Cynacism over CAM Testimonial

[....]'s "life was derailed
by extensive food and chemical sensitivities brought on by
multiple exposures to environmental toxins. Aside from the
typical assaults we all experience in a lifetime, she was
exposed to a broken mercury thermometer in her late 20s, toxic
fumes in a garbage dump fire during a photography workshop in
her early 30s, the harmful fumes (and emotional trauma) from the
World Trade Center fires of 9/11, mold resulting from a flood in
her apartment in 2003, and she recently tested positive for Lyme
bacteria, which she believes is a 35+ year infection underlying
all of her other health challenges."

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Wow, she has had it bad!!. But, I think she forgot to mention being exposed to all that lead-laden glazed ceramic stoneware in the 80's, her asbestos-insulated and mercury-painted grade school, shower fungus in her high-school gym class, and aspartame in her foods since birth. And, I'm sure she could detail all the other positive "lab tests" she's had that diagnose her with all kinds of pathologies and sensitivities. I can't wait to hear all the sundry details about how, in spite of all of this, she maintains a fair degree of wellness thanks to all the supplements, enemas, talismans, rituals, and special diets!! She must truly be a gem of an individual.

Problem is, we all share a similar "toxin exposure" story. But I guess that's the intent, part of the lure to suck readers into the quackery. I question whether there is one ounce of empiric evidence that her noted environmental insults has caused any true chronic symptoms. BTW, "Notice to Readers: Caution Regarding Testing for Lyme Disease": http://www.cdc.gov/MMWR/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5405a6.htm

Overall, this kind of rhetoric is getting old and busted. Where's the new hotness in CAM these days?

Dale

LubriSyn and hyaluron

Does anyone on this list have experience with Lubrisyn?

http://www.lubrisyn.com/about/

"LubriSyn™ is a patented, daily supplement of hyaluronic acid (HA),
which occurs naturally in healthy tissue. HA is the main component of
the synovial fluid that cushions equine joints, so two adjacent
cartilage caps glide against each other with minimal friction"


Thanks Deb


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Although I can't speak to equine use, the cool thing about hyaluronic acid in human medicine is that it isn't technically a drug in that it's effect is not achieved through chemical action or by being metabolized by the body. It's a polymer, albeit a natural constituent of synovial fluid and cartilage. So, FDA hyaluronic acid products are approved through CDRH (first in 1997) as a device - not a drug. http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfPMA/PMA.cfm?ID=6926

Despite widespread use and acceptance by the medical community, a re-evaluation of the published clinical evidence by the BCBSA TEC in 2005 concludes:
"...hyaluronan (injected into the knee for painful osteoarthritis) is about as roughly as effective as NSAIDs. However, this literature base remains small, and the quality of the evidence is not very good."
http://www.bcbs.com/betterknowledge/tec/vols/19/19_17.pdf

Products containing hyaluronic acid have been used as an injection since the early 80's to lubricate the painful osteoarthritic knee. Made primarily from chicken combs, sodium hyaluronate (hyaluronic acid) injection products now have FDA PMA approvals for ophthalmologic use in cataract surgery, and injection into the mid to deep dermis for correction of moderate wrinkles.

Anywho, let's think about this. Would a non-bioactive substance consumed into the digestive tract somehow find it's way, and to a significant degree, into the articular spaces of painful joints? AND, would that orally consumed substance, if it made it's way to the joints, result in an appreciable difference in symptoms? Maybe, but what does that say about eating Elmer's Glue (no equine pun intended), swallowing chewing-gum, or using Tupperware?

BTW. MEDLINE identifies no human studies using oral hyalonurate containing substances.

-nawledge

DSACDAD Part Two

KC, who sent me the original DSACDAD question, confessed he knew up front about the "Havidol" satire:

Linked from fark.com:

http://www.int.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=29&art_id=iol1171790988617F236


New York - A media exhibit featuring a campaign for a fake drug to treat a fictitious illness is causing a stir because some people think the illness is real.

Australian artist Justine Cooper created the marketing campaign for a non-existent drug called Havidol for Dysphoric Social Attention Consumption Deficit Anxiety Disorder (DSACDAD), which she also invented.

But the multi-media exhibit at the Daneyal Mahmood Gallery in New York, which includes a website, mock television and print advertisements and billboards is so convincing people think it is authentic.

"People have walked into the gallery and thought it was real," Mahmood said in an interview.


'Subtle kind of parody'
"They didn't get the fact that this was a parody or satire."

DSACDAD Part one

think I might have DSACDAD. I took the quiz on this site and scored a 48.
What is your professional opinion?

http://havidol.com/

KC


Reply>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

My take on DSACDAD: Just because someone creates a name, doesn't make it real. I do not like the Website AT ALL. "Good, better, best" suggests that even if you feel like you're okay, you can feel even better. "More than 50% of the population have DSACAD" is an unrealistic assumption that half the population should be taking a psychotropic drug - that can't be a good idea. I went away from the Website thinking Havidol is better than meth, and that you take either one for the same reasons.

A few years ago, there was much debate in the medical community about how pharmaceutical companies will get FDA approval for a drug to treat some disease, then how they go out and MAKE a huge population of people who have that disease. For example, they create "grass roots" campaigns to "increase awareness" and sponsor .org websites and charity organizations. One step further, is making up a brand new disease as pointed out in this article in the British Medical Journal in 2003: http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/326/7379/45 . There is much professional commentary published elsewhere on this whole topic.

