*doublepromote *parody *military *health

Double-Promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Thursday, February 17th, 2011 5:47pm PST - doublepromote requested by kronosposeidon.

Adding video to channels (Health, Military, Parody) - requested by kronosposeidon.

Brilliant.

Responsible alternative health practitioners understand that there is a time for allopathic medicine.

And this is hysterical.

>> ^bareboards2:
Responsible alternative health practitioners understand that there is a time for allopathic medicine.
And this is hysterical.


Yea: Always.

As has been said on many occasions, alternative medicine that has been proven to work is just called, yep, you guessed it, medicine. The alternative to taking medicine that works is taking something that doesn't work.

I'm not sure what you mean, but I am 99.9999% sure it was meant to be sarcastic.

My best friend for the past 20 years is a homeopathic physician. I know for a fact she refers patients to "regular" doctors.

She is, as I originally said, a responsible alternative health practitioner.

So yeah. It happens.

And this vid is hysterically funny.

>> ^rottenseed:

>> ^bareboards2:
Responsible alternative health practitioners understand that there is a time for allopathic medicine.
And this is hysterical.

Yea: Always.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Alternative, medicine, sham, snake oil, medic, battlefield' to 'alternative, medicine, homeopathy, sham, snake oil, medic, battlefield' - edited by calvados

So then she refers ALL her patients to "real" doctors?

>> ^bareboards2:

I'm not sure what you mean, but I am 99.9999% sure it was meant to be sarcastic.
My best friend for the past 20 years is a homeopathic physician. I know for a fact she refers patients to "regular" doctors.
She is, as I originally said, a responsible alternative health practitioner.
So yeah. It happens.
And this vid is hysterically funny.
>> ^rottenseed:
>> ^bareboards2:
Responsible alternative health practitioners understand that there is a time for allopathic medicine.
And this is hysterical.

Yea: Always.

@enon.

Please read the quote below from ryanbennitt.

As a scientist (I presume you have a scientific frame of reference) you should know that we don't know everything. When I was in elementary school, there were no quarks. Now there are quarks.

You must know that there are things we don't yet have the ability to measure.

Besides, even if you don't subscribe to the possibility of change on an energetic level, you must know about the power of placebos. Just think of alternative medicine as Structured Placebo. Placebos work. It has been proven.

>> ^ryanbennitt:

As has been said on many occasions, alternative medicine that has been proven to work is just called, yep, you guessed it, medicine. The alternative to taking medicine that works is taking something that doesn't work.

>> ^bareboards2:

Besides, even if you don't subscribe to the possibility of change on an energetic level, you must know about the power of placebos. Just think of alternative medicine as Structured Placebo. Placebos work. It has been proven.


The measure for medicine that works is that it exhibits a response significantly stronger than the placebo response. Some placebos exhibit stronger responses than others, e.g. using larger sugar pills over smaller ones, using toothpicks instead of acupuncture needles. But the differences are only a few percentage points, not enough to qualify as a working remedy. Alternative remedies are all about how you administer the placebo, not what you're giving them, just making people feel better so that their body has time to heal naturally over time. So long as the body is capable of recovering on its own that is.
If gullible people are willing to pay over the odds for something they could live without, there will be an industry selling placebos. But unregulated, greed tends to prevale and wild claims abound of placebos that cure e.g. cancer, can prove tragically fraudulent.
There is room for the unknown in medicine, undiscovered natural remedies that actually work, but that place is in medical trials. Alternative medicine that refuses to submit to such trials isn't worth the sugar it's coated in.

Alternative medicine is bunk. Like alternative math or alternative reason.

If there was any truth to it, it would stand up to scrutiny and it would be used as proper treatment. Homeopathy especially is downright fraud.

*debunked

Adding video to channels (Debunked) - requested by gwiz665.

Placebos are a joke unto themselves as all testing so far has been done in a scenario were psychology can be manipulated and pathology is fixed.

If you offer a placebo to someone with REAL chronic pain they will throw it back at you, or be back the next day telling you it did nothing or helped within a normal range of perception (I think it's usually 10% or so; the more time you add the higher that percentage gets, eventually proving a placebo correct or completely wrong no matter what). Most of the studies look at conditions that are not pathological (or could barely be described as a true medical condition; it's usually mental health studies were the conditions barely exist if at all). Like a simple headache, but not a gunshot, cancer, or a cluster headache. Placebo study is a psychological study. No real doctor is going to screw over someone with pancreatic cancer with a placebo "radiation treatment". No real doctor will use a placebo as it's illegal. The very definition of placebo tells you why.

/Not trying to come off to snippy, but I have chronic pain and a placebo would be a day and night experience to me. Most will tell you the same thing. Example: a high morphine dose vs. a fake one. In 15 to 30 minutes your patient will be back, pissed, and emotionally/mentally upset. Placebos are meant for specific uses in testing not an actual treatment; as they do nothing if it is pathological, duh.

