file.newsgroup.med.59602 Maven / Gradle / Ivy

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From: [email protected]
Subject: Re: INFO: Colonics and Purification?

In article <[email protected]>, [email protected] (Mark Robert Thorson) writes:
>> Not everything that goes in comes out, and personaly I don't mind giving
>> my body a hand once in a while.
>> 
>> Just my experience,
>> 
>> George Paap
> 
> I've got a very nice collection of historical books on medical quackery,
> and on the topic of massage this is a recurring theme.  Ordinary massage
> is intended to make a person feel better, especially if they have muscular
> or joint problems.  But -- like chiropracty -- there are some practitioners
> who take the technique to a far extreme, invoking what seems to me to be
> quack science to justify their technique.
> 
> In the case of massage, there is a technique called "deep abdominal massage"
> in which the masseur is literally attempting to massage the intestines!
> The notion is that undigested food adheres to the inner surface of the
> intestines and putrifies, releasing poisons which cause various disease
> syndromes.  By this vigorous and painful procedure, it is alleged that
> these deposits can be loosened up and passed out.
> 
> I just can't believe this idea has any truth behind it!  The human intestine
> is not a New York City sewer pipe!  And even if it were, you eat half of
> a small box of Triscuits, and there ain't gonna be nothin' sticking to the
> inner surface of your intestine  :-)

Mark, this is the most reasonable post that I've seen in Sci. Med. on the 
topic of Colonic Flushing.  I'm in a profession that uses manipulation(a 
very refined form of massage) to treat various human diseases.  Proving 
that manipulation works has been extremely difficult(as the MD's delight in 
pointing out).  The Osteopathic Profession seems to be making better 
progress than the chiropractors in proving(scientifically) that their 
techingues work.  The JAOA recently had a study on the use of manipulation 
to relieve mensrual cramps in women with results that were as good or 
better than drug treatment(using physiological measurements, and not just 
the woman's preception of improvement).  This study was hailed by the JAOA 
editors as the turning point in the profession's long struggle to prove 
itself to the medical community.

I'm currently trying to get the AOA(American Osteopathic Association) which 
has supported most of the Osteopathic research in the U.S. to also support 
nutrition education and research.  I've pointed out, in a grant proposal, 
that the founder of Osteopathic Medicine(A.T. Still) embraced both diet and 
manipulation to set himself apart from the MD's of his time who were pushing 
only drugs(Still was himself an MD who got real dissillusioned with drugs 
during his service in the Civil War).  He decided that there had to be a 
better way to treat human disease since he saw the cure(drugs) as being 
worse than the disease.  Through his many years of study of the human body, 
he developed his manipulation techniques that he then taught to his 
students in the U.S's first Osteopathic Medical school.  We now have 17.
Still used manipulation to treat(and also diagnose) human disease but he 
used diet to prevent human disease.  I'm trying to get the Osteopathic 
Profession to return to it's roots and beat the MD's to the punch(so to 
speak).  Both DO's and MD's in current medical practice have very little 
understanding of how diet affects human health.  This has to change.

Martin Banschbach, Ph.D.
Professor of Biochemistry and Chairman
Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology
OSU COllege of Osteopathic Medicine

"You are what you eat."