I recently had to have some fascia boards on my house replaced. They had holes in them, and squirrels and raccoons were coming in through the holes and trying to take up residence in the attic.
We have rotted fascia that will have to be replaced. I think it got damaged by ice dams over the course of a few winters.
Soffits, too. We need soffit rolfing.
a body part that is firmly located in the land of hocus-pocus
At first I thought you were talking about the clitoris.
Surely rolfing is some sexual practice urple dreamed up.
Huh. I would have bet there was at least the usual pop-scientific justification behind all of the claims that one can have tight fascia, etc. Interesting.
This field seems to be at an interesting point. I like the therapists trying to make their therapies work, while remaining aware that they don't know why they work, and resisting the temptation of nonsensical explanations for why they work.
I thought there were some things that were known to be fascia related? Like compartment syndrome?
In fact, it is indeed so known:
http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/compartment-syndrome/Pages/Introduction.aspx
Compartment syndrome can be scary as hell.
This was interesting. I'd only ever heard of fascia from massage therapists and occasional fitness trainers, and wasn't at all sure that it was a real thing. I suppose being a real thing that isn't understood at all isn't very helpful in terms of validating what those people told me, but at least it's only 50% made up.
Of course it's a real thing - otherwise we wouldn't have plantar fasciitis!
This seems like as good a thread as any to mention that our vet has prescribed homeopathy for our dog. Time to find a new vet? My wife understands that it's nonsense but nevertheless thinks it's helping. Has the placebo effect ever been studied in canines?
My wife understands that it's nonsense but nevertheless thinks it's helping.
This seems like a problem.
OTOH, much as one loves one's pets, it's a dog. If the expense isn't exorbitant, and it makes your wife happy, and isn't making anything worse, why make trouble?
My mother-in-law is way into the homeopathy, and my wife buys into it to a certain extent. I think its bollocks, but I don't tell her this because I don't want to harsh on any placebo effect she may be getting out of it.
14: astoundingly, there seems to be a rich literature on the existence of a placebo effect in animals (for instance here, by Richard "Bell Curve" Herrnstein himself). I couldn't find anything specifically about the existence of the effect in canines, but the fact that canine drug trials tend to be placebo-controlled leads me to think that people at least believe it exists enough to try and control for it.
Huh. Well, there you go. I guess it maybe * is* helping, by serving as a beneficial placebo.
Really, its not like the dog needs to feel better for the placebo to work, just the owner needs to perceive that the dog feels better. Its the owner paying the vet bills, after all, not the dog.
If I'm understanding wikipedia right, I don't think the Plantar Fascia is actually a Fascia (but rather a Aponeurosis).
17: Not so fast. I'm not at a good computer to do a thorough search, but a quick look at "placebo effect dogs" in PubMed doesn't return very much. In fact, the first thing I see is a rebuttal of a previous study reporting a placebo effect in dogs with hip osteoarthritis. They conclude that smaller group size (49) exaggerates what looks like a placebo effect and suggest they'd need almost 10X that to get a valid result (although they say their numbers aren't definitive, either). I can do a good search later if you're actually interested.
The best reasons for placebo or vehicle groups in drug studies is that sometimes, there are effects either from the formulation. For example, there's was a study where guinea pigs were given a drug in sugar water. Many developed diabetes, which was unrelated to the active drug and completely related to the vehicle/formulation and long treatment duration. The other reason is that sometimes administration is stressful for animals and they lose weight or show other negative side effects. It's important to tease out whether it's a side effect of the drug or just a stressed animal.
Homeopathy enrages me so much I would rather my loved ones die than for them to benefit from the stupidest version of the placebo effect ever.
Is it really dog homeopathy or just giving the dog some plant or something to chew on? I feel like with dogs there's a difference in crazy level between "here, try this ultra diluted tincture of woo" and "here's some plant that seems anecdotally to help dogs that's not really a drug and we don't really know much about how it works."
Does homeopathy mean something different across the pond? Because holy shit. (Yeah, I know , Daily Mail)
About 20 per cent of doctors in Scotland have basic homeopathic training compared with one per cent 15 years ago.
23: Yeah, I do wish alternative medicine people would use "homeopathy" rigorously. If something is literally homeopathic, I feel confident knowing that it's completely harmless albeit completely pointless. But you do get herbal stuff in perceptible doses labeled "homeopathic" sometimes, and that you have to actually think about.
