Re: alternative medicin and scientific studies

Often when I say I have methylation issues, or other people say they have pre diabetic hypoglycemia, or candida or whatever, a counter argument from "Non beleivers" is there is no science behind these conditions.

Why is that? How does scientific studies into things like candida overgrowth come about, who can conduct them, approve them, fund them, publsh the results?

Many of us patients agree the conditions are valid as if we treat them often we feel better, but it would be nice to tell the sceptics about scientific proof and any cover up as to why thre arent many studies to back this up in the public domain.

The orthomolecular approach which helps thousands is often labelled "quackery" as tehres no science behind it but is that true, is there no science behind it, or are the studies to expensive for the ortho Dr's to prove the mainstrams Dr's wrong?

Frequently the studies do exist but people often don't know how to do the research to find them.  And if they do they rarely understand the study including how it was designed or what the results mean.  Take for example the poster who tried to claim the phase 1 study of "oleander soup" showed it was effective.  The phase 1 study actually stated  "no objective anti-tumor responses were seen".  He clearly did not understand what that meant since it means the oleander had no significant effect.  I asked him for quite a while to post proof of effectiveness and he simply kept claiming there was a second study that he could not seem to come up with.  All he could post as "evidence" were unverifiable testimonials that also happened to contradict his own claims as to why the first study showed it was worthless.  When the results of the second study finally came out he posted the results of the second study.  It was extremely clear though that he did not understand what the results meant since he tried to claim it was very successful when in fact the study really showed it be more of a failure once again.  I addressed all the lies, deceit, financial conflicts of interest by the testers, etc. in the links found in this post:

http://curezone.com/forums/fm.asp?i=1877385#i

As we can see the first study was in 2006 yet this supposed expert on the subject was unable to find the study.  And when he did finally find a study after being asked over and over and over.... he finally came up with a study that he had absolutely no idea what the results meant.  As I pointed out chemotherapy drugs that we consider being quackery had a better outcome that the oleander product produced.

Here is another example of making statements where he had no clue about what he was talking about:

http://curezone.com/forums/fm.asp?i=1278918#i

So this is a great example of what I was stating.  People often have no idea how to properly research information that exists and if they manage to find it they frequently have no idea how to comprehend the findings of the studies they find.

I am working on my book on cancer when I have time so I will be going in to this in more depth in the book.  But the link above will address a lot of the false claims that have been made about the effectiveness of oleander for cancer.

Another factor I have found to play a role is that people want to rely on the Internet as their only source of information.  Problem is that I know of a number of studies I have read that cannot be found anywhere on the Internet. Sometimes people actually need to go to the medical library or open a real book to find the research on certain subjects.  Just because something cannot be found on the Internet does not mean it does not exist.

Getting more specific though to your examples here are a few examples of studies on the things you mentioned to show they can be found:

Hypomethylation:

Monoamine oxidase A gene DNA hypomethylation - a risk factor for panic disorder?

And I covered Candida proliferation by alkalinity in these posts:

http://curezone.com/forums/fm.asp?i=1452732#i

http://curezone.com/forums/fm.asp?i=1452747#i

As another example a friend of mine wanted me to go to the doctor with him to listen to what the doctor has to say about a particular test.  The doctor made a comment about herbs not really being tested so I brought up some facts that showed pharmaceuticals are not really tested either so we ended up in an argument and he stormed out.  When he came back he asked me how long it would take my way and I told him about a month.  So he said good and wanted my friend back in two months.  When we came back the first thing the doctor said to me was that he can eat crow and was going to start researching chromium.  Point is that the research was there all along where it could be easily found with a little effort.  Until the doctor saw the evidence though he had no desire to even bother researching the subject.