Reflexology anyone?

arf9999 said:
However I'm fairly sure that if I spend a bit of time I could find some clinical trials of ECT. Are you a Scientologist perhaps? Your whining about psychology is strangely familiar.
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No I am not a Scientologist and they are indeed one of the most vocal groups against ECT.
I am not even against ECT, it does seem to work for some extreme cases of mental disorders. Whatever, it is not scientific, unless one simply means by that that it works.

Let's go back to what I said: reflexology, chriropractic manipulation, crystal healing, reiki, homeopathy, aromatherapy,and the SCIO machine are all quackery. If they worked, there would be no issue conducting clinical trials on them. But since there have been no successful clinical trials that demonstrate any advantage over that of a control group that received a placebo, it has to be concluded that they do not work.
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Reflexology, chiropractic and aromatherapy all involve the manipulation of the body or sense. IIRC you granted that acupressure may have some real effects on a person. If that is the case how come that other kinds of manipulation have no effect other than the placebo one?
This leaves the more esoteric therapies like reiki, crystal healing, maybe homeopathy. There is indeed a lot 'non-sense' going on, esp. with the first two. However there are also people who are convinced that they were healed through such a therapy. Whether this in fact the case may be impossible to determine as the basic conditions and principles on which scientific research depends cannot be fulfilled.

The human mind and body is such a complex thing, and no-one knows its detailed functioning from one moment to another.
Are you saying that logic and science has all the answers at all times with regards this complex 'machine'?
 
its definitely a scam, thats what all hypochondriacs keep telling me.

I have family members and friends that have visited a reflexologist or just chinese doctor and were amazed by the results. I'll the number for you soon
 
Ok, my simple take on this - if you visit a healer, of any kind, and one or two treatments work for you, fine :)

If you have to visit them regularly, having a standing weekly, forthnightly or monthly appointment, for an indefinite period, I get suspicious...

At the OP - yes, I've tried reflexology and it has worked for me over three sessions - problem solved. I will not go into details, but it was something minor that has bugged me for years...the first session was excruciatingly painful and I almost did not go back. Sessions two and three was pleasant.
Placebo effect or not, it's lasted for a few years now...probably my gullible nature :)

But, hey, different strokes...
 
Dixie said:
If you have to visit them regularly, having a standing weekly, forthnightly or monthly appointment, for an indefinite period, I get suspicious...
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Who forces anyone to goto a healer?

The question is whether we are, should be, and can be responsible for our own health. There is a concerted effort by the pharmaceutical and to some extent the medical profession, to remove choices from the consumer, that is us.
Labelling alternative health care practices as quackery and unscientific, is only one of the tactics used towards the goal of greater, and ultimately total control over health care. Every control measure limits one's choice more. It also means that health care for simple ailments and illnesses will increasingly become unaffordable.

One day you may need to get a doctor's script to get some vitamin C or buy some nutritional supplement. It is too late to wake up then.

Alternative health care practices mean having a choice, in many cases a more affordable choice, than medical treatment. As with any choice there are risks. Take resonsibilty for your choice of healer and method of healing.
 
risingtide said:
Who forces anyone to goto a healer?

The question is whether we are, should be, and can be responsible for our own health. There is a concerted effort by the pharmaceutical and to some extent the medical profession, to remove choices from the consumer, that is us.
Labelling alternative health care practices as quackery and unscientific, is only one of the tactics used towards the goal of greater, and ultimately total control over health care. Every control measure limits one's choice more. It also means that health care for simple ailments and illnesses will increasingly become unaffordable.

One day you may need to get a doctor's script to get some vitamin C or buy some nutritional supplement. It is too late to wake up then.

Alternative health care practices mean having a choice, in many cases a more affordable choice, than medical treatment. As with any choice there are risks. Take resonsibilty for your choice of healer and method of healing.
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Yes, it it's obviously a conspiracy. It couldn't be because these alternatives have no credibility. If they work, why can they not survive a double-blind trial. It's too easy to blame big pharma... scamsters hate competition.
 
