wrongheaded pop medical movements/diagnoses

vaccine autism connection

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/dc/Headon.jpg

ADD

Coca cola douches

countdown to roots/phrenology.jpg

Toilet seat AIDS

ADD might be over-self-diagnosed but it's real.

The oat bran craziness of the late '80s.

lactose intolerance

yeah seriously. i have no problem with milk, look i'm drinking some right now. what's the problem? no problem! here have some.

Any shit that involves the word holistic

in before someone makes hilarious "pop" reference (pop music DO YOU SEE)

home-bastard-opathy

Possession by the devil

lactose intolerance

― metametadata (n/a), Friday, October 17, 2008 2:55 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah seriously. i have no problem with milk, look i'm drinking some right now. what's the problem? no problem! here have some.

― rent, Friday, October 17, 2008 2:59 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

you guys should come to my house and watch what happens when i drink milk.

chronic limes disease

home-bastard-opathy

reflex-fucking-ology
chiro-bloody-practic
acu-dicking-puncture

wuz joking que. still, sounds fun.

In every dream home an aromatherapy candle

30 leeches and a hazlenut candle = perfect weekend

lactose intolerance

― metametadata (n/a), Friday, October 17, 2008 10:55 AM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah seriously. i have no problem with milk, look i'm drinking some right now. what's the problem? no problem! here have some.

― rent, Friday, October 17, 2008 10:59 AM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lol white people

Lactose intolerance levels also increase with age. At ages 2 - 3 yrs., 6 yrs., and 9 - 10 yrs., the amount of lactose intolerance is, respectively:

* 6% to 15% in white Americans and northern Europeans
* 18%, 30%, and 47% in Mexican Americans
* 25%, 45%, and 60% in black South Africans
* approximately 30%, 80%, and 85% in Chinese and Japanese
* 30–55%, 90%, and >90% in Mestizos of Peru

i fuckin love all lactose related food

i think lactose intolerance is just people realizing that drinking milk is gross

naw some of them can even eat ice cream

hay guyz whats the deal with sickle cell anemia whatta buncha crap amirite

i'm okay with ice cream and cheese, it's milk that equals death for me

Corn flakes as antidote to masturbation.

I.B.S.

back in my day we called it "the runs"

"hard" cheeses and yogurt i can do. cow's milk, ice cream ;_; & stuff like mozzarella makes me nauseous & head-achey. like motion-sickness almost.

(i still eat all of this yummy lactose)

sickness from leaky silicone boobs

hay guyz whats the deal with sickle cell anemia whatta buncha crap amirite

― and what, Friday, October 17, 2008 10:18 AM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

uh

hay guyz whats the deal with sickle cell anemia whatta buncha crap amirite

dude...
xpost

i get what you're going for, dude, but joeks about lactose intolerance (lol pooping) aren't really the same thing as clowning sickle cell anemia

and what i think your detector is still set too high
healing powers of magnets

I.B.S.

back in my day we called it "the runs"

No.

Every child in America having a "peanut allergy"

giving everyone antibiotics for everything

I.B.S.

back in my day we called it "the runs"

No.

how about stop eating so many hotpockets?

jokes about nobody "really" being lactose intolerant because you're all white dudes is pretty much the same as clowning sickle cell anemia since ability to process lactose after like age 3 is basically a northern european thing

echinacaea

restless leg syndrome

xp except that people DIE from sickle cell anemia

I've got a friend with IBS and it looks pretty miserable to me, but y'know maybe I should tell him to man the fuck up or something.

giving everyone meds for psych "conditions". sad because your dad died? have some drugs.
god AW get a grip

female hysteria

homosexuality

I mean can you really not differentiate between someone playing the fool "haha *I* don't have it so it must not exist! lolz" and someone "clowning" sickle cell anemia?

neither are funny

this thread is retarded, y'all are just jealous that people haven't thought up a syndrome for being chronically tedious yet

vaccine autism connection

― joe the plumber (ice crӕm), Friday, October 17, 2008 9:46 AM (56 minutes ago) Bookmark

^^^ this one is still the most aggravating

...and one that could definitely kill people

funny has nothing to do with it ("normally i'd think that was racist as fuck, but it made me laugh so I guess it isn't!") and ironically the most unfunny and tedious thing is people coming onto thread to say how unfunny and tedious it is.

selling homeopathic remedies for e.g. malaria is somewhat life-threatening. xp.

christian science

blood-letting

yeah, I'm not sure if putting it in this thread with a bunch of more harmless ideas trivializes how much dangerous undue attention is being paid to the anti-vaccine pseudoscience movement, or if it's a good thing to just lump it in with all these other crackpot theories.

