Colon Hydrotherapy

[dcan]

Look, I'm the first to admit that doctors are jerks sometimes and the medical profession doesn't have all the answers to everything. My wife is in chronic pain and doctors are stumped, so they aren't all-seeing-all-knowing gods.

However... You quite literally risked your life by doing what you did, precisely because there are no controls. You're lucky you didn't wind up with cement injected in your rear end like the lady in Florida.

I'm serious, please read Charlatan for your own sake. It is fascinating, outrageous, funny, and horrifying all at once. It is also one of the greatest and most enjoyable books I've ever read. This guy single-handedly created the modern medical mass fraud market and you will never look at infomercials or ads the same way ever again.

Reviews at Amazon: Charlatan: America's Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam

Read it on Google Books

Just read the intro and first chapter online, that's what hooked me. You can buy it used for a penny. If it doesn't change how you look at this stuff I don't know what will.

[taylor]

dcan,

I'm not sure what your stance is on alternative medicine or therapies. But I absolutely know acupuncture works since I've had several treatments in the past. It's funny that not too long ago most people who practice western medicine were skeptics about acupuncture. Now there are more doctors in the United States who are coming around to accept the legitimacy of acupuncture. Several years ago when I was looking for an orthopedic surgeon to do subacromial decompression surgery on my shoulder, I immediately scratched one surgeon off my list because he thought acupuncture was a scam. To me for this doctor to have this opinion at this point in time was extremely closed minded and ignorant. Colon hydrotherapy may not work but to me that doesn't mean all alternative therapies don't?

[Jonathan Whatley]

But I absolutely know acupuncture works since I've had several treatments in the past.

Scenario: I had an awful cold, and treated it with acupuncture. The cold symptoms disappear. At this point, do I absolutely know acupuncture works?

The conditions you treated with acupuncture, do you absolutely know that they couldn't have been self-limiting? The improvement you witnessed: do you absolutely know the condition couldn't have benefitted from regression toward the mean, from spontaneous remission?

Additionally, was acupuncture the only thing you were doing to improve or that could have improved your conditions? If you were doing anything else, and something external treated you, are you absolutely certain it couldn't have been that something else, and not necessarily the acupuncture?

Colon hydrotherapy may not work but to me that doesn't mean all alternative therapies don't?

I largely agree! With a very big note on language: There's a much clearer name for alternative medicine that works.

[cookderosa]

There's a much clearer name for alternative medicine that works.

That's a fun blog My family was/is wayyyyyy off into alternative medicine land. My dad is a chiro, my mom was a nurse who thought doctors were idiots. My family did it all- from dousing rods to muscle testing to an alphabet of supplements. That was my upbringing. As a result, I'm a bit of a free thinker. I even had 2 home births. And yet, 99% of it is woo. Placebo. Magical thinking.

I think the idea of questioning and educating yourself is good, but the rub, is that if you can't recognize a scam, then you're unable to educate yourself. Reading random websites is NOT the resource to "educate and inform" a person. You can't see that that magnetic bracelets are a scam or that the water ion system is a scam unless you've taken chemistry 101. You can't intuit the ridiculousness of alternative cancer and AIDS treatments unless you've taken a handful of biology classes. You can't understand how suggestible we are unless you've studied psychology and social psychology.

I'm not slamming anyone in this thread. I'm simply saying, that *like me* you don't know what you don't know. Education fixes this.

When I was a little kid, I'd sit in the bath and mix this shampoo and that conditioner and this gel with that. I used to wonder if I'd discovered a cure for cancer or something- after all, what I had done was so random, how could "they" know for sure that what I'd done wouldn't work? That mindset is alive and well in people- even as adults. To find a "secret" or to believe that "they" don't want you to know about xyz ...... to hold these opinions vastly underestimates the work that has been done- is being done. The science. The underlying principles that explain WHY.

"well, can you prove that xyz doesn't work?" Most things are not dis proven because they are too far out there to warrant the allocation of funds to disprove. Science, imo, should spend a bit more time "educating" the masses, but I see the frustration of scavenging for limited resources- why waste time on educating the public when they have not taken the time to acquire basic scientific knowledge that would equip them with the tools to dismiss the woo on their own? If you believe your vitamin is making you feel good, then it is. Truthfully, very few things to anything to your body. THANKFULLY. Heaven knows we don't need Aunt Dolly moving around her ions.

AND, all this is said with apologies for my zest. Can anyone tell I'm in a science media class right now lol?

[dcan]

dcan,

I'm not sure what your stance is on alternative medicine or therapies. But I absolutely know acupuncture works since I've had several treatments in the past. It's funny that not too long ago most people who practice western medicine were skeptics about acupuncture. Now there are more doctors in the United States who are coming around to accept the legitimacy of acupuncture. Several years ago when I was looking for an orthopedic surgeon to do subacromial decompression surgery on my shoulder, I immediately scratched one surgeon off my list because he thought acupuncture was a scam. To me for this doctor to have this opinion at this point in time was extremely closed minded and ignorant. Colon hydrotherapy may not work but to me that doesn't mean all alternative therapies don't?

