fledged medical practitioners but more often they are not. Many of them do not believe they offer quack services or quack pills and potions because their brains are consumed by blind belief rather than logic. Some are ruthless and just after your money. Check out the green apple signs that will appear from time to time on this blog if you want to find out more about pills, potents and procedures of the modern age that, if not complete and utter quackery, are being promoted without any evidence base that they work other than perhaps by placebo effect.
Nevertheless, the placebo effect is an interesting phenomenon and likely a post or two on this subject will appear here at some time in the future.
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Photographed by Adrian Pingstone in January 2005 and placed in the public domain.
Morning sickness : Acupuncture, ginger and other alternative therapies
Posted by admin in Alternative medicine, ICONS - Books and apple, PREGNANCY on August 23rd, 2011
In the previous post, a link to brief information on the BBC site, I questioned the usefulness of acupuncture and ginger in helping morning sickness, so I have tried to find whether there is any evidence that these work. In summary, the evidence is not good.
Cochrane reviews are an attempt to put medicine on an evidence base and there is was a paper in 2010 discussing ginger, acupuncture and other alternative therapies that are often recommended for pregnancy sickness. This is a comprehensive article and is probably the most evidence based that there is around at the present.
INTERVENTIONS FOR NAUSEA AND VOMITING IN EARLY PREGNANCY
COUNTRY : COLLABORATIVE – IRELAND, UK, USA
IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE
Women will continue to seek treatments for the often distressing symptoms of nausea and vomiting in pregnancy. They may take over-the-counter and complementary therapies, based on anecdotal or peer advice. There are many sources of advice for women on the Internet, including peer fora. Wilkinson 2000 found a lack of consensus about safety of herbal treatments (including ginger) for nausea and vomiting in pregnancy in 300 non-medical sources identified in a literature review. This highlights the necessity of health professionals providing clear guidance to women, based on systematically reviewed evidence. On the basis of this review, high-quality consistent evidence is lacking to support the accuracy or appropriateness of that advice. Current guidelines and other reviews often offer incomplete evidence, without comment on the quality of evidence. Health professionals’ decisions about treatments should take account of the lack of clear and consistent evidence found in this review and acknowledge that it is not possible at present to identify, with confidence, safe and effective interventions for nausea and vomiting in early pregnancy.IMPLICATIONS FOR RESEARCH
The difficulties in interpreting the results of the studies included in this review highlight the need for specific and clearly justified outcomes in research on interventions for nausea and vomiting in pregnancy. The range of instruments used to measure these symptoms (including those not developed for this patient group) also suggest the need for a consistent and appropriate approach to measurement, which may be addressed by the PUQE scale described above. There is also a need to systematically measure quality of life and adverse maternal and fetal and neonatal outcomes, to ensure that studies are of most usefulness to health professionals and women seeking safe and effective treatments. We did not identify any studies of dietary or behavioural interventions. Dietary and behavioural strategies (eating low fat, small, frequent meals) were often recommended to all participants (in both treatment and placebo groups) within the studies in this review. Only one study (Ozgoli 2009) measured adherence to dietary advice. The effectiveness of dietary and other behavioural strategies also needs to be evaluated in good quality trials.
It is interesting that this article seems at variance with NICE guidelines on the matter of acupressure and ginger. Furthermore, I am not at all sure what the last paragraph of the quotation of the guidelines below is supposed to mean. It seems to imply that patients should be given knowledge of all alternative therapies for morning sickness that are not evidence based? If so, why and how will this be done to ensure patients are not being led up the garden path by those health care professionals looking after them who themselves have a non-evidence based bee fluttering around in their bonnets about alternative medicine in pregnancy?
ANTENATAL CARE : ROUTINE CARE FOR THE HEALTHY PREGNANT WOMAN
COUNTRY: UK
Nausea and vomiting in early pregnancy
Women should be informed that most cases of nausea and vomiting in pregnancy will resolve spontaneously within 16 to 20 weeks and that nausea and vomiting are not usually associated with a poor pregnancy outcome. If a woman requests or would like to consider treatment, the following interventions appear to be effective in reducing symptoms:
• non-pharmacological: − ginger
− P6(wrist)acupressure • pharmacological:
− antihistamines.
Information about all forms of self-help and non-pharmacological treatments should be made available for pregnant women who have nausea and vomiting.
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Allergy: Don’t be taken in by the allergy sharks
Posted by admin in ALLERGY, Alternative medicine, Food allergy, ICONS - Green Apple on February 23rd, 2011
It is difficult to sort out the wheat from the chaff in the internet. This is particularly true of websites dealing with allergy, one of the commonest medical conditions that has been increasing in prevalence in recent years.
Those searching the internet for allergy information should be very aware that allergy, because it is so common, is big, big business. The allergy sharks infest the water when there is money to be made.
Today, the BBC are issuing a warning regarding “alternative” allergy tests.
ALTERNATIVE ALLERGY TEST OFFERS “MISLEAD PARENTS”
COUNTRY : UK
“There is no scientific evidence that complementary therapies or kits sold through websites can identify allergies, the NHS watchdog NICE says.
It says sites for services such as hair analysis use plausible stories but are not backed up by scientific evidence.”
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Ear Candling
Posted by admin in Alternative medicine, Ear Candling, ICONS - Green Apple on January 31st, 2011
The other day, a leaflet came through my door advertising “ear candling” at the local hairdresser. By coincidence, my daughter appeared that same day and told me her friend had tried it on her and “it was amazing what came out of my ears” So I thought I’d better put up a post about this before she managed to burn her eardrum playing about with this procedure.
Don’t be fooled by this – what seems to be coming out of your ears is just the melted wax and soot from the candle.
Ear candling often known as Hopi Ear Candling has several dangers. These are burns of the skin and hair by candle itself and also the ear drum itself might be damaged.
“Ear candling,” also known as auricular candling or coning, refers to various procedures that involve placing a cone-shaped device in the ear canal and supposedly extracting earwax and other impurities with the help of smoke or a burning wick. The origins of candling are obscure. Ancient Tibet, China, Egypt, the pre-Columbian Americas, and even the mythical city of Atlantis are cited as possible contributors. The procedures supposedly create a low-level vacuum that draws wax and other debris out of the ear canal. Some proponents even claim that impurities are removed from the inner ear, the facial sinuses, or even the brain itself, all of which are somehow connected to the canal. Proponents claim that candling can:
“THE BOTTOM LINE
For most people, ear wax moves along the ear canal and eventually makes it to the outside, taking with it any accumulated dirt or other matter. Compacted ear wax should be removed by a physician or other health professional using legitimate instruments. Candling is both ineffective and dangerous.”
HOPI EAR CANDLING – REMOVING THE GREY GOO BETWEEN YOUR EARS
“Hopi Ear Candling, or thermo-auricular therapy (TAT) as it is known, is a rather strange technique that involves sticking a burning candle in your ear. The mundane reason for doing this is that it can allegedly draw out the nasty wax from your ears. Quacks never like to restrict their techniques to the obvious, so the candle apparently acts on the ‘energetic level’ and can also detoxify you and treat all sorts of ailments unconnected with your ear.”
“The main manufacturer of ear candles is a German company called Biosun. Their web site tells us about the Hopi tribe of native Americans and their ancient wisdom. Pictures on their web site show tribe members and ancient murals showing the Hopi sharing candles. The problem is that all this is just made up nonsense. All of it.”
If you want to read a whole host of references on this procedure you can find them here:
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