//edit: Yes, I know we don't know everything yet. Especially, how the mind interprets and "saves" it's data. Psychology is very young compared to other fields, but neuroscience is helping it catch up FAST. This is where you'll find placebo studies that go no where. (Placebos only work on pain that is thought of and borderline in the first place...)
///Also a few clarifications.

Western medicine tends to be really good in one area - trauma.
guess where western medicine learned most of it's trauma skills...? yes indeed, the battlefield.

For other things such as chronic pain, western med generally sucks. Partly because you have a for-profit system that makes far more money treating than through prevention or cure.

>> ^criticalthud:

Western medicine tends to be really good in one area - trauma.
guess where western medicine learned most of it's trauma skills...? yes indeed, the battlefield.
For other things such as chronic pain, western med generally sucks. Partly because you have a for-profit system that makes far more money treating than through prevention or cure.


I spent years trying to get something done for my cluster headaches. Eventually, a pain clinic helped me the most. Small amounts of long-acting narcotics for the "leftover" headache, but high-flow oxygen (12-14 L/h) kills it dead in it's tracks, assuming I stay on it for about 30 minutes or so. I requested that, not the doctors...

Otherwise, I would be playing merry-go-round with anticonvulsants, narcotics, and antidepressants. I would also be very pissed as cluster migraines hurt like nothing else. Even pulled muscles/tendons, broken bones, appendicitis, etc... got nothing on that pain level. (It can radiate as far as my lower thigh and cause me to keep my eyes closed due to the pain from light--it feels like someone is stabbing a needle through/into your eye, even with an extremely small light, like a power-button LED...)

>> ^criticalthud:

Western medicine tends to be really good in one area - trauma.
guess where western medicine learned most of it's trauma skills...? yes indeed, the battlefield.
For other things such as chronic pain, western med generally sucks. Partly because you have a for-profit system that makes far more money treating than through prevention or cure.


And alt med isn't "for profit"? Bwahahaha.

being compensated for your work is a far different thing than structuring your entire business according to the bottom line.

>> ^FlowersInHisHair:

>> ^criticalthud:
Western medicine tends to be really good in one area - trauma.
guess where western medicine learned most of it's trauma skills...? yes indeed, the battlefield.
For other things such as chronic pain, western med generally sucks. Partly because you have a for-profit system that makes far more money treating than through prevention or cure.

And alt med isn't "for profit"? Bwahahaha.

Scientific method.

"Alternative" medicine wants to do the same thing as Intelligent Design, it wants to take the easy road. ID wants to be in the class room without having sufficient evidence to support its claim. Alternative medicine wants to be sold and used to heal sick people. The latter is fine and even admirable, if it works, but there is insufficient evidence to support the claims that alternative medicine makes.

If you buy a service from me that I cannot provide, then you have been scammed and my claim was bunk. This is what alternative medicine does.

Defining alternative, it's medicine that hasn't gone through thorough scrutiny and does not stand up to it. It is medicine that doesn't work.

Pick your poison: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_medicine Homeopathy, Chiropractic, energy therapy, crystals all that stuff.

Regarding massage and acupuncture, I'm in a more relaxed approach, because they don't promise magical solutions. Massage works at healing muscle pain, certainly, and it certainly relaxing. Acupuncture, I don't have sufficient knowledge about to make a definitive judgment about. Naturally, I'm skeptical, because as far as I know, it has not been tested to the proper extent that it should to be called medicine. When I read about more details of it "Qi" and whatnot - I get more skeptical.

It may work, but it should be tested experimentally, before making claims of healing.

People are allowed to use their money as they want, but these things should damn well not be able to call themselves medicine. Relaxation, sure, therapy, perhaps, healing - no.

In reply to this comment by criticalthud:
would you care to define alternative? do you mean non-american, non-western?
does acupuncture stand up to western scrutiny? how about manual therapy? who's scrutiny are you talking about? Tell me how you measure what people FEEL with a machine, or a bloodtest.
how well does typical western medicine deal with back pain? - drugs, drugs, more drugs?
how about a scoliosis? neurological strain patterns? any chronic pain issue?
western medicine, relies on over-drugging it's patients, treating each as a number. What and how they practice is often completely controlled by insurance companies.
perhaps your statement doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
sure there is crap out there, but lets not pretend that western medicine is immune. far from it, it's peddling a good portion of the stinkiest garbage.



In reply to this comment by gwiz665:
Alternative medicine is bunk. Like alternative math or alternative reason.

If there was any truth to it, it would stand up to scrutiny and it would be used as proper treatment. Homeopathy especially is downright fraud.

