Tag: Functional medicine
AAFP: Functional Medicine lacks supporting evidence; includes “harmful” and “dangerous” treatments
The American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) found Functional Medicine lacking in evidence and said some treatments are harmful and dangerous. The AAFP is right and should stick to its conclusions.
Gwyneth Paltrow and Goop: Another triumph of celebrity pseudoscience and quackery
Earlier this month, the hostilities between Gwyneth Paltrow's den of celebrity pseudoscience and quackery, her "lifestyle" website and store Goop, and skeptics erupted into open warfare, as Goop attacked Dr. Jen Gunter, an OB/GYN, blogger, and frequent critic of the pseudoscience published and sold by Goop. This leads to the question: Who are the physicians facilitating Paltrow and Goop? And does debunking...
Trump’s new CDC Director is very pro-vaccine, but was she also at one time a quack?
On Friday, Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Tom Price announced the appointment of Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald to head the CDC. Reassuringly, her record as Georgia Public Health Commissioner was pro-vaccine and relatively non-ideological. Not so reassuringly, a news report yesterday found that before entering public service she was peddling anti-aging quackery at her private practice. Where will her balance fall now...
Dietetics: Embracing Integrative and Functional Medicine?
The Accreditation Council for Education in Dietetics is planning on changing the accreditation standards for requirements Registered Dietitians to include integrative and functional nutrition as core components. This should worry science-based practitioners, and the general public.
The Medical Director of The Cleveland Clinic Wellness Institute spewed antivaccine misinformation last week. Why is anyone surprised?
A social media firestorm erupted over the weekend after Dr. Daniel Neides, Director of The Cleveland Clinic Wellness Institute, posted an article full of antivaccine misinformation. The Cleveland Clinic promptly disavowed it, but shouldn't have been surprised that one of its "integrative medicine" leaders is antivaccine. If you "integrate" medicine that teaches that "toxins" cause disease and "detoxification" is the cure, antivaccine...
“Functional medicine” in practice
"Functional medicine" is a form of quackery that combines the worst aspects of conventional medicine and alternative medicine. Specifically, it combines massive over-testing with a lack of science and a "make it up as you go along" ethic, all purportedly in the service of the "biochemical individuality" of each patient. Don't believe the hype. It's mostly quackery.
Is there a distinct standard of care for “integrative” physicians? The Woliner case
We at SBM argue that there should be a single, science-based standard of care in medicine. Unfortunately, with the rise of "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) also called "integrative medicine," there is a separate standard emerging that allows CAM practitioners to get away with using unproven and disproven treatments. The case of Dr. Kenneth Woliner illustrates this problem.
MEND Protocol For Alzheimer’s Disease
The medical profession is currently engaged in a simmering debate about what is the best overall approach to take toward the relationship between science and health care. I would say that the current dominant model is Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM). We, of course, advocate for a number of tweaks to EBM we call Science-Based Medicine (SBM). SBM essentially advocates for an ironic-sounding holistic...
Functional medicine: The ultimate misnomer in the world of integrative medicine
Functional medicine. It sounds so...scientific and reasonable. It's anything but. In fact, functional medicine combines the worst features of conventional medicine with a heapin' helpin' of quackery.
Guess who pioneered chemoprevention through diet?
This is an expansion of a post I did over on the Society for Science-Based Medicine blog about this time last year. The original post, which got far more traffic than is usual for the SFSBM, is a good example of how science works and the good that it can do. The hard work of real science illustrated here serves as a...