An Alternative to Appendectomy: Antibiotics
My title doesn’t refer to alternative medicine, it refers to an alternative within medicine: treating appendicitis with antibiotics instead of surgery. You may be surprised to learn that patients with appendicitis don’t always automatically need an appendectomy. A recent randomized controlled trial in Finland compared surgery to medical treatment. History of appendicitis treatment There is an excellent, detailed history of appendicitis available...
Monkeys, Myths, and Molecules: A Chemist Separates Fact from Fiction
“Dr. Joe” (from the title of his radio show) has done it again. He keeps putting out books faster than I can take them in; this one is titled Monkeys, Myths, and Molecules. It is packed with pithy analyses of health-related subjects that should be of particular interest to SBM readers. Dr. Joe is Joseph Schwarcz, a chemistry professor and science popularizer...
Is Homeopathy Unethical?
“A gentle ethical defence of homeopathy” by Levy et al. was recently published in an ethics journal. A full-text preprint is available online. They say: Utilitarian critiques of homeopathy that are founded on unsophisticated notions of evidence, that adopt narrow perspectives on healthcare assessment, and that overstate the personal, social and ontological harms of homeopathy, add little to our understanding of the...
ASEA, ORMUS, and Alchemy
I got an e-mail from a woman who had read my article on ASEA, a multilevel marketing diet supplement that I characterized as an expensive way to buy water. She had not tried ASEA products but was applying for a position as an accountant with the company, and she chastised me for not doing my due diligence and researching the new science...
“Hands On Learning Solutions”: Untested Solutions for Problems That May Not Even Exist
Hands On Learning Solutions, a business in Gig Harbor, Washington, evaluates and treats children for learning disabilities and claims to identify the underlying causes and help eliminate the symptoms. Much of what they do is questionable, and at least one of their methods is clearly bogus. Their program is reminiscent of the Brain Balance program that I wrote about in 2010. I’ll...
How To Listen to Chi
You will need flat shoes and a bottle of vitamins, herbal formula, or prescription medicine. Step 1: Hold the bottle with both hands, touching your chest Step 2: Stand up straight and get your balance Step 3: Close your eyes and feel what is happening to your body. Results: If your body moves forward or stays neutral – going side to side...
Cryotherapy: A Layman’s Attempt to Understand the Science
NOTE: I get a lot of emails asking me whether treatment X is evidence-based or a scam. This one was different. Zachary Hoffman had done his homework and had already answered the question for himself (at least, as well as it could be answered with the existing published evidence). I asked him to write up his findings as a guest post for...
Update on Cholesterol and Statins
The consensus of mainstream medicine is that a high blood level of LDL cholesterol is a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease and that lowering high levels can help with prevention and treatment. Statins have been proven effective for lowering cholesterol levels and for decreasing cardiovascular and all-cause mortality. I recently wrote about the new guidelines for statin therapy. Currently half of...
Answering Cancer Quackery: The Sophisticated Approach to True Believers
I got an e-mail with a link to a video featuring “Dr.” Leonard Coldwell, a naturopath who has been characterized on RationalWiki as a scammer and all-round mountebank. Here are just a few examples of his claims in that video: Every cancer can be cured in 2-16 weeks. The second you are alkaline, the cancer already stops. A pH of 7.36 is...
Functional Disc Rehydration for Chronic Back Pain
A chiropractor in Illinois named Jeff Winternheimer claims to have discovered an effective way to heal herniated discs by rehydrating them. He calls it Functional Disc Rehydration and he offers it through a network of four offices in the Chicago area called the Illinois Back Clinic. He has lots of testimonials and one sorry amateurish attempt at a scientific study that claimed...