Kellogg made sure that the bowel of each and every patient was plied with water, from above and below. His favorite device was an enema machine that could rapidly instill several gallons of water in a series of enemas. Every water enema was followed by a pint of yogurt — half was eaten, the other half was administered by enema “thus planting the protective germs where they are most needed and may render most effective service." The yogurt served to replace the intestinal flora of the bowel, creating what Kellogg claimed was a squeaky-clean intestine.

funny has nothing to do with it ("normally i'd think that was racist as fuck, but it made me laugh so I guess it isn't!") and ironically the most unfunny and tedious thing is people coming onto thread to say how unfunny and tedious it is.

― Granny Dainger, Friday, October 17, 2008 11:45 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

bro it sounds like youre the one who needs to chill out... maybe go grab a healthy snack or something
http://tbn0.google.com/images?q=tbn:rXZciEb1EDGmOM:http://gearx.com/images/17926.jpg

what is the consensus on fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, epstein barr and all that these days?

fibromyalgia seems fishy to me, not in the sense that the people who "have" it aren't suffering, but in the sense that it seems like a catch-all name for stuff that doctors can't figure out or diagnose

I always refer to it as "lazy middle aged white woman disease" but that might be a tad harsh

cf Bell's palsy

xp

see also Chronic Fatigue Syndrome?

oh sorry, someone said that

My dad had "bell's palsy" and his face never fully recovered, which does seem to lend creedence to the idea that people don't quite know what "it" is

i've had severe CFS for 5 years
i thought it was a joke until it happened to me
:(

actually, not really, but yeah, i think they're still trying to figure out the etiology of fibromyalgia

bell's palsy is medical-speak for "CN VII is damaged but we don't really know why it happened"

that is, as soon as they know what it is that *caused* the paralysis, then it is no longer bell's palsy

people with bell's palsy probably make pretty good poker players

the problem with the vaccines is that it's a public health issue....like, if you're a christian scientist or jehovah's witness or hmong or whatever, then fine, it's your body. but not immunizing your kids doesn't just put them at risk

one of the things about the nut allergies, keep in mind I have a 2 year old and live in Berkeley and you can't even take peanut butter to daycare because of fears of this... the kids whose parents claim they have them (and obviously some do) are all over the map on their reactions. I was under the impression that a legitimate nut allergy, like a bee allergy, involved anaphylaxis and possible death. But I hear people saying "oh he gets a rash". That might be a sensitivity to oils or something but doesn't equal an allergy to me. Maybe I'm wrong though.

trephination (trepanation?)

okay apparently I am wrong, symptoms can be mild to severe. shows what an asshole I am!

but you know, I'm allergic to cats and I still have two of them. I don't expect the entire world to get rid of cats.

one of the things about the nut allergies, keep in mind I have a 2 year old and live in Berkeley and you can't even take peanut butter to daycare because of fears of this... the kids whose parents claim they have them (and obviously some do) are all over the map on their reactions. I was under the impression that a legitimate nut allergy, like a bee allergy, involved anaphylaxis and possible death. But I hear people saying "oh he gets a rash". That might be a sensitivity to oils or something but doesn't equal an allergy to me. Maybe I'm wrong though.

― akm, Friday, October 17, 2008 12:03 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

Yeah, Mrs. Hurting, a teacher, has a lot of anecdotal evidence about this too. In fact a some of them don't even turn out to have any noticeable reaction to nuts. I think it's sort of an unconscious stand-in for "My child is extra special and delicate and should be handled with white gloves"

allergies are weird. i think there's data to suggest that food/environmental allergies among children are on the rise, but it might be similar to autism: we're just diagnosing them earlier and more accurately, and they're not dying anymore.

xp i think some docs/epidemiologists have told moms that LESS exposure to nuts/other allergens at an early age will decrease the chance of developing a full-blown allergy

Which is not bloody likely anyway though.

then again, studies are being done that would suggest the opposite: expose kids early to allergens and they're less likely to develop allergies later (a la vaccination)

not sure about acupuncture... my boyfriend fell 30 feet, got crushed under porch debris and 50 bodies, and his back was so fucked up he tried everything. he was totally skeptical about acupuncture, but was desperate to not be in pain anymore. it was the only thing that gave him long-term relief.

wellllll, allergies get worse as you get older. therefore, if you spend your early years NOT being exposed to the thing you MIGHT be allergic to, then it's not as big a deal when you're older. then again, if you're not allergic and not likely to ever be allergic, then you're just wasting a childhood that could have been spent eating PB&J

xp o_O at porch story, yikes

did he used to live in Chicago?????