I think acupuncture has an interesting background, and one I personally would not rule out. I was heavy into Oriental stuff in the late 90s when I studied martial arts, and I studied and practiced Japanese acupressure which has similarities with acupuncture. But it turns out acupressure is really just trigger point therapy, which is really just breaking up fascial knots. Acupuncture is almost certainly based on the same thing, putting needles into fascial knots to break them up. But then add to it some traditional Chinese medicine woo-woo and it becomes something mystical, with 10,000 needles along your chi meridians and whatnot. And yet it is still really just trigger point therapy, practiced by physical therapists around the country now. Although admittedly the Chinese discovered trigger points a few years before the West...

Certainly there is more to the universe than what we understand scientifically, and it is hubris to declare otherwise. But it is equally arrogant to look to alternative therapies before traditional ones that are proven to work. Plus, remember, these "alternative treatments" need a market in order to thrive, and they get that market by preying on the gullible.

A couple months ago I flipped out when I saw a series of signs alongside the road, in the poor section of town no less, advertising "miracle pills" that cure everything from AIDS to syphillis to cancer to lupus to diabetes to depression. They literally claimed a pill that would kill any STD "within 15 minutes on contact". I took down one of the signs, photographed it, and sent it to the state medical examiner's office and the state AG office. No real response but the signs came down. It made me sick that someone was preying on the poor like that, and I hope whoever it was gets a serious legal slap for it.

Cook said it best: They rely on people using magical thinking rather than real thinking. And I'm serious, I completely changed how I look at this stuff after reading that book on Dr. Brinkley. The book isn't about modern stuff, it's a chase story of a man trying to take down a scam artist who I think makes all other scam artists pale in comparison. But reading it I can immediately spot the exact same terminology and arguments used in modern infomercials and ads for this stuff. It's like Brinkley was teleported from the 1920s to today and is still running his scams on a global scale. It's really eerie.

[taylor]

Jonathan, Cook, and Dcan,

It doesn't sound like any of you have actually tried acupuncture. And that's fine because if you aren't comfortable with the procedure, you probably never will. And if you are happy with the treatments you've gotten in the past then you may not feel it necessary to give it a shot. However, I've tried it many times but I realized I wrote only "several" in my previous post. My experiences with acupuncture has always been for an injury or a sprain, never a cold or anything else. What it's done for me is it has always sped up the healing process, not a placebo effect. For example, I'd walk into my acupuncturist's office with an ankle sprain barely able to walk, I leave the office after one treatment walking much better and the swelling has gone down a lot due to a procedure called cupping along with the needles. Now if I had gone to the doctor, he/she would've told me to ice it and rest. That would work too but that would take a much longer recovery.

Ultimately when I finally decided on an orthopedic surgeon to perform arthroscopic surgery on my shoulder, I picked the one who told me that he gets acupuncture treatments done from time to time for certain sorenesses he gets from working out that he's had a hard time relieving with just stretching and pt exercises. It was refreshing to hear from a doctor who didn't feel threatened by acupuncture but just saw it as another treatment that he was not an expert on but knew it worked from past personal experiences. Now is that the only reason I picked him. No. But that along with the fact that he was similar in age to me, graduated from an Ivy undergrad and medical school, and the fact that he could relate to me and vice versa.

Also my cousin is a 3rd generation acupuncturist. He's college educated from the US but has a practice in Asia. I've never gotten treatments from him but my parents visted his dad and mom a few years ago and stayed at their home. During their stay, my dad who is an avid hiker ended up tripping and severely spraining his wrist. My uncle took him back to the house and fixed him up in 3 treatments. My parents love telling that story whenever they get a chance because the wrist pain could've probably made their trip less enjoyable considering how active my dad likes to be.

Cook, since your dad is a chiro I thought I should mention this to you. I know a guy who's a chiro who later ended up getting his acupuncture license to make himself stand out from other chiro's, and from what I've heard this is a new trend since the field is so competitive.

Dcan,

What does martial arts have to do with acupuncture? Sounds like you've been watching to many kung fu movies. Sorry couldn't resist that correlation gave me the chuckles.

[taylor]

And what's up with all these LIKES. I feel like I'm in a popularity contest or something. I noticed Cook has the most LIKES. Why doesn't that surprise me?

[dcan]

...

What does martial arts have to do with acupuncture? Sounds like you've been watching to many kung fu movies. Sorry couldn't resist that correlation gave me the chuckles.

Edit: After responding I realized I didn't quite directly address your question. So here goes. Acupuncture is based on piercing and "manipulating" the chi meridians in your body in an effort to restore the chi balance. Chi meridians is a core concept of Traditional Chinese Medicine. Chi is also a fundamental concept in internal martial arts, and "old-school" martial arts use of "pressure points" explained it as the manipulation of chi points. So TCM is the basis for both acupuncture and older internal martial arts (as opposed to "external" or "hard style" martial arts like taekwondo). Therefore, traditional Oriental martial arts is very related to acupuncture. Acupuncture uses the TCM chi meridians concept to heal, while martial arts uses it to know how to hurt.

