Medical Quackery: Let's talk.

[Spidey's mom]

As a well-seasoned nurse I've come across so many medical quackery kind of stories but this one sort of pushed me over the top of the frustration meter. We were talking about it yesterday at work with some of the physicians and nurses so I came home and looked it up.

I've already heard about bleach enemas curing autism by removing toxins from your system. But this one was new to me. I'm hoping this "archbishop" gets the book thrown at him for peddling this elixir (aka "sacrament"). Watch the video . . .

Husband Says Fringe Church's 'Miracle Cure' Killed His Wife - Yahoo

Quote

The U.S. government and medical experts say MMS is really nothing more than a kind of industrial bleach -- a mixture of sodium chlorite and water -- and, when used as directed can cause serious harm to a person's health.

"They might as well be selling Clorox," said Ben Mizer of the U.S. Department of Justice. "You wouldn't drink Clorox, so there is no reason you should drink MMS."

How about the rest of you? Any quackeries you'd like to rant about?

[catsmeow1972, BSN, RN]

Marijuana, especially marijuana oil, as a cure for everything. I'm active on a board with a cancer forum, and one woman constantly pushes marijuana oil as a cancer cure. She says it helped her husband, who died of cancer.

Way down the list of presidential candidates (y'know the ones that don't have a snowball's chance in hell of even getting on any ballot, never mind any debate) was some person named Princess something or other whose platform was pot legalization for everything including scopalamine detox??? Oh and some angry ranting about a bunch of other bizarre things. i kid you not. Look it up. You'll also find some guy named "Joe Exotic" too. God help us all......

*I did just look up the idea of a "scopalamine addiction" Apparently it does exist but is pretty obscure. hmm..learn something new everyday. I don't think getting baked is gonna fix stupid though. :face palm

[morte, LPN, LVN]

Spectrum of gluten-related disorders: consensus on new nomenclature and classification. - PubMed - NCBI

testing for celiac has a fairly high false negative. and damage needs to be fairly extensive. also as the link points out, there is now what is called NCGI. have a nice day.

[morte, LPN, LVN]

People who do not test positive for Celiac Disease but insist they feel so much better on a gluten free diet.

My mother has bona fide, medically diagnosed Celiac Disease. So her kitchen is totally gluten-free, understandably. When i was living there for a while, by extension, i ate the same way. I did stop having a lot of GI trouble etc. However i assure you it had absolutely nothing to do with the gluten. I think it was because i stopped eating a lot of junk/fast food/prepared frozen stuff. I actually got in the habit of cooking real food. i can say, i most certainly DID NOT lose any weight. If anything I ate more because the stuff actually tasted good.

That's the only reasonable explanation I can think of for this line of thinking.

if your mom has only one gene, you have 25% chance of having that gene. If she has two, you DO have one. celiac can occur at any point in life. there are many psych symptoms associated with celiac, as well. and, then there is NCGI...

[catsmeow1972, BSN, RN]

Very true, but the testing (including biopsies) has been run and while I do have the gene, thus far I do not appear to have any symptoms. You are also correct in that it can show up anytime. As I recall you've got to have 3 things- the genetic component, gluten in your diet and something to set it off.

I think what the above poster was referring to was not the "I feel better" component (possibly NCGI) in which I say, go for it, but rather the "gluten free" as a weight loss fad. One of the common symptoms of Celiac is massive weight loss. So, eliminating gluten to lose weight is quite a bass-ackwards thought. Mom eliminated the gluten and subsequently gained 40 pounds. She needed it.

[Spidey's mom, ADN, BSN, RN]

I work in a school, my first year I had a diabetic kiddo in my office and another older boy comes in for a bandaid. He then proceeds to tell my diabetic that it a shame that his dad won't just give him these 3 magic oils, it would cure his diabetes and he would no longer be a "slave to the medical industry" He made my diabetic cry and he also got a lecture on why we trust doctors, not 4th graders, when it comes to medical advice.

This just showed up on a Multiple Myeloma group's comment section - 1st comment. Not sure if it is satire or real. Still, there is a crazy mindset out there about "cures".

Try cannabis oil for cancer and baking soda with juice

[la_chica_suerte85, BSN, RN]

We get the cannabis oil thing sometimes. There was someone using apricot seed and several other random fruit seeds as well. At least they're still showing up for their chemo.

[Anonymous865]

Someone with a wheat allergy will feel better following a gluten free diet.

People who do not test positive for Celiac Disease but insist they feel so much better on a gluten free diet.

ANY wacky diet plan! So you are going to go back to the way you were eating before that caused you to be 50 pounds over weight when your wacky diet is done?

At least these diets wont kill you. So sad when people die from quackery. When I read about it I do a little teeth grinding, then remember that they at least get the Darwin Award.

I don't know all the details but an acquaintance had been to Mexico, and had gotten her and her daughter's passports all ready go to to China, to cure her daughter's colon cancer. So sad, so desperate clutching at straws. I can't blame them, but still....?

