The bottom line is that supplements only work if there is a deficiency. If you take in any more than the body needs, the body just excretes it or stores it and it makes no difference except running the risk of an overload or an overdose. You can not “boost” anything by doing it. It also wastes your money, making for expensive urine.
Increasingly, you can see more advice to use zinc supplements to treat verrucae on the foot. Is that advice warranted?
Continue readingThere seems to be increasing advocacy for the use of cannabis oil (medical marijuana) for plantar fasciitis recently, mostly from what I can see, from those who sell it. If you hang out in some of the online communities for those with plantar fasciitis, you see a lot of very bad advice being given, mostly based on anecdotes. In the last year or so, the most popular advice was to use magnesium supplements to cure plantar fasciitis. This was all the rage for a while with an extraordinary number of people advocating its use based on it working for them (when we have no idea if it actually worked or not or if it was just a placebo or just part of the natural history or any other explanation). There is no mechanism that I could find by which it could affect plantar fasciitis. More recently, the volume of advice for the magnesium supplements has started to drop off but is being replaced with an increasing amount of advice for the use of cannabis oil to treat plantar fasciitis. Some of the testimonials are quite compelling … if they are true.
Continue readingWhen you are busy and have so much important stuff to write about, it is so much easier to go after the ‘low hanging fruit’. Much less effort is needed and when it so easy, you don’t need to think too hard about it. Research on reflexology never fails to deliver on that count.
Reflexology is total bunk; it is made up pseudoscientific bullshit that has no basis what-so-ever. There is absolutely no known physiological mechanism linking areas on the foot to different organ systems and not one clinical trial that stacks up to scrutiny shows that it works. Every single clinical trial on it either shows it does not work or if it shows it works, it has fatal flaws in the methodology (and as such should never have been published, let alone carried out) or more often than not, was not even a clinical trial on reflexology, but a clinical trial on a damn good foot massage. Almost everyone is going to feel better after a damn good foot massage, so measures of anxiety etc are going to improve, especially if a chronic illness is present. Being more relaxed after a damn good foot massage is going to affect a number of psychosocial factors as well as some physiological parameters. BUT, that is not evidence for the junk that is reflexology, that is evidence for a damn good foot massage.
The whole ‘natural cures’ industry is a scam. Just because something is natural does not make it better. Arsenic is natural. Ionizing radiation is natural. Neither of them are any good for you. Arguing that something is better because it is natural is a logical fallacy.
As for the natural cures for heel spurs in the infographic below. None of them will or can work. Its that simple. It is physiologically implausible and biologically impossible for any of them to work; let alone there being a single shred of evidence showing they work. I never cease to be amazed at those who should know better are so devoid of any critical thinking skills.
Reflexology is just made up mythology. There is no known physiological link between parts of the foot and organ systems in the body, let alone any involvement in these disease processes. Every single meta-analysis and systematic review of all the clinical trials of it have concluded the same thing: it does not work. It is no better than a placebo. The only clinical trials that show it works are in low quality, low or no impact factor journals and have serious methodological flaws. The most common methodological flaw is the lack of a control group. Most of those studies were not even on reflexology, but were on nothing more than a damn good foot massage. Everyone, regardless of what medical condition they have is probably going to feel better after a damn good foot massage!
This caught my eye on Twitter and was also posted on Podiatry Arena.
Such a great day speaking at the Hants #socap meeting. We changed a ladies foot function by mobilising her wrist… #IntergratedSystem
— Anthony Fletcher (@aka_Fletch) October 19, 2013