*debunked

>> ^criticalthud:

being compensated for your work is a far different thing than structuring your entire business according to the bottom line.
>> ^FlowersInHisHair:
>> ^criticalthud:
Western medicine tends to be really good in one area - trauma.
guess where western medicine learned most of it's trauma skills...? yes indeed, the battlefield.
For other things such as chronic pain, western med generally sucks. Partly because you have a for-profit system that makes far more money treating than through prevention or cure.

And alt med isn't "for profit"? Bwahahaha.


And there's a bigger difference between charging for legitimate, scientifically tested practices and products that have been demonstrated to work and charging for sugar pills and magical thinking. Both medicine and "alternative medicine" are for-profit, but "alternative medicine" can't even legitimately claim to have any aims to cure its customers. Medicine is a for-profit enterprise that aims to treat disease and injury with the application of science. "Alternative medicine" is a for-profit enterprise that aims to bilk its marks for as much cash as they can spare (or even more) with little hope of actually treating their complaint.

alright there. not really getting the gist of the statement, are you?
you're arguing for the sake of arguing.
do you know what the success rate of chemo is for curing cancer? pretty much the same as not having it
back surgery? the same
there's plenty of crap out there, and no "medicine" is immune from it. the one major difference between what is labeled as alt and what isn't is the degree that it is run purely as profit generating business. Do you get it? western medicine isn't necessarily interested in cures. doctors might be, but the biz side of it ain't. it's quick fix, in and out, write the latest scrip that has been peddled to you by big pharma, and do the treatments and tests that you are allowed to do by the insurance company.
western medicine doesn't know their ass from a hole in the ground when it comes to chronic pain, because treating something that typically has it's roots in the structure of the body isn't profitable.

>> ^FlowersInHisHair:

>> ^criticalthud:
being compensated for your work is a far different thing than structuring your entire business according to the bottom line.
>> ^FlowersInHisHair:
>> ^criticalthud:
Western medicine tends to be really good in one area - trauma.
guess where western medicine learned most of it's trauma skills...? yes indeed, the battlefield.
For other things such as chronic pain, western med generally sucks. Partly because you have a for-profit system that makes far more money treating than through prevention or cure.

And alt med isn't "for profit"? Bwahahaha.


And there's a bigger difference between charging for legitimate, scientifically tested practices and products that have been demonstrated to work and charging for sugar pills and magical thinking. Both medicine and "alternative medicine" are for-profit, but "alternative medicine" can't even legitimately claim to have any aims to cure its customers. Medicine is a for-profit enterprise that aims to treat disease and injury with the application of science. "Alternative medicine" is a for-profit enterprise that aims to bilk its marks for as much cash as they can spare (or even more) with little hope of actually treating their complaint.

I'm not arguing for the sake of arguing, I'm arguing because you seem to think "alternative medicine" is superior to medicine. What point are you trying to make about chemotherapy, exactly? In many cases it's a very effective treatment. Do you know what the success rate of, say, acupuncture is for treating cancer? How about therapeutic touch? Or chakra realignment? Or ground turtle shell? Or homeopathy? Or vitamin megadosing? Or evening primrose oil supplements? Or magnetic wristbands? Nil. Nothing. No demonstrable effect. And there's a reason for that. There is no alternative to medicine. There's medicine, and there's "crap that doesn't work".

You're right that the major difference between scientific medicine and "alternative medicine" is the degree that it is run purely as profit generating business. Except that you have it completely the wrong way round. "Alternative medicine" has no chance of curing you, and costs money. Medicine has a chance of curing you, using products and medicines backed up by science, and costs money. I know which I'd rather go for. "Western medicine" (as you call it, though you should note that the practice of science-based medicine isn't limited to the Western world, thank goodness) is interested in cures because the effective interventions are the ones that get used, thereby generating income. It's only in the field of "alternative medicine" that "crap that doesn't work" can be sold for a profit without anyone ever questioning it. If a medical intervention or treatment doesn't work, the scientific method roots it out eventually, but tellingly there is no such self-regulatory framework in place when it comes to "alternative medicine", and the practitioners don't care.

Put it this way: if it were true that science-based medicine didn't "know their ass from a hole in the ground" when it comes to chronic pain then what the hell would make you think that the pseudoscientific bullshitfest that is "alternative medicine" would stand a chance at solving the problem?