I tried acupuncture for a while for stress and stomach problems. I always felt great for the three hours after I had it done, but then the feeling went away completely.

the ama recognized acupuncture as legit even tho it as no idea how it works - does not belong in the "pop" category at all

xpost yeah it was that porch collapse in chicago a few years ago

his mum also made him go to this dumb crystal healer. he had a really severe chest infection from inhaling a bunch of dirt and gravel and shit, and she kept telling him to hold his breath, which would cause him to cough, and then she would tell him off for not lying perfectly still.

my neighbor went to a crystal healer for a while to treat her ovarian cancer (!!!!!). needless to say, it didn't work, and almost killed her.

I think it's a stretch to even call crystal healing a "pop medical movement"

my friend is an acupuncturist and studied for several years in china as well as school in the us and she has a license and all that, and if you want to see steam come out of her ears, then compare her to someone who thinks that crystals can be used to cure cancer.

i think the best you can say about acupuncture is that the jury is still out. a recent review on back pain treatment found that genuine acupuncture was no better than sham treatment. Are you sure about the AMA?

Oh, I so want to say "stress" but I know stress can be terrible and have real physical manisfestations, it's just seems like a get out phrase sometimes. sorry.

acupuncture is not "legit" except in the sense that targeting random points of the body with needles can help with pain relief, much like any phsyical therapy - when you do critical trials of "trained" acupuncturists who know all the chi b.s. vs dudes who dont know shit about it, they perform equally well

xp

the idea that acupuncture points are random is pretty lol - regardless if you think chi is the thing - theyre still specific points

which you have to be trained to identify - not sure who all these untrained acupuncturists are out there

Placebo is a helluva drug.

yeah but it makes no difference whether you stick needles in those points or anywhere else. xp.

chronic stress has real-deal clinical ramifications, but that really isn't what you're talking about

low back pain is a particularly bad thing for a clinical study cause everyone knows its all in the head anyway

xp
No, absolutely I agree. It's just co-worker ballshit I have to oput up with sometimes, ignore me!

Read all about acupuncture at Bad Science...
http://www.badscience.net/?p=540#more-540

which you have to be trained to identify - not sure who all these untrained acupuncturists are out there

― joe the plumber (ice crӕm), Friday, October 17, 2008 12:31 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

it was a study of 1200 ppl, genius

biolog1e t0tale.
seriously dangerous bs that apparently is getting more popular.

basically it's something like "nlp" but for medical purposes... typical example: a cancer patient go for a medical consultation at these charlatans, after a 10 min chat dr.fraud suggest them to drop their treatments because their health problem is all their fault, it's all in their brain \ if they would not have gotten medical treatment the cancer would have gone off by itself etc... usually that means the patient must fix the "conflict source" in their lives that "generated the cancer". what happens next: they cut contact with their long time loved ones, metastasis happens and they die alone in horrific pain.

which you have to be trained to identify - not sure who all these untrained acupuncturists are out there

― joe the plumber (ice crӕm), Friday, October 17, 2008 12:31 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

it was a study of 1200 ppl, genius

― and what, Friday, October 17, 2008 12:41 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

are we still talking abt the back pain one, jerk

what is sebastian talking about?

sounds like christian scientists - christ + tom cruise

the ama recognized acupuncture as legit even tho it as no idea how it works - does not belong in the "pop" category at all

― joe the plumber (ice crӕm), Friday, October 17, 2008 12:16 PM (29 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

wtf are you even talking about here???

i looked around for any such statement from the AMA on acupuncture and all i found was this from 1997:

"There is little evidence to confirm the safety or efficacy of most alternative therapies. Much of the information currently known about these therapies makes it clear that many have not been shown to be efficacious. Well-designed, stringently controlled research should be done to evaluate the efficacy of alternative therapies."