The mother started a foundation in her daughters name, unfortunately pushed vitamin and diet cures for cancer. And is even involved with a doctor who has some ???? machine that measures the toxins in your body with a small machine you put your hand in, then she prescribes supplements based on what the machine finds!

[Buyer beware, BSN]

Medical quackery, charlatanism and snake oil salesmen have all played a tremendous or horrendous part in deceiving people all over the world. The purveyors of this stuff always play upon gullibilty admixed with a person's intense desperation to find a cure or at least a respite from a disease process that is physically and emotionally debilitating and often points toward doom.

I have known nurses and doctors down through the years who despite their purported background in logic and critcal thinking skills will when push comes to shove consign their fates to these later day shaman with their buy now and get a second bottle free TV commercial discount carnival hucksterisms.

But with this said, being the equinanimous creature that I hope I am, I still can't get out of my mind the well studied and authenticated power of the placebo with its effect to somehow act to mitigate the symptomology that can drive the afflicted to distraction. As we know "legitimate" new medicines are always tested for their efficacy against the placebo.

In more than a few cases through clinical trials, the placebo is adjudged either just as effective, the same as or only slightly less effective than the latest, greatest only slightly more molecularly tweeked but hugely more expensive generic counterpart.

As a result of this phenomenon, the neurobiologists and others that deal with our intrapsychic landscape have alerted us to the observable and experimental realities that there is something somewhat intangible going on here that defies our innate bias to want to understand all things and in doing so, as nurses, honestly recommend to those in need of a procedure, treatment or any palliative that may give those at their wit's end some shelter from the storm.

I have been lambasted by many en mass on another site that shall remain nameless that in the case of the late Steve Jobs he reportedly after not finding a cure to his torment through conventional medicine resorted to homeopathic remedies with few if any salubrious results. As a result of my assumed avocacy of non-conventional medicine, hoards remonstarted my way that he was being taken advantage of by unscupulous purveyors of "false hope" and I that should basically drop dead ASAP. (presumably without access to "mumbo jumbo" remediation)

But from the "false hope" perspective I was reminded of the fable of "Pandora's Box." Many know this story but what makes it applicable to the disscussion at hand is that in this allegory, to be exact, Pandora opened the taboo box and inadvertently let escape all the evils in the world before closing it to retain but one. And that one was "Hope." Not "false hope", merely Hope.

So I must ask the question that I don't really know the answer to. Do any of us as nurses, as human beings, wish to deny a terminal patient's last refuge called Hope by offering them a placebo after all known medical interventions have been exhausted?

I reservedly don't think I do, at least for now. But I still remain conflicted nonetheless.

Love and mercy brothers and sisters. (no rose garden for us, I suppose)

[Horseshoe, BSN, RN]

I have been lambasted by many en mass on another site that shall remain nameless that in the case of the late Steve Jobs he reportedly after not finding a cure to his torment through conventional medicine resorted to homeopathic remedies with few if any salubrious results.

According to a biography I read, Steve Jobs "resorted to homeopathic remedies" BEFORE he consented to be treated using conventional medicine. His wife said he was engaging in "magical thinking" when he refused surgery (that could possibly have cured him) in favor of homeopathic medicine. He told her he didn't like the idea of being "cut on." Only after these alternative methods failed did he give conventional medicine a try. Unfortunately, this came too late.

[brownbook]

I am still terrible at using the quote feature but I like Buyer Bewares post. This is coming from an atheist whose strongest belief is in evidence based medicine.

My poor old dog had an ugly, bleeding, we assume cancerous, (the vet didn't think it worth sedation and biopsy due to his age), golf ball size tumor on the edge of his ear canal. It was there several months, started out small, quickly grew.

Suddenly it started shrinking and now is completely gone! My daughter and grandson say they prayed for him....I am sure things like this happen from time to time and patients and family will claim that proves their prayers, or "quack" treatment worked.

For every illness, malady, known to man there is spontaneous remission.

ALONG side of modern medical treatment, hope and prayer can't hurt. Unfortunately using only quack treatments alone can harm.

[hppygr8ful, ASN, RN, EMT-I]

Very true, but the testing (including biopsies) has been run and while I do have the gene, thus far I do not appear to have any symptoms. You are also correct in that it can show up anytime. As I recall you've got to have 3 things- the genetic component, gluten in your diet and something to set it off.

I think what the above poster was referring to was not the "I feel better" component (possibly NCGI) in which I say, go for it, but rather the "gluten free" as a weight loss fad. One of the common symptoms of Celiac is massive weight loss. So, eliminating gluten to lose weight is quite a bass-ackwards thought. Mom eliminated the gluten and subsequently gained 40 pounds. She needed it.

Gluten free for weight loss is a farce - I actually looked into this and found that many gluten free foods are actually higher in calories, sugars and fat than those that have not had the gluten removed. I do eat many gluten free foods like red rice and quinoa and lots of green leafy vegetables and feel better because of it.

hppy

[catsmeow1972, BSN, RN]

Brownbook's.......agreed!.

My thought is that if someone has a faith of some sort, prayer can go a long way towards helping with comfort.