Nothing I've said above implies the "reality" of chi meridians, just that that is the fundamental concept underlying TCM.

We now return you to our originally scheduled message...

Wait... First, I'm not saying acupuncture isn't effective. I'm saying it probably has the same roots as acupressure (Shiatsu) which is really just what modern physical therapy calls trigger point therapy or myofascial release. I do self-myofascial release almost every night with a foam roller -- and so does almost every athlete and weight lifter nowadays. It's crude but effective in breaking apart knots in your fascia and your muscles. If you don't know, your fascia is the "spongy" material between your skin and muscle that basically ensures your body all hangs together properly. You can see it when you eat chicken sometimes, it's the whiter stringier parts. Fascia covers your entire body in one mesh, and it gets knots in it from overuse. These knots affect sometimes distant areas of your body because the fascia pulls, for example a knot in the fascia in your upper back pulls in all directions and pulls the fascia (and muscle, and nerves) in your skull which causes a headache, so the practicioner works on "releasing" the knots in your back to alleviate the headache. Etc. You also get "knots" in your muscle, small areas that bunch up and inhibit movement elsewhere, called "referred pain." These muscle knots have actually been photographed now, so they are a real scientific phenomenon.

Coincidentally, trigger points are broken up by one of two methods: direct pressure (which sounds a lot like Japanese acupressure) or by injection, inserting a needle coated with local anesthetic into the trigger point to force it to release. That sounds a lot like acupuncture, without the mysticism.

Second, martial arts is all about understanding the dynamics of the human body. In order to understand how to harm someone you have to learn how the body actually works. By learning how the body works you become better at understanding how the body heals, at least in part because you have to learn how to fix your own problems from training so hard. And if you spend enough time studying martial arts you start to get seven shades of weird and you start looking at all kinds of weird things. On the scale of weird things a dedicated martial artist gets into, acupuncture is very, very, very "normal".

And no I have not had acupuncture myself, but I've done Shiatsu and had it done to me, and it's pretty mind-blowing what happens to your body, both the one doing the acupressure and the one receiving it.

Here's some further reading:

Fascia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Trigger point - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Trigger Point Injection for Muscle Pain

Trigger Point Therapy Workbook; Your Self-Treatment Guide for Pain Relief (get it on Amazon for $13)

Amazon.com: Thera Cane Massager: Health & Personal Care (used for trigger point manipulation, 430 reviews, 4.5 stars average)

[cookderosa]

Jonathan, Cook, and Dcan,

It doesn't sound like any of you have actually tried acupuncture. And that's fine because if you aren't comfortable with the procedure, you probably never will. And if you are happy with the treatments you've gotten in the past then you may not feel it necessary to give it a shot. However, I've tried it many times but I realized I wrote only "several" in my previous post. My experiences with acupuncture has always been for an injury or a sprain, never a cold or anything else. What it's done for me is it has always sped up the healing process, not a placebo effect. For example, I'd walk into my acupuncturist's office with an ankle sprain barely able to walk, I leave the office after one treatment walking much better and the swelling has gone down a lot due to a procedure called cupping along with the needles. Now if I had gone to the doctor, he/she would've told me to ice it and rest. That would work too but that would take a much longer recovery.

Ultimately when I finally decided on an orthopedic surgeon to perform arthroscopic surgery on my shoulder, I picked the one who told me that he gets acupuncture treatments done from time to time for certain sorenesses he gets from working out that he's had a hard time relieving with just stretching and pt exercises. It was refreshing to hear from a doctor who didn't feel threatened by acupuncture but just saw it as another treatment that he was not an expert on but knew it worked from past personal experiences. Now is that the only reason I picked him. No. But that along with the fact that he was similar in age to me, graduated from an Ivy undergrad and medical school, and the fact that he could relate to me and vice versa.

Also my cousin is a 3rd generation acupuncturist. He's college educated from the US but has a practice in Asia. I've never gotten treatments from him but my parents visted his dad and mom a few years ago and stayed at their home. During their stay, my dad who is an avid hiker ended up tripping and severely spraining his wrist. My uncle took him back to the house and fixed him up in 3 treatments. My parents love telling that story whenever they get a chance because the wrist pain could've probably made their trip less enjoyable considering how active my dad likes to be.

Cook, since your dad is a chiro I thought I should mention this to you. I know a guy who's a chiro who later ended up getting his acupuncture license to make himself stand out from other chiro's, and from what I've heard this is a new trend since the field is so competitive.

Dcan,

What does martial arts have to do with acupuncture? Sounds like you've been watching to many kung fu movies. Sorry couldn't resist that correlation gave me the chuckles.

I think you misunderstood my comments, in any case, I never suggested acupuncture didn't work for you. I don't want to debate this, it's not helpful to me or anyone here looking for testing info. Hope everyone has a great week.

[cookderosa]

And what's up with all these LIKES. I feel like I'm in a popularity contest or something. I noticed Cook has the most LIKES. Why doesn't that surprise me?

LOL, I like often, kinda like on FB. I don't think it means anything.