I don't think most people ever mean the stupid-dilution version of the word.
26: That's not right -- there's plenty of literally homeopathic stuff for sale, and someone must buy it and use it.
21.1: eh, if I was interested I could have done a thorough search. I didn't find anything on "placebo effect canine" on scholar except a ton of placebo-controlled studies, so. The Herrnstei study got cited by a lot of more recent stuff that also seemed to find a placebo effect in animals. The etiology of that effect I have no idea. The suggestions you list make perfect sense. But we also don't know what kind of homeopathic "remedy" is being given to urple's dog, nor for what ailment. So could there be a placebo effect? I vote "sure, maybe" with my second place vote going to "I guess t depends".
I will say that true homeopathic diets are pretty close to 100% effective at taking the weight off.
Aponeurosis is the feeling you get when deciding whether to click on one of his links.
26, 27: Until I got on the internet and interacted with Brits, I had basically no idea that "homeopathy" is supposed to mean all the tincture stuff*. In conventional USian usage, homeopathy basically means non-medical health treatment, whether it's herbs or acupuncture or, I suppose, tinctures.
*Indeed, it took me years to understand just why Brits get so mad about homeopathic claims, because there are, obviously, examples of "traditional medicine" working. But over there everyone seems to know that homeopathy, strictly defined, is all about the tinctures.
Does homeopathy mean something different across the pond? Because holy shit
Not really, it's just scarily popular and has been very irresponsibly legitimised by the NHS and some universities.
Royal London Homeopathic Hospital
I'm picturing an incredibly small building, visible only through a powerful lens, in a vacant lot.
27: Just because the stuff is for sale doesn't mean the consumers are understanding it correctly.
I have this wish for woo to work because I have lots of low-level health stuff that doesn't respond to much of anything.
In conventional USian usage, homeopathy basically means non-medical health treatment, whether it's herbs or acupuncture or, I suppose, tinctures.
This is very surprising - I must not know anyone who's into it.
I guess people have confused the words "homeopathic" and "holistic".
34: Oh, you mean that that they buy homeopathic (in the dilution sense) stuff and use it and talk about it, but don't understand the dilution principle? I'd buy that.
I certainly know people who refer to herbal medicines with actual active doses -- and in some cases with, possibly somewhat ambiguous, clinical trials data pointing to their efficacy*--as 'homeopathic'.
* hypericum, or Devil's Claw, or whatever.
Further to 31/34/37.last, there's a fair amount of marketing overlap between the stupid-dilution stuff and just "natural remedies" or whatever, e.g. you can buy arnica marketed as a homeopathic remedy at "1X HPUS" dilution, which is obviously not relying on the dilution principle.
or necrotizing fasciitis.
Or fascism, man.
My wife got me to try some kind of herbal pill thing for my allergies. It had actual stinging nettles or whatever in it, not super diluted with water, so I figured maybe it would have some effect. And maybe it did. But to take it, I had to dissolve 4 pills under my tongue, three times a day. Fuck that noise, give me a 24 hour pill I can swallow.
Huh, I hadn't considered the possibility that the vet might be using the term "homeopathy" imprecisely. Maybe she is, which, oddly, would make me think more highly of her. (It seems better to falsely label an effective natural remedy as "homeopathic" than to sell actual homeopathic remedies to patients.) The condition being treated is just itchy skin (which the dog scratches incessantly until it bleeds). Also, I didn't mean to turn this into a homeopathy thread and am sorry for that. Please talk about fascia.
Necrotizing Homeofasciitis: you have it RIGHT NOW!
I had to dissolve 4 pills under my tongue, three times a day. Fuck that noise, give me a 24 hour pill I can swallow.
When I did acupuncture one time, I was told that it wouldn't be effective unless I bought a tea and some horse pills, which needed to be taken EIGHT times a day. (I've told this story before - the pills ended up having squirrel shit in them, which is an actual woo ingredient.)
Tell me again why pills filled with squirrel shit don't need FDA approval?
Some of the descriptions in the U.S. of non-diluted "alternative" remedies as "homeopathic" have to do with a homeopathy exemption from (certain) ordinary federal drug regulation, I think. Of course, that's not inconsistent with there being a marketing angle as well.
