Hot on the previous topic of beetroot juice for chilblains, we have now got eggplants as an option! Or have we?
Some new research recently crossed my screen on “Antichilblain Components in Eggplant” – something like that is going to get my attention. Turns out that eggplant applied externally to relieve the symptoms of chilblains has been used in East Asia for quite some time.
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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 readingThe concept of foot orthotic dosing is something that has been bubbling away under the surface for a long time now, but for some reason, not a lot of noise gets made about it, or when noise is made about it, tends to get dismissed by those who want to protect the way they did things.
To introduce the concept, consider this hypothetical analogy: what if a really well conducted clinical trial was done on a very low dose of an anti-hypertensive drug and it shows that the drug does not work at that dose. Should that be used as evidence that the drug is not effective? Of course it shouldn’t, but that is exactly what is done with clinical trials of foot orthoses at low doses. As the methodology and analysis of that hypothetical drug trial was sound, should it be included in the systematic reviews and meta-analyses? It will meet all the textbook criteria to be included in a systematic review and meta-analysis, but, of course, it should not be included as the dose was low. To include it would probably be unethical as it would unreasonably bias the systematic review and meta-analysis in the direction of the drug not working (unless the review stratified the study results into different doses). It makes sense to exclude that study because of the low dose. So, why then is it acceptable to do exactly that in systematic reviews and meta-analyses of foot orthoses?
What does apple cider debunking, overpronation and cigarette smoking, Oscon supplements for Severs disease and vaccines causing autism have to do with each other?
^^^ that is the final slide in a video from my Critical Thinking Boot Camp. Anyone who blogs about science always get responses and comments with anecdotes about what was written with responses that it either does or does not apply to them. The science either ‘sucks’ or is the ‘greatest thing since sliced bread’ depending on the anecdote! It has now reached the point where I just delete that anecdotal comments on my posts as they contribute nothing of use to the topic under discussion. Steve Novella succinctly summed this up:
It is almost inevitable that whenever we post an article critical of the claims being made for a particular treatment, alternative philosophy, or alternative profession, someone in the comments will counter a careful examination of published scientific evidence with an anecdote. Their arguments boils down to, “It worked for me, so all of your scientific evidence and plausibility is irrelevant.”
In my other blog, I previously litigated all the issues around “anecdotes” and why useless treatment sometimes appear as though they did work. I don’t intend re-litigating the same issues here but develop them further with some examples I have dealt with recently. For background, I refer you to those two posts.
Health Benefits of Apple Cider
My first example comes from a blog post by Melinda Moyer following an article she wrote on the health benefit of apple cider. These three quotes sum up the issue:
After getting hate mail for debunking the health claims of apple cider vinegar, I’m explaining why I rely on science, not rumors.
Last month, I wrote my first Truth Serum column, “What Apple Cider Vinegar Can—and Can’t—Do for Your Health,” which explored what the science says about apple cider vinegar’s supposed health effects. I found that there isn’t much evidence ACV can cure colds, heal acne, help you lose weight, or alleviate heartburn—and that vinegar can sometimes be harmful.
Then came the angry emails and Facebook posts. Readers chided me for interviewing researchers and doctors rather than people who have actually been helped by apple cider vinegar. Others felt the evidence is irrelevant; vinegar works for them, so they’ll keep using it. A few implied that my writing was unbalanced and unfair.
I am sure you can see the issue …
The whole idea of the peer review process prior to publication is to weed out the junk, so it does not get published. One thing that the alternative therapies have in common is that their journals let a lot of junk science through. Too many studies get published in those journals that should never see the light of day, let alone been conducted so badly in the first place. There are ethical issues at stake in this and the editors of those journals would do well to apprise themselves of publication ethics. Institutional ethics committees or review boards also have a responsibility to prevent bad science from even getting off the ground.
What spurred that little rant was this publication today on ‘The effect of reflexology on the quality of life with breast cancer patients‘ published in the journal, Complementary Therapies in Clinical Practice. They do not get much worse than this one.
It was a study that supposedly randomized 60 people with breast cancer into two groups; one group the control and one group getting reflexology; the aim being to see how it affected their quality of life and symptoms. Sounds good on the surface, but:
One probably should not laugh at another’s misfortune, but sometimes it can just not be helped. For those unfamiliar with it, schadenfreude is the German word for just that. There is not an equivalent English word. I recently, twice, had a really good schadenfreude. This had nothing to do with podiatry or the foot, but has everything to do with pseudoscience and junk science.