I wish I could use SCIO to screen for virulence genes in E. coli...or hell, even sequence the whole genome with its magical "quantum" abilities. Would've made my life a lot easier, and I would've been able to create a vaccine a lot quicker. Oh well, guess I'll just take the long road and do it over a couple of years because it's so fun :p
 
tyrone_schulaisses said:
Yes, it it's obviously a conspiracy. It couldn't be because these alternatives have no credibility.
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It is not a conspiracy. They just do what capitalists do. That is why the lobby the FDA to declare nutritional supplements as medicines. If they succeed you can bet that they will all of a sudden find plenty of scientific evidence for how beneficial they are.
 
risingtide said:
It is not a conspiracy. They just do what capitalists do. That is why the lobby the FDA to declare nutritional supplements as medicines. If they succeed you can bet that they will all of a sudden find plenty of scientific evidence for how beneficial they are.
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I really think you've got this backwards. Surely pharmaceutical companies would want medicines to be unregulated, to sell more? Requiring a prescription would reduce the number of people taking the medication...
 
risingtide said:
Labeling alternative health care practices as quackery and unscientific, is only one of the tactics used towards the goal of greater, and ultimately total control over health care.
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Labeling something as quackery and unscientific is entirely legitimate when it is quackery and unscientific. The greatest gift of the Enlightenment was the scientific method. Ignoring it is just another way of regressing to the Dark Ages.

I say again: if any of these CAM remedies worked, it would be simple to conduct clinical trials to confirm it. If the remedy cannot survive this kind of blind objective testing, then it is quackery and the scamsters that continue to sell it to gullible people are criminal.

If in fact these remedies were testable and did in fact work, they wouldn't be "alternative" but rather "mainstream".

Your "Big Pharma" conspiracy theory is just another smokescreen employed by the CAM hucksters to bleed another buck out of credulous suckers.


Here is some interesting reading for your edification:
www.counterknowledge.com
www.badscience.net
quackwatch.org;

Damien Thompson (copied from Counterknowledge.com) said:
Last rites for quacks?

<From an oped Thompson wrote in the Daily Telegraph>

Few experiences are more disorientating than the erosion of faith. I have seen it many times in my encounters with religious believers: the fixed smile contradicted by a flicker of doubt in the eyes; the desperate appeal to half-remembered scriptures. And then the confession: “I’ve been doing some… questioning.”

Interestingly, many of them are women. The faith in question is the system of belief built around Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Women have always been attracted to alternative remedies. Now that faith is crumbling.

People still fill their bathroom cabinets with herbal cold remedies and nod respectfully at the words “rich in antioxidants”. But, like Mediterranean peasants who still make the sign of the cross but have lost all confidence in the Church, growing numbers no longer subscribe to the doctrines of alternative medicine.

These are difficult times for CAM. For the past 15 years, a multi-billion pound industry has fed off the claims of media nutritionists, barefoot doctors, Native American shamans and homeopaths. Suddenly, it finds itself threatened by the economic downturn: forced to choose between pricey detox courses and mortgage payments, customers have decided to put up with their toxins.

But CAM’s real problem is not shortage of money; it is shortage of proof. The information technology brilliantly exploited by unorthodox therapies is now being harnessed to spread the inconvenient truth that most of them don’t work.

Sceptics in the blogosphere have assembled a global daisy-chain of links exposing the falsehoods of alternative practitioners.
The BBC, which used to be strongly biased in favour of CAM, had these headlines on its website recently: “University professor criticises guides on alternative medicine backed by Prince Charles”; “Complementary therapy hampers IVF”; “Concern over HIV homeopathy role”.

When did the tide begin to turn? I reckon the consumers of CAM got the shock of their lives when the case against MMR - in which they had invested so heavily, not to say hysterically - collapsed. Dr Andrew Wakefield’s theory that the injection triggered autism tied together a whole bundle of anxieties: about “Big Pharma”, synthetic drugs, a blinkered medical establishment, lying politicians and autism, one of the least understood but most widely misdiagnosed child disorders of our age. Plus, Dr Wakefield’s campaign made such a good story. His claims felt right.

But they were wrong, it turned out - completely unsupported by large-scale studies. They were, however, supported by the nutritionist high priests of CAM such as Patrick Holford, who carried on lobbying for Wakefield even after the latter had been accused of serious professional misconduct by the General Medical Council.

