What Is in the News about Manual Medicine?

Saturday, July 16, 2011

Plug your Placebo!

For those of us supposed to be healing, rather than hurting,
Doesn't the fact that the placebo effect works so well
beg us to have better bedside manners?


What gives us the right to shatter someone else's magic ring?

Do we have the right to lock the doorway
that someone else could have taken
on the way to finding their own truth?

The topside to this is it is a test of truth: if something works consistently better than placebo, it's something we had best pay proper attention to. Here we are able to differentiate flukes from a true "flame-on."

"Thus, it appears
that placebo is about 55 -60 % as effective as active
medications irrespective of the potency of these active
medications.”
(The Psychobiology of Mind- Body Healing, Ernest Lawrence Rossi)

@TranceDoctor

Thursday, June 10, 2010

What is Craniosacral Therapy?

What is Cranial-Sacral Therapy (C.S.T.)?



The cranial-sacral system addresses bones and membranes that surround the central nervous system.  Restrictions here can pull on and strain neural tissues and affect correspondingly innervated somatic areas, organs, or tissues.  Craniosacral Therapy or CST uses very light manual techniques. These are often meant to induce responses that decrease, unwind, or remove neural tissue strain. CST, while particularly effective for treatment-resistant headaches, also has positive bearing on varied cases of unresolved chronic muscle and joint pain. Case studies have shown usefulness in helping resolve some digestive and neuro-endocrine disorders. Learning curves, attention spans, and memory retention are often reported improved. 



The cranial-sacral (craniosacral) system addresses bones and membranes that surround the central nervous system. Restrictions here can pull on and strain neural tissues, and affect correspondingly innervated somatic areas, organs, or tissues.  Craniosacral Therapy or CST uses very light hands-on techniques. These techniques deal with pressures and movements of and between brain structures. Hands-on application of CST resistance to certain tissue pressures or movements are often meant to induce responses that decrease, unwind, or remove neural tissue strain. CST Induction techniques are meant to propagate proper movements between brain structures. 

CST, while particularly effective for treatment-resistant headaches, also has positive bearing on varied cases of unresolved chronic muscle and joint pain. Case studies have shown usefulness in helping resolve some digestive and neuro-endocrine disorders. Learning curves, attention spans, and memory retention are often reported improved.

An urgent call exists for strong Randomized-controlled-blinded studies on both the mechanism of action and effectiveness of CST. While ardent practitioners and patients attest to its wondrous effects, strong scientific validation is still lacking.

In the very least, a profound relaxation response is almost always possible with CST. For those for whom "nothing else has worked," CST may be of some help. My biggest concern with CST is the large inter-practitioner discrepancy in in both the rhythm and amplitude of the movements they say they notice in patients. Two different practitioners may read the number of "cycles of flexion-extension" very differently -- even when "readings" are taken a few seconds apart.

My personal advice: find a CST practitioner you are truly comfortable with. Hopefully that practitioner has also had at least a year of successful interventions. As with surgical interventions, the more experience, the better. 

Personal caveat: If you find a practitioner who says they always have a 100% success rate with CST, i would suggest you run away, very quickly, in the opposite direction. That doctor is either extremely gifted or downright scary. (On the off chance that they've developed a system that absolutely always works, for any indication, please send me their contact numbers. I need to learn what they are doing. My magic isn't that good yet.  So i'm sticking to my science, and letting God do the rest.)

Looking for a CST Practitioner?



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Welcome To Hands-On Pain Solutions

This is the sister Site of www.manualmed.blogspot.com

This is meant to be the site where patients can find answers for their pain concerns.

Think of this as the patient info site, while the manualmed site remains the site for practitioners.

Keep informed, and stay pain-free!