Chiropractic for mental health, Bogus*? Updated

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*Deliberate deception not implied

In light of other bloggers looking at chiropractic treatment I thought I’d have a look from my perspective. According to the BCA chiropractic can be used to treat many conditions beyond back pain but does not appear to mention mental health symptoms specifically.

I thought I would find out if individual chiropracters did suggest they could treat depression and this is what I found:

I’m starting to think they do it on purpose

Here we go again, the BBC website has some more marvellous reporting of research. This time the article is : Trial drugs “reverse” Alzheimer’s
O rly…

The BBC being accurate again

I know I haven’t been terribly active in blogging recently but this story on the BBC website raised an eyebrow. The story in question is about a crop of daffodils being grown in Wales as a source of Galantamine crystals.
For the uninitiated, Galantamine is an Acetlycholinesterase inhibitor, one of the medications used in Alzheimer’s, more specifically it is one of the three medications that doctors in the UK are allowed to prescribe. It says it right in the NICE guidelines, not according to the BBC’s reporting though. Apparently it is only available in Scotland and then only privately…
I’ve blogged repeatedly about the quality of facts on the Beeb and I will again, hopefully by the time you read this the article will be accurate but I’m not holding my breath.

The least worst option

This post was triggered by a comment about bpsd (behavioural problems and symptoms in dementia) made by The Shrink author of the Lake Cocytus blog (follow the link and read it is a great insight into life as a consultant psychiatrist). Much of what The Shrink writes echoes with me as I have had eerily similar experiences in my practice.

I made a decision when I started blogging to focus on evidence and legislation rather than clinical cases when I started and I’m not going to change that when others do the clinical blogging better than me. Having said that one of the biggest (if not the biggest) challenges presenting to the psychiatrist working with dementia and brain injury is that of so called “behavioural disturbance” and “wandering”.

When MMR attacks (or LBC and Jeni Barnett, what were you thinking?)

Just a very quick post, Ben Goldacre has been threatened by LBC’s lawyers fro infringement of copyright.

The copyright in question is to do with an episode of Jeni Barnett’s show which was frighteningly ill informed and further scare mongering about MMR. As I’ve blogged previously, the data about MMR does not show an association with autism and never has.  The events have been blogged by other already, Holford watch, jdc, Anthony Cox (Black triangle) amongst others, click on the links on this page to read their posts. You will find more links in their posts.

All this when the data shows that measles cases are increasing and therefore the risk of serious sequelae including death are also increasing. Well done LBC for stifling debate, the internet is a scary thing when geeks get riled isn’t it.

Mind you it’s all good publicity isn’t it? Well isn’t it?

It’s just a little prick

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But does it do any good?

I’m referring to acupuncture which is being puffed, sorry reported on, by the BBC again today in this article.

Confusion you say, now what confusion would that be I wonder? Nothing to do with the media portrayal of previous studies surely.

MMR again

So the Lancet have published another paper on MMR, and this time it’s not Wakefield, well sort of.

It’s all in the mind surely?

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I was navel gazing and having a look at which of my rants was the most read, it seems that it was the one on electrosensitivity. So lets have a talk about medically unexplained symptoms shall we?

But she’s a professor!

Thanks to Ben Goldacre’s mini blog I came accross this story. It’s a worrying story for me in several ways, the diagnosis by letter being one.

Snoring kills, no really…

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I was reading a car magazine last week and found an advert selling SnorBan With the strap-line “Snoring Driving fatigue can be fatal”.