The media nutritionists have also contributed to the erosion of faith in CAM. For years, they had the lucrative field to themselves. No breakfast television sofa was complete without a “food doctor” making wild claims for berries and herbs through a rictus grin.

The most familiar was Gillian McKeith, a bossy Scottish nutritionist who called herself “Dr McKeith”. And she might have got away with it if it wasn’t for that pesky kid, Dr Ben Goldacre, youthful author of the Bad Science blog, who discovered that her doctorate came from a correspondence college. A website called Holfordwatch then started looking at the CV of Patrick Holford, who was recently made a professor of nutrition by Teesside University, despite the fact that his only academic qualification is a 30-year-old BSc in psychology.

Growing scepticism about alternative medicine has emboldened opponents of homeopathy. This 200-year-old quackery is available on the NHS - but that may change, as financial pressures mount, and as “respectable” British homeopaths continue to turn a blind eye to the prescription of lethal homeopathic Aids treatment by their maverick colleagues.

This month saw the publication of Trick or Treatment? Alternative Medicine on Trial, co-authored by Edzard Ernst, Britain’s first professor of complementary medicine. He found that Britain spends £500 million a year on unproved or disproved therapies. Compared to that figure, even Scientology is value for money.

No one is saying that orthodox medicine is a complete body of knowledge, that Big Pharma is not capable of gross ethical lapses, or that strange or traditional treatments do not sometimes work. But we should welcome the fact that healthy scepticism is finally being extended to CAM.

Instead of requests to share their wisdom, alternative practitioners are being asked to produce double-blind randomised tests to support their claims. They try to shrug off the demands - but, if you look closely, you can see their ayurvedic auras vanishing into thin air.

Damian Thompson is the author of ‘Counterknowledge: How we surrendered to conspiracy theories, quack medicine, bogus science and fake history’ (Atlantic Books).
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Well...my sis went for spa day that included Reiki and Reflexology and she said it was fantastic. With the reflexology he said he is not picking up anything wrong........apart from a certain problem that she has indeed been struggling with for a while now. She was very surprised. I am going with her next time for just a normal massage and then Reiki. Looking forward to it....even if it is just for the relaxation bit. :-)
 
Sometimes when I have a headache, I push my toes around a bit. Then I take headache tablets.
 
Ockie said:
Well...my sis went for spa day that included Reiki and Reflexology and she said it was fantastic. With the reflexology he said he is not picking up anything wrong........apart from a certain problem that she has indeed been struggling with for a while now. She was very surprised. I am going with her next time for just a normal massage and then Reiki. Looking forward to it....even if it is just for the relaxation bit. :-)
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Why don't you rather have a braai started with a few hundred rand notes? Same principle. Or try unblock the toilet with a plunger lined in Cheetah-notes...?
 
DJ... said:
Why don't you rather have a braai started with a few hundred rand notes? Same principle. Or try unblock the toilet with a plunger lined in Cheetah-notes...?
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STUDY: Facilitating nurses’ knowledge of the utilisation of reflexology in adults with chronic diseases to enable informed health education during comprehensive nursing care

http://www.hsag.co.za/index.php/HSAG/article/view/567/html

Snippets from article:
Results
There is statistically no significant evidence (class M) in terms of efficacy of reflexology with cancer patients as reported by the systematic review (Wilkinson, Lockhart, Gambles & Storey 2008). However, statistically significant evidence of class A supported the utilisation of reflexology to decrease anxiety in patients with breast and lung cancer (Stephenson, Weinrich & Tavakoli 2000). Several other studies conducted on anxiety in cancer patient populations also reported a statistically significant decrease in anxiety after reflexology treatments (Hodgson & Andersen 2008; Quattrin, Zanini, Buchini, Turello, Annunziata, Vidotti, Colombatti & Brusaferro 2006; Stephenson, Swanson, Dalton, Keefe & Engelke 2007). An experimental study conducted by Hodgson (2000) on patients in the palliative stage of cancer who received reflexology treatments reported statistically significant improvements in pain management, decrease in constipation, better sleep, decreased anorexia and nausea.

Recommendations
Reflexology as a CAM modality may be incorporated into nursing practice to make it more accessible to patients with chronic disease or disabilities or those undergoing palliative care to promote well-being and quality of life. Patients should be informed of the possible benefits and left to decide for themselves if they want to utilise it as part of emotional and spiritual healing to empower themselves in their pursuit towards wholeness and integrity.