tbh, infuriating as wacko charlatan medicine is, if someone wants to go ama and not treat their cancer, fine. it's when JWitnesses or whatever start refusing transfusions for their children that my head explodes

i had reiki done once. also another time i took a nap.

the ama recognized acupuncture as legit even tho it as no idea how it works - does not belong in the "pop" category at all

― joe the plumber (ice crӕm), Friday, October 17, 2008 12:16 PM (29 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

wtf are you even talking about here???

i looked around for any such statement from the AMA on acupuncture and all i found was this from 1997:

"There is little evidence to confirm the safety or efficacy of most alternative therapies. Much of the information currently known about these therapies makes it clear that many have not been shown to be efficacious. Well-designed, stringently controlled research should be done to evaluate the efficacy of alternative therapies."

― and what, Friday, October 17, 2008 12:47 PM (6 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ha i remember hearing some such thing on npr like 10 years ago - but whatever i dont really know anything abt acupuncture ive never had it and lets all be cool

anyway i still think its awesome and that yr a jerk - try and disprove that jerk

huh, i didn't know about the demographic breakdown of lactose intolerance but basically all of my mom's family has it, i live in terror that i'll have to stop eating cheese someday.

as i as i know, guys, the AMA basically *can't* support acupuncture or other homeopathic therapies unless they've been submitted to rigorous, evidence-based clinical trials. moreover, it can't just be "acupuncture seems to work but we don't know why." they want to have an idea of the mechanism before it can be endorsed. because, remember, endorse = OK to prescribe. and if you're going to prescribe something to someone, you're liable, and you'd better have some idea of what the fuck is actually going on.

most of the docs that i've met that are friendly to the idea of holistic medicine only suggest it to their patients in a "you might want to check this out" sorta way. they literally can't say "i officially recommend acupuncture."

would be curious to know *how* the practice of acupuncture developed. like, is their some mystic significance to the all the nodes they use, or did it take 2000 years of trial and error to develop a systematic understanding of needle placement? is "chi" meant to interpreted as a literal animal/mineral/vegetable that interacts in some way with needles? do the "maps" used for acupuncture jive in anyway with what we know about nerve pathways?

god, spelling

i have friend who is afraid to have her feet touched because her mother performed rigorous and sometimes painful reflexology techniques on her throughout childhood.

A++ questions from gbx here - whenever somebody comes with this alternative medicine bullshit always ask where the paper trail is, the same stuff that "mainstream" medicine is required to have

I've read several medical studies on acupuncture and they all agree that while it may have some stress relieving factors (most if not all of which is probably due to placebo effect), there's absolutely no evidence that it can do anything else (like cure sicknesses), nor has anyone ever been able to find those mystical energy channels in the human body which acu points are supposed to be connected to. The fact that acupuncture has a long history or that you have study for long in order to practice it doesn't mean anything, because the same applies to many other mumbo jumbo "alternative medicines". It's the same as saying that the Christian God must exist because Western universities have had faculties devoted to studying him for centuries.

anyway i still think its awesome and that yr a jerk - try and disprove that jerk

I think this is actually a passage in Jenny McCarthy's book about her miracle cure for autism.

Here's the picture: a few thousand years before it was known that blood circulates or germs cause disease, doctors who had never dissected a frog, claimed that yin and yang could be balanced by inserting needles into the right points, among the hundreds of points strung along 12 meridians....Scientists suggest the needles stimulate release of endorphins. Jalapeno peppers do the same thing. So it wouldn't matter where you stick the needles would it? Then who needs an acupuncturist?

no way jenny could ever pen prose that beautiful

it should be called assholistic medicine

bringing the a-game

The fact that acupuncture has a long history or that you have study for long in order to practice it doesn't mean anything, because the same applies to many other mumbo jumbo "alternative medicines". It's the same as saying that the Christian God must exist because Western universities have had faculties devoted to studying him for centuries.

word.

another question: do practicing acupuncturists *want* to see their practice reconciled with western medicine (ie - do they believe that there is a rational explanation for it), or do they hold firm to a mystical belief in chi that is by definition unprovable

so many lols

so many lols

― rent, Friday, October 17, 2008 1:40 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lmao my friend/co-worker did this one

http://www.strangetoons.com/strangetoons%20root%20folder/Antony/acustapleweb.jpg

upthread i got carried away a bit when i wrote a "typical example" of getting roped into b1ologie t0tale, that is pretty much representative of what i heard except that fortunately usually ppl drop out of it before dying. but it happened.
http://www.radio-canada.ca/nouvelles/Science-Sante/2008/10/02/002-biologie-totale.shtml?ref=rss

oh yeah they cure aids too.