>> ^criticalthud:

alright there. not really getting the gist of the statement, are you?
you're arguing for the sake of arguing.
do you know what the success rate of chemo is for curing cancer? pretty much the same as not having it
back surgery? the same
there's plenty of crap out there, and no "medicine" is immune from it. the one major difference between what is labeled as alt and what isn't is the degree that it is run purely as profit generating business. Do you get it? western medicine isn't necessarily interested in cures. doctors might be, but the biz side of it ain't. it's quick fix, in and out, write the latest scrip that has been peddled to you by big pharma, and do the treatments and tests that you are allowed to do by the insurance company.
western medicine doesn't know their ass from a hole in the ground when it comes to chronic pain, because treating something that typically has it's roots in the structure of the body isn't profitable.

and the answer is: because i work in the field, somewhere in the middle of alt treatment and mainstream treatment. i'm quite mainstream in many parts of the world, alt in others. it's really pretty stupid.
i work mostly with fairly severe spinal issues. i'm particularly fond of somatic theory, from a structural perspective, and i practice and teach manual therapy utilizing a neurological approach focusing on rotational distortion. On the whole, what is often dismissed as alternative in treatment turns out to be the most innovative, that pushes mainstream treatments into new and more effective territory. "Touching" a person was pretty out of style in the accepted medical practice until late, -- PT's are actually starting to get a clue.

i'm quite aware of the fluff that is out there, the weird, the barbaric, the hippy dippy, the downright stupid. both the alt side of things, as you might define it, and the mainstream side of things, often fall into these categories. There are however, powerful lobbies that make one form of treatment more acceptable than others.... Big pharma is insanely powerful, and insanely profitable... we're drugging our kids for fucks sake.
and lets put it this way, the profit margin is very small in what i do. it's just too time consuming and labor intensive.

And while the business side of things has thoroughly poisoned mainstream medicine, there tends to be more, but not necessarily all, of "alt" providers, who purposely shy away from it. we'd all be better off in a socialist medicine system that was not for profit. In every socialist system, some form of what i do is commonplace, mainstream, accepted science...goddamn common sense.
anyhoo..., would you like some figures on iatrogenic death?

I worked in an acupuncture clinic for a bit, mostly treating cancer and HIV. The acupuncture was most effective for treating nausea, pain, and other symptoms that came with the chemo.
In china it is combined with herbs to treat the cancer. I don't know the success rates. i know they take their acupuncture very seriously, and very scientifically... and western docs are starting to wake up to it.
For chronic pain issues (back, neck, pain) etc...i probably bat somewhere in 80-90%. That destroys mainstream. I'm an anomaly, but i shouldn't be. more talented people should be in this field. and being able to spot and work with spinal issues at young ages would save billions of dollars in lost labor, workers comp, SSI, medical expenses, drugs...a shit ton of pain and suffering.

foresight. preventative medicine.

>> ^FlowersInHisHair:

I'm not arguing for the sake of arguing, I'm arguing because you seem to think "alternative medicine" is superior to medicine. What point are you trying to make about chemotherapy, exactly? In many cases it's a very effective treatment. Do you know what the success rate of, say, acupuncture is for treating cancer? How about therapeutic touch? Or chakra realignment? Or ground turtle shell? Or homeopathy? Or vitamin megadosing? Or evening primrose oil supplements? Or magnetic wristbands? Nil. Nothing. No demonstrable effect. And there's a reason for that. There is no alternative to medicine. There's medicine, and there's "crap that doesn't work".
You're right that the major difference between scientific medicine and "alternative medicine" is the degree that it is run purely as profit generating business. Except that you have it completely the wrong way round. "Alternative medicine" has no chance of curing you, and costs money. Medicine has a chance of curing you, using products and medicines backed up by science, and costs money. I know which I'd rather go for. "Western medicine" (as you call it, though you should note that the practice of science-based medicine isn't limited to the Western world, thank goodness) is interested in cures because the effective interventions are the ones that get used, thereby generating income. It's only in the field of "alternative medicine" that "crap that doesn't work" can be sold for a profit without anyone ever questioning it. If a medical intervention or treatment doesn't work, the scientific method roots it out eventually, but tellingly there is no such self-regulatory framework in place when it comes to "alternative medicine", and the practitioners don't care.
Put it this way: if it were true that science-based medicine didn't "know their ass from a hole in the ground" when it comes to chronic pain then what the hell would make you think that the pseudoscientific bullshitfest that is "alternative medicine" would stand a chance at solving the problem?
>> ^criticalthud:
alright there. not really getting the gist of the statement, are you?
you're arguing for the sake of arguing.
do you know what the success rate of chemo is for curing cancer? pretty much the same as not having it
back surgery? the same
there's plenty of crap out there, and no "medicine" is immune from it. the one major difference between what is labeled as alt and what isn't is the degree that it is run purely as profit generating business. Do you get it? western medicine isn't necessarily interested in cures. doctors might be, but the biz side of it ain't. it's quick fix, in and out, write the latest scrip that has been peddled to you by big pharma, and do the treatments and tests that you are allowed to do by the insurance company.
western medicine doesn't know their ass from a hole in the ground when it comes to chronic pain, because treating something that typically has it's roots in the structure of the body isn't profitable.