Complementary Therapy (2 Viewers)

[Squack]

I am a Complementary therapist, based in Trinity College Sports Centre.
I also provide mobile at-home treatments and I am available for corporate events.
Holistic Massage
Reflexology
Fertility Reflexology
Maternity Reflexology
Cancer Care Therapies
Indian Head Massage
Check out Susan Gannon
€35 per hour €20 for half hour

 

[Cornu Ammonis]

Reflexology? The S in your username might be redundant...

 

[Squiggle]

Reflexology? The S in your username might be redundant...

Don't be a dick!

 

[NoNo]

Good luck with your business. What music do you have on in the background?

 

[тхеодоре кацзынски]

Reflexology? The S in your username might be redundant...

Get outta here science guy.

Good luck with your business. What music do you have on in the background?

Great question.

 

[nooleen]

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[NoNo]

I was thinking more along these lines

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Nooly, are cartoons your guilty pleasure!!

 

[nooleen]

no, i was actually shocked by how shite that video is, i hadn't seen it since the 90s

 

[Cornu Ammonis]

Don't be a dick!

I'm not the person charging for stuff that doesn't work. Getting your feet rubbed might feel nice but the claims made on the website about it helping back pain, migraine and infertility are spurious at best. Honestly, I think so many of these complemantary therapies (though well meaning) foster a culture of medical ignorance, prey on the desperate (when it comes to pain, people will try anything even if it's as mad as a bag of cats) and should be held to task for making bogus claims without any good evidence. Sure, there a loads of poorly performed studies published in crappy journals but this stuff fails time and time again to show any real effect.

 

[Squack]

I'm not the person charging for stuff that doesn't work. Getting your feet rubbed might feel nice but the claims made on the website about it helping back pain, migraine and infertility are spurious at best. Honestly, I think so many of these complemantary therapies (though well meaning) foster a culture of medical ignorance, prey on the desperate (when it comes to pain, people will try anything even if it's as mad as a bag of cats) and should be held to task for making bogus claims without any good evidence. Sure, there a loads of poorly performed studies published in crappy journals but this stuff fails time and time again to show any real effect.

Corn Ammonis, all I will say is I am not medically ignorant and am certainly not giving a nice foot rub to rip desperate people off.
It is a Complementary Therapy, that means it complements other therapies. I have happy clients who come back for treatments which to me is a positive sign. And certainly none of my clients I would consider desperate.
The health insurers now allow patients to charge back under certain policies for reflexology. This is a positive thing.
This therapy has been in existence long before Western medicine. And as helpful as Western medicine is, it relies on chemicals and doesn't always necessarily heal.
Go to any hospice and ask the cancer patients who receive reflexology or massage if they feel the benefits or not!
Don't knock it before you try it! Not all therapies suit every person but that can be said for anything.

 

[Cornu Ammonis]

Corn Ammonis, all I will say is I am not medically ignorant and am certainly not giving a nice foot rub to rip desperate people off.
It is a Complementary Therapy, that means it complements other therapies. I have happy clients who come back for treatments which to me is a positive sign. And certainly none of my clients I would consider desperate.
The health insurers now allow patients to charge back under certain policies for reflexology. This is a positive thing.
This therapy has been in existence long before Western medicine. And as helpful as Western medicine is, it relies on chemicals and doesn't always necessarily heal.
Go to any hospice and ask the cancer patients who receive reflexology or massage if they feel the benefits or not!
Don't knock it before you try it! Not all therapies suit every person but that can be said for anything.

As I said, I do not deny that it might feel nice or relaxing but what exactly does it do for cancer that a normal massage or other relaxing activity does not? Where's the evidence base? The most recent Cochrane review (the gold standard for clinicians in understanding the effectiveness of any treatment, including a very large number that don't involve chemicals) finds that the only studies out there that show any effect for reflexology tend to be poorly designed studies. You can't make an argument for a therapy on "ask my patients, they seem to like it", that's part of the problem.

I work with psychologists a lot, I'm very happy with the concept of a non-drug therapy but psychology has made great strides in recent decades because it can compete with conventional medical therapies in terms of scientific rigour, sound theory and a willingness to put data ahead of feelings and tradition (just because it's old and eastern, doesn't make it correct or even effective). Complementary and alternative therapies have not embraced the scientific method because they know it will not stand up to scrutiny.

 

[Squack]

So maybe studies need to take place to see the effects?

 

[Cornu Ammonis]

That's the point of the Cochrane review, out of all the studies done (including properly controlled studies), only the poorly designed ones came out in any way positive.

In any case you can't make claims about what a therapy can do until the studies have already been done. It's the same thing as pharmaceutical companies marketing the off-label effect of drugs (i.e. possible benefits for which the full studies have not been done), it's unethical and it is bad practice. To sell a therapy, the claims must be supported by hard evidence. Any other approach is bogus profiteering at the expense of patients.

 

[Squack]

So shall I stop treating clients?

 

[nooleen]

i'd say you should bung cornu a free treatment to keep him quiet

 

[Cornu Ammonis]

So shall I stop treating clients?

If you think it's right. You don't have to agree with me.