Morgellons disease

autism overdiagnosis/misdiagnosis really gets to me. Your kid is retarded, folks, deal with it.

ethan that gif up there totally made me cry dude

Well the western model for determining what is effective is hardly fail safe. For example, a study just came out that questioned the efficacy of taking small doses of aspirin to prevent heart disease and stroke. That was pretty much orthodoxy in western medicine for a while now. Even what we understand, we don't necessarily understand that well, and there is plenty we don't understand.

Clearly western medicine struggles to understand certain kinds of systemic body issues (see fibromyalgia and any number of immune related conditions), and treatments like acupuncture, which is based on systemic balance, could provide insight. So why dismiss it as quackary?

People keep using autism as an excuse for their own failings, its so pathetic. "I'm not a jerk, I have asperger's!" Just because I claim I'm the Pope's wastebasket, doesn't mean that it's true.

oh come on super cub.

science over quacking like a duck any day.

Well the western model for determining what is effective is hardly fail safe. For example, a study just came out that questioned the efficacy of taking small doses of aspirin to prevent heart disease and stroke.

how are you using the self-correction principle of this "western model" to criticize itself? the fact that trials can sometimes have misleading or faulty conclusions is not an excuse to believe any old crazy shit, it's a reason to keep having trials until we get it right

"for centuries astronomers thought the sun revolved the earth, so, you know, the earth could still be flat"

The astronomers are just forgetting to take off their 3-d glasses when they look through the telescope, is all.

Really hoping this turns out to be another thread where people make lazy, ill-informed snarks about ASDs, to be honest.

Does that mean that you don't think diagnostic substitution is a major factor in the autism epidemic? I realize that there are conflicting literatures, but a lot of the papers I've read seemed pretty convincing.

And admittedly this attitude probably largely reflects the attitudes of my psychopathology teacher, who was big into the idea that mid-to-high SES white people basically refuse to accept that their kids might have mental retardation if they can "massage" their doctor's perception of the symptoms until it looks like autism.

I'm coming from a UK perspective rather than a US one, and I suspect that diagnostic substitution is not a big factor here. Diagnosis is still hugely problematic and contested, I agree, and self-diagnosis is meaningless. But those are complex issues. It was "cameron"'s comment I was getting butthurt over, not yours Dan. ('Tho seeing the US use of "retarded" still feels weird to me and I have to remind myself it doesn't connote the same as over here.)

It probably does have the same connotations. We're supposed to say "a person with mental retardation" rather than "that retarded guy", but you know, we're on a semi-anonymous message board and all...

From what I've read and seen, autism and retardation are not that similar in terms of symptoms.

I'm not getting at that either, it's just that any use of the word to talk about disability in the UK is a huge faux pas nowadays.

I wonder if the epidemic might also be related to a big increase in doctors deciding they are competent to diagnose ASD? Again that doesn't apply over here.

Sorry, I was responding to Dan.

So was I, whoops.

how much of drug discovery is dependent on scientists reproducing or exploring a bunch of trad therapies

here's a story on 'total biology' referred to by sebastien upthread. does sound completely nutso.
http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2008/10/07/mtl-totalbiology1006.html?ref=rss

No one's mentioned lobotomy yet?
What about post-abortion syndrome?

shock treatment

I thought shock treatment worked!

It does, with limited applications. I once saw a woman go from catatonic in the waiting room, to joking about her husband in the recovery room. Crazy shit.

By the way, most cheese has little or no lactose in it. The bacteria that cause the cheese to ripen eat up all the lactose. I have lactose intolerance & eat large cheese plates all the time.

Whoever said ADD or IBS has never had ADD or IBS. Wait, what was I going to say.. Uh oh, please excuse me for a moment.

PMS.

OK - I don't believe this is actaully a wrong diagnosis (and am sure it exists in some form) and as a student of women's health I would probably be crucified for even implying so but I do think it's often exaggerated/used as an excuse.

i prefer the more clinical term "on the rag"

Shock treatment has been scaled back quite a bit in terms of what it's used to treat, but yeah, still used.

I used to restock the meds in a shock treatment room. That room smelled worse than another in the entire hospital. Also creepier.