Science or evidence-based medicine, I find, is not a common approach to an individuals understanding of medicine. This is also the case when it comes to many things in life. I recently read an article talking about how we should be using evidence-based management for successful businesses, which made a lot of sense to me. It should also make sense to everyone but that doesn’t seem to be the case if you look at how people treat medicine.

What SBM’s all about is really very simple; it’s about observing evidence and using reason to come to conclusions to make the best decisions. Many people do not do this. It often will not negatively effect a person but in cases it can be detrimental. An example would be a case where you have a life threatening illness, that is treatable with medicine, and you treat it with alternative medicines. Hopefully you would be rushed to hospital before it was too late.

If I were to become ill with a sickness that has no known cure or form of treatment, I would have no choice but to use unproven medicines in the hope of being healed. This is different to using disproved medicines with the same hope. Unproven medicines can be newly created medicines that show some hope but have not had their efficacy shown. I would hope that in using these medicines I would also be helping doctors to find treatments which can stop future patients from having to use unproven medicines.

Alternative medicine is just unproven or disproved techniques that make claims to be able to heal all sorts of illnesses. Once it is proven it is called medicine, therefore alternative medicine is another way to say nonsense medicine. In most cases the alternative medicines have been shown to be nothing more than a placebo. Why would you spend money on these things or even give yourself false hope? There comes a stage where you need to choose to die with dignity and wasting time on nonsense does not allow this. I’m looking at you, Jim Stynes. There is no dignity in drinking your own urine because someone told you it is extremely good for you.

The next time someone recommends that you to go to a chiropractor for your back pain, take some homeopathy to heal your hay fever, or stick fine needles in you to resolve a long-term injury ask them for some evidence and not anecdotes. If they have none to show you, look for it yourself. We have this wonderful knowledge-base called the Internet to find proof.

If I told you that eating your snot would reduce your chance of stomach cancer, would you start gulping down bogies? Would you question what I am saying and look for evidence? If you were to do the former you would be thought of as simple. How is it any different to accepting that homeopathy is efficacious? Do you know what homeopathy is?

I will answer this briefly; homeopathy is when you take an actual proven active ingredient for a purpose like treating hay fever and then dilute it down until there is absolutely none of the active ingredient detectable in the final product. You are then expected to believe that the water will have a memory of the active ingredient and you will be healed.

As I find time to write some more blogs I will write thorough explanations of some of the more popular alternative medicines (and try to be as objective as possible). I believe most people who use alternative medicines have just accepted that they work and have never looked into what they claim or what they actually are. Hopefully some people will read these; change their opinion of at least some alternative medicines and hopefully take a more science-based approach to more things in their lives.