Conclusions
Nurses should be facilitated on reflexology as CAM modality to respond proactively on patients inquiries and to enable informed health education in comprehensive nursing care of chronic diseases.

The study was approved by the Ethics Committee and Postgraduate and Research Committee of the School of Nursing Science at the Potchefstroom Campus of the North-West University.
Published: 18 May 2012
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OMG, DJ... Potch Uni actually conducted a study and recommended that nurses be trained in reflexology in case patients may want some.
 
Skywalker42 said:
STUDY: Facilitating nurses’ knowledge of the utilisation of reflexology in adults with chronic diseases to enable informed health education during comprehensive nursing care

http://www.hsag.co.za/index.php/HSAG/article/view/567/html

Snippets from article:


OMG, DJ... Potch Uni actually conducted a study and recommended that nurses be trained in reflexology in case patients may want some.
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Their outcome is that massaging relaxes the patients. Whoop-dee-fscking do...
 
http://www.takingcharge.csh.umn.edu...logy/what-does-research-say-about-refloxology
What Does the Research Say about Reflexology?
Research studies in the U.S. and around the world indicate positive benefits of reflexology for various conditions. In particular, there are several well-designed studies, funded by the National Cancer Institute and the National Institutes of Health that indicate reflexology's promise as an intervention to reduce pain and enhance relaxation, sleep, and the reduction of psychological symptoms, such as anxiety and depression. Perhaps the most beneficial results have been in the area of cancer palliation (Ernst, Posadzki, & Lee, 2010).

Kunz and Kunz (2008) have developed a summary of 168 research studies and abstracts from journals and meetings from around the world. Many of these studies originated in peer-reviewed journals in China and Korea. All of the studies had information about the frequency and duration of the reflexology application.

Based on the studies they reviewed, Kunz and Kunz identified four primary effects that reflexology demonstrates:

Reflexology has an impact on specific organs (e.g., fMRI readings demonstrated an increase in blood flow to kidneys and to the intestines)

Reflexology can demonstrate an amelioration of symptoms (e.g., positive changes were noted in kidney functioning with kidney dialysis patients)

Reflexology creates a relaxation effect (e.g., EEGs measure alpha and theta waves, blood pressure was decreased, and anxiety was lowered)

Reflexology aids in pain reduction (27 studies demonstrated a positive outcome for reduction in pain; e.g., AIDS, chest pain, peripheral neuropathy of diabetes mellitus, kidney stones, and osteoarthritis)
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OMG, they study this **** all over the world...
 
Nobody is denying that massaging relaxes people. What is complete and utter bullschit are the direct health benefits often associated by snake-oil-peddlers of reflexology. Is there any research on relaxation curing cancer, or aiding in cancer cure and prevention?
 
REFLEXOLOGY GRANT RESULTS
http://www.branchreflexology.com/NIH_GRANT.html
By Barbara A. Brower

Snippets from article:
Nationally Certified Reflexologist
Lead Reflexologist for Michigan State University
National Institutes of Health $3.1 Million Grant (2005-2011)

The 3 things this grant has established for Reflexology are:

1) Safety
2) Feasibility, and
3) Efficacy


IN CONCLUSION

This National recognition has established Reflexology in the medical community
as safe and effective. I am very honored to have made a contribution in my field
to see the return of Reflexology to hospitals where it first started in our country
in the early 1900’s, with Dr. William Fitzgerald, M.D.

In Michigan, two very prestigious and progressive hospitals,
William Beaumont in Royal Oak, and St. John Hospital in Grosse Pointe,
have invited our Clinical Reflexology Training to their on-site schools.

Doctors at these hospitals are informed by the Integrative Health Directors
of the various modalities offered. Doctors have agreed, if you were trained
on-site at their school, practitioners are given an open door policy to their patients,
knowing they will ‘do no harm’.

This is our new health care evolving, and for Reflexology this is just the beginning!
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OMG, a State University has a Lead Reflexologist on staff and gives her 3.1 million dollars to do research.
Then the bitch comes back with positive results, oh nooooo.
 
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