I remember someone told me about some plant/bush that is the only plant with natural levels of radium (or radon). It’s apparently good to relieve arthritis pains. Does anyone know the name of this plant?
Other than arthritis, my health is pretty good. But it seems like one of those kind of ailments that there will never be a cure for.
A certain amusing UK-trained osteopath was busted recently for falsely claiming to be a doctor (he protests: “I only use the title occasionally”).
To deflect criticism, he charges that skeptics mock only obsolete osteopathic treatments. As usual, he’s missed the point. The object is to demonstrate osteopaths’ continuing inadequate criteria for evidence. Andrew Taylor Still, the founder of Osteopathy, claimed, for example, to absolutely cure yellow fever, malaria, diphtheria, rickets, piles, diabetes, dandruff, constipation and obesity, all through physical manipulation. He also claimed absolutely to be able to grow 3″ of hair on a bald head in one week, also through physical osteopathic manipulation.
So, was Still lying, or was he delusional? Which is it? Probably both. Still was widely judged (even by his own family) of being mentally ill. Almost all the biographical data in Still’s highly amusing autobiography has been found false or grossly exaggerated (this seems to be a common pattern among osteopaths…).
The point is, delusion and sloppy standards of evidence are regular characteristics of UK-pattern osteopathy even today. Take, for example, today’s Cranial Osteopathy (or its close cousin craniosacral therapy, or several other variations). Practitioners, (such as our bogus “doctor”) convince themselves they can place their fingers on a patient’s skull and command brain fluids to change direction, this “facilitating” some vaguely positive change in the body. Cranial osteopaths claim TODAY to treat the following diseases with cranial osteopathic skull feel-ups:
allergy, arthritis, asthma, autism, birth trauma, bone disorders, bronchitis, cerebral palsy, colic, depression, digestive problems, dyslexia, hormonal imbalance, impotence, infertility, rheumatism, spinal curvature, stroke, cancer, and many other diseases.
(Incidentally, the Advertising Standards body of the UK recently told them to stop making these bogus claims).
So what do responsible (mostly USA-based) Osteopaths think of Cranial Osteopathy and its variants? Two professors at University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine:
“Our own and previously published findings suggest that the proposed mechanism for cranial osteopathy is invalid and that interexaminer (and, therefore, diagnostic) reliability is approximately zero. Since no properly randomized, blinded, and placebo-controlled outcome studies have been published, we conclude that cranial osteopathy should be removed from curricula of colleges of osteopathic medicine and from osteopathic licensing examinations”.
Osteopathy, as practiced in the UK (and unfortunately among too many USA-based osteopaths) remains deeply quacky and delusional. So, if as some osteopaths claim, A. T. Still was not a liar, do they believe osteopathic manipulation can cure baldness?
my mum is having too mucg pain on her knee i always give her a massage so the pain will be lessen.i also apply pain reliever gel and she takes a medicine that could lessen the pain but still it doesnt work on her.what should i do?
if i keep my leg up the pain goes away.
it would be a reassurance to know it might