To make the behavioral disease conspiracy stronger, coverage of mental health by government and private insurers is federally mandated:
http://www.dol.gov/ebsa/newsroom/fsmhparity.html. The 1996 Federal law basically says mental health has to be covered as part as health insurance. Many states have made additional laws that say mental health coverage has to at the SAME level as medical health coverage.

There is money to be made on treating "mental health disorders" for sure.

The branch of mainstream medicine that is least based on science (evidence-based medicine) is behavioral health. There are essentially no lab tests, no x-rays, no distinct physical signs or symptoms that can pinpoint a mental health disorder. Many times, the difference between having a mental health disorder and not having one boils down to how a mental health professional judges you against descriptive, and very subjective criteria. See: http://psyweb.com/Mdisord/DSM_IV/jsp/dsm_iv.jsp Criteria are sometimes based on little more than a society's expectation of what "normal" mental status is.

The risk is then that we have millions of children who have patterns of subjective misbehavior on psychotropic medication. Or worse, "disease" being used to control social dissonance http://www.aapsonline.org/nod/newsofday339.php. Or, we have people like you and me thinking we are deranged because we answered "yes" to few questions on an On-line mental health quiz.

Okay, rest assured, there is such thing as mental health disease. Read the recent domestic news, and you're convinced. And, rest assured, psychotropic drugs have changed our society for the better. We no longer have vast insane asylums, and we will all have times in our lives when a psychotropic medication will probably be beneficial to help us through. I think the average persons mental health capacity is challenged more intensely today than say compared to 20 or 30-years ago. We have more expectations on us and our world has much more in it and moves much faster than then. Either that, or we're better able to recognize that medicine can help versus the attitudes of a generation ago. (By the way, this observation carries over to children, see: http://www.healthyplace.com/Communities/add/nimh/treatment_study_children.htm )

A good litmus test for yourself, better than some On-line quiz, is to recognize when an irrational behavior, or a state-of-mind leads you to irrational behavior that seriously interferes with you living your life, like sleep, work, school, or relationships. Watch out, sometimes it takes another person to point out that your behavior is truly irrational.

Big prize for CAM practitioner or researcher

http://www.drrogersprize.org/


This national competition will reward one researcher or practitioner who has
made a significant contribution to the field of Complementary and
Alternative Medicine (CAM) in Canada with the $250,000 Dr. Rogers Prize. The
prize will be awarded at a Gala Award Dinner in Vancouver on November 1,
2007 ... featuring keynote speaker Dr. Andrew Weil.

Increasingly, evidence is available supporting the use of CAM to increase
well-being by alleviating cancer symptoms and reducing the adverse effects
of conventional treatment. Evidence for cancer cures is sparse but research
in this field is active and often very promising.

A new and challenging research area is called 'whole systems research' which
recognizes that many CAM interventions are not single component
interventions but systems of care such as TCM and naturopathic medicine or
integrative care.

The concept of 'unstuckness' as an outcome (coined by Dr. Iris Bell
University of Arizona) represents an innovative way of looking at CAM
outcomes. It is the point/axis at which therapies or approaches in
combination start to affect the body's immune and endocrine systems in a
positive way, i.e. where the course of disease starts to be reversed.

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My cynical reply:

Ahem. Er... "Unstuckness" is a totally legitimate scientific outcome in medical clinical studies. I need only reference the 1999 breakthrough study commissioned by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), "Alternative Medicine Approaches for Women with Temporomandibular Disorders." (http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct/show/NCT00009594?order=2 , http://www.news-medical.net/?id=4613) The study, which compares the effectiveness of naturopathic therapies to acupuncture and "conventional" (Western) medical care, concluded that in the Naturopathic arm,

"Patients experienced "transformational" changes. A number of patients came to believe that they had been "stuck" in their pain level and that they could not imagine that they could feel better. After the study, they reported they had become "unstuck" in their way of thinking."

No patients in the conventional medicine arm experienced such outcomes.

http://www.ranchforyouth.com/

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I'm not sure what a "commercially manufactured oxygen rebreather mask" is, but in my time, they were simply a non-rebreathing mask with the little one-way seal rubber flange removed. The mask doesn't make a tight seal on the face, and even has built-in ventilation holes. For a panic attack, I bet they aren't as effective as a paper bag, but they sure are a fancier sort of treatment and easier to use for someone in the emergency room. Used in the described "mask-therapy" context, with this sort of non-rebreather, I wonder whether the effect is any more than would be breathing into a cupped hand in front of the mouth and nose.

There are acute physiological effects of controlled breathing and I appreciate Dr. Laidler's right-shift refresher. I wonder if maybe the mask-therapy exercise could be a way to get children who begin to act hyper to stop and take a breath. But, as routine therapy, I am skeptical that it can demonstrate all the list of things that they say it does.

In gradeschool (that's "grade", not "grad"), I had teachers who would periodically have a rambunctious class be silent for 1-2 minutes with head and arms down on the desk. Otherwise, I think there are methods incorporated into child rearing that are every bit as effective as therapist-based "mask therapy", without the added expense, gadgetry, or health risks.

N-, Registered Respiratory Therapist

BTW, did I ever tell about the time I cured my hiccups with 100% CO2? There was CO2 in a H-tank in the PFT lab. One day when I had some severe hiccups for several hours, I bled a little CO2 into a plastic sandwich bag. I put it up to my mouth and nose and took a tiny little test sniff. Instantly, my sinuses burned to the back of spine, my ears caught fire, and my eyes teared up. It took several seconds to recover, but my hiccups were gone. Since then, I've found the amount of CO2 off a newly opened 7-up can usually does the trick.