(It seems better to falsely label an effective natural remedy as "homeopathic" than to sell actual homeopathic remedies to patients.)
I don't know about that -- 'real' homeopathic remedies are guaranteed harmless. Other 'natural' remedies aren't.
I'm still wondering what the actual dog remedy was.
Although, now that I think about it, squirrel shit might actually have some beneficial uses as a probiotic. You know, if you are having problems digesting acorns.
My massage therapist is slightly on the woo side, but it's all aromatherapy/herbal stuff, not the dilution malarkey. She's all about the anatomy and the connected causes by issues in one part of the body to problems elsewhere. Part of the stuff she works on during a session is fascia - she generally identifies the issue as fascial binding and the sensation of having it worked on is quite different - shallow, sharp, burny painfulness- to having regular muscle tension released - the more usual deep ache, left-a-bit-up-a-bit-RIGHT-THERE.
re: 45
Flying squirrel shit, I think.
I worked for a chinese pharma company, or rather a Western pharma company running clinical trials on Chinese ingredients, and that was in the traditional formulation for a preparation they were testing. For menstrual cramps, iirc. They were using an alternative formula without the Trogopterori faeces.
Flying squirrel shit, I think.
Well, of course. Why would you eat shit from squirrels that don't fly? That's disgusting.
I don't know about that -- 'real' homeopathic remedies are guaranteed harmless. Other 'natural' remedies aren't.
'Real' homeopathic remedies are guaranteed to be ineffective. Other 'natural' remedies may actually work.
49: oh, I have no idea. Didn't ask, don't care. It's some chalk-like substance that has to be massaged into the dog's gums twice daily. Looks like ground up aspirin.
It wasn't expensive enough to be cocaine. (At least not lab grade cocaine.)
You know who are super into eating both squirrels and shit? Dogs.
36, 37: Maybe I wasn't clear: I don't mean that practitioners of these things are being imprecise (maybe they are, but that wasn't my intent); I mean that people who don't pay much attention, IME, are doing 37.2. As evidenced by 31.1, 26, 39*, 40, &c.
*OK, not a USian example, but still
There's absolutely a placebo effect in animals, just as much as there is in humans (and basically all animals too, not just human-like ones like dogs). But that's just because the placebo effect is an effect, not a cause. The cause behind the placebo effect isn't just suggestion or expectation effects, it's literally everything in the universe affecting the outcome that is not the specific thing you're taking/studying/etc. The natural getting-better-then-getting-worse-then-getting-better fluctuations of most medical problems, and the general mood of the dog (and the person trying to figure out from relatively subtle changes) are probably big causal factors in the placebo effect in this case.
Huh, when I had a sore ear a year ago, I bought some homeopathic drops at the grocery store out of desperation (they didn't have anything else), and they really did reduce the pain. I thought that seemed unlikely, since it must be some kind of stupid tincture, but it turns out it was a pretty high concentration of belladonna--not what I thought homeopathic remedies are at all.
As long as it had actual poison instead of diluted-to-mere-water poison.
At some point, I had gotten the idea that Rolfing involved being pummeled by a giant nerf bat or pool noodle type thing. I have no idea where I got that idea. I explained this to a Rolfing student I once rented a room to. Finding how wrong I was was rather humiliating. But I like my idea of Rolfing better than the real definition. Maybe I should start a movement.
Or fascism, man.
Say what you like about the tenets of National Socialism, at least it's a gauze-like matrix of connective tissue that envelopes the muscles.
62 is quite startling. Hey, have some wholly natural organic painkillers! Available over the counter without prescription! Don't take too many, though, because they'll stop your heart and breathing.
Wait, you want a decongestant as well? ALARM! ALARM! Sign this book and produce ID, you filthy meth-peddler.
66: Ear drops! I'm sure one could try to take them orally, but they worked well topically.
Sounds very Hamlet-like. Here, pour this preparation of belladonna in your ear.
it turns out it was a pretty high concentration of belladonna--not what I thought homeopathic remedies are at all.
But it had one part in a hundred thousand aspirin, which was what helped the pain.
Dog medicine is rhus tox. In a powder form that gets rubbed into the dog's gums.
That's the beauty of real homeopathy. No, it's not scary at all. You could treat low energy with homeopathic plutonium and be just fine.