 

[Diumraid]

Even conventional medicine depends on a certain amount of placebo effect to be really efficacious, a pleasant doctor and a window with a nice view will skew the results of any test - carry on with the healing squack! Holism or bust.

 

[ann post]

I think there is a big difference between what reflexology claims to be and what cornu is trying to prove it isnt. For a disease like mine chemically treating the disease doesn't necessarily make me feel better as a human being other than reduced symptoms. I still need to do stuff that makes me feel better that is deeply unscientific. Its grand to argue it academically I suppose but I don't think it disproves anything I've witnessed in regard to reflexology or similar treatment.

 

[Squack]

I think there is a big difference between what reflexology claims to be and what cornu is trying to prove it isnt. For a disease like mine chemically treating the disease doesn't necessarily make me feel better as a human being other than reduced symptoms. I still need to do stuff that makes me feel better that is deeply unscientific. Its grand to argue it academically I suppose but I don't think it disproves anything I've witnessed in regard to reflexology or similar treatment.

May I ask what your experience has been?

 

[Cornu Ammonis]

Even conventional medicine depends on a certain amount of placebo effect to be really efficacious, a pleasant doctor and a window with a nice view will skew the results of any test - carry on with the healing squack! Holism or bust.

Of course all that plays a part and there is a strong evidence base for it all. I'm not saying that medicine = drugs but a lot of the medical industry (both conventional and complementary) has gotten by on wishy-washy, anecdotal evidence and can get away with charging people money for stuff that does not work in the way that is claimed. That is not to say that these therapies do nothing but do they do everything they claim? If they do help, how do they help? Can they be modified in some way to be more beneficial? So many standard medical techniques and approaches come from folk and traditional medicine and it is through systemised study that they can be refined and improved upon. However, if you have a vested interest in claiming that your treatment (i.e. charging money for a drug, surgery, mental health therapy, physical therapy, etc.) can do many different things for many different disorders and complaints, why would you be interested in doing the proper science to cut out some of your potential profit?

"a pleasant doctor and a window with a nice view will skew the results of any test" - the whole point of a propery controlled trial is that you can account for this and then discard the expensive treatment if you find that it is only the niceness of the enivornment is playing a part. Most scientists would argue that medicine is not holistic enough, the evidence points towards an overall approach to any disease being better than one pill to rule them all. Yet, if a therapy claims to do things it can't, or to do things in a way that is physically impossible (or improbable), then patient's time and money (both of which precious) should not be wasted on something which only serves the industry.

I think there is a big difference between what reflexology claims to be and what cornu is trying to prove it isnt.

I take exception to the claims made on the website. For cancer, it is claimed that reflexology can help in:

• Lowering pain levels
• Strengthening the immune system
• Side effects of chemotherapy, radiotherapy and other medication
• Relieving digestive problems
• Boosting the immune system
• Repairing and healing body tissue damaged by surgery or radiotherapy
• Optimising liver and kidney function
• Reducing muscle tension
• Relieving stress, fear and anxiety

These are vague terms and no sources are given for the claims. How does it strengthen the immune system? How is this different from boosting the immune system? How is this strengthening/boosting measured? Do clients who get reflexology have less colds/flus than those who don't get it or get a non-reflexology foot rub? Are white blood cell counts different? Are markers of immune activity like interleukins affected? Does this fit in with the claims made about arthritis on the main page? How are liver and kidney functions optimised? Is this related to the immune effect? How is liver and kidney functioning measured? What are the real outcomes of these supposed benefits, i.e. remission rates, comfort scales and mortality rates?

I'm not being facetious, these are important questions and complementary medicine gets away with making these vague "can help with" claims with little-to-no evidence with most people not caring. That, to me, is very wrong. If practitioners truly believe in these therapies, then they must step up and address these issues in an honest, open way. Otherwise they will always be dismissed as charlatans and purveyors of snake oil.

So, if reflexology can do any of these things (and I do think it can lower pain levels, relieve stress and anxiety and reduce muscle tension), why not quantify it and legitimise it. That would increase the number of doctors referring to reflexology and not for other therapies. It would be a win-win situation.

For a disease like mine chemically treating the disease doesn't necessarily make me feel better as a human being other than reduced symptoms. I still need to do stuff that makes me feel better that is deeply unscientific. Its grand to argue it academically I suppose but I don't think it disproves anything I've witnessed in regard to reflexology or similar treatment.

Why is the "other stuff" deeply unscientific? As I mentioned above, modern medicine readily acknowledges that a more holistic approach is better than a cold, clinical drug-focussed approach. Whether all clinicians practice this is a different issue but I would argue that "other stuff" on top or instead of drugs is best practice. What this "other stuff" is though, needs to be determined. Maybe reflexology works a bit but acupuncture is better? Wouldn't you want to know that? Or should complementary medicine exist outside scientific enquiry and only have to show anecdotal evidence to "prove" it works?

This evidence-based approach has had great success in recent years with mental health therapies with CBT, group/family therapy and mindfulness all being good examples where an initially skeptical scientific majority can be won over by designing good, robust studies that strengthen the case for the therapies being beneficial and a real alternative to pharmacological intervention.