Some cheesy medical show on the television recently had a segment on an interesting old technique: cupping. This is a procedure related to bleeding, in which suction is used to draw blood to the surface. It’s absolutely useless, an artifact of old, discarded theories about humors, and it’s not something I ever thought I’d see practiced.
A modern twist on an ancient procedure promises big results in the treatment of pain. Tracy, 36, suffers from chronic back pain and writes The Doctors for help.
Acupuncturist Dr. Michael Yang performs a cupping procedure on Tracy, which, he explains, works on the same principles as a deep massage or physical therapy. The placement of heated glass cups on a person’s bare back serves to separate connective tissue, muscle and fascia, which subsequently increases circulation and decreases inflammation.
Chinese medicine purports that cupping moves “stagnant blood,” or stuck chi, or energy, as well as detoxifies the blood. “It’s been around for thousands of years,” Dr. Yang notes. “It’s really a tried and true therapy.”
Our acupuncturist throws around a lot of jargon, but it’s all a put-on, and he’s a quack. His therapy certainly has been tried, tried for a long, long time with no therapeutic effect (other than, perhaps, the placebo effect). Lots of things have been around for a long time, but that doesn’t make them correct. What’s he going to do next, sacrifice a goat, do a magic dance around the patient, and make her drink a potion made from mouse dung and boiled roots? People did that kind of thing for thousands of years, too.
It would probably make for good TV.
That was one of the techniques they used in the excellent film “The Madness of King George”. Looked quite painful, as well as useless.
Quack, Quack, Quack. As much science in those three words as there is in cupping. Good old Placebo. Worlds best drug. All that is required is a belief you will get better. Take as directed. Your results may vary.
James Randi spends an inordinate amount of time debunking these type of charlatans. They are legion.
Enjoy.
Cupping looks painful–those bruises look nasty–
That doctor’s not right in the head;
If I want to do something to mess up my back
I’d much prefer spooning instead.
Useless? Yes, but you’re forgetting that usefullness means nothing in the face of fashion, and in the end that’s what a lot of these treatments are about.
You know, if you add a little bourbon to your mouse dung and boiled roots, it’s much more drinkable.
Yeah, the placebo effect seems immoral since it involves deceiving the patient.
Here’s what cupping looks like courtesy of “The fearless Vampire Killers” (first minute of the clip)
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=KJWb1w6jyck&feature=related
Huh? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I suspect that anybody with “stagnant blood” is probably already lying in the morgue.
I once had my chi stuck.
Very painful.
Wet cupping returns some results and claims of efficacy on medline:
http://search.medscape.com/medline-search?queryText=wet%20cupping
“separate connective tissue, muscle and fascia” is what I do to beef brisket and baby back ribs in my barbecue pit/smoker. mmm…barbecue…glaaagh (attempt to spell Homer’s food noise).
I wonder what Orac has to say about this…
Heated cups???
Sounds to me like you could get the same effect with a good heating pad.
Cupping is not placebo and had a great effects, its practice was older than 2500 year, were all people who treated by cupping wrong?, Many researches and master thesis supported the effectiveness but cupping need more research trials in a wide basis to support or reject its effectiveness in many diseases, and finally the practice of cupping is common beside acupuncture and regulated in USA,Uk and many other countries.
Uh, increased blood flow is a component of inflammation, not a solution to it. That’s why inflamed tissue gets red and swells.
melted connective tissue gglaharhrhagrhhh
/homer
robotahoic actually, the placebo effect can sometimes work even when the subject is aware that it is a placebo. It all comes down to how the doctor presents it to the subject. E.g. if the doctor says something along the lines of “we don’t know how or why this works but it appears to for some people so it might be worth a try”, then often there can be a positive result.
Were all those people who thought sickness was brought on by sin wrong?
I mean it goes back ages…
Oh, that’s no problem, I “promise big results” to my boss all the time ;)
Er. Ahem. I tried acupuncture once for an annoying twitching muscle in my arm/shoulder that had lasted over a month and the treatment actually worked. Gone after 20 minutes of me lying there with needles. (It was recommended I try it by a massage therapist). I was not seeking to cure cancer, though. Massage, heating pads, slow motion exercise and stretching didn’t work. Please don’t think I’m nuts, but I think some of these things need to be investigated by legitimate science before we completely toss them out the window.
Btw, the German word for this procedure, “Schröpfen”, is also used as the equivalent of “to fleece someone” (as in, getting lots of money from someone). Seems fitting.
You think they haven’t been?
Go do a search on Orac’s blog for acupuncture.
@15
Bleeding is not placebo and had a great effects…
Trepanning is not placebo and had..
If English is not your first language I apologize for making fun of your syntax. The other stuff, though, is fair game.
Links?
I agree that ‘cupping’ is complete bumfuggery. However, there is a practice of ‘blood-letting’ that IS used that utilizes ‘medical leeches’ as a mechanical and chemical aid to blood circulation in the area of re-constructive surgery. Wikipedia has a good article on it.
I have heard it said that George Washington was killed by blood letting (via cupping) and Calomel that dehydrated him and removed five pints of blood by his doctor when treating him for pneumonia.
-DU-
Well, hey – don’t disrespect bleeding a patient as a cure, PZ! I just spent an afternoon with a hematologist who diagnosed me with hemochromatosis. He also explained that this particular disease o’ mine results from a genetic mutation that evolved to make some people resistant to tuberculosis and that treatment of this disease is simply donating blood a few times a year.
In other words, I’d be a superhero in the 17th century – resistant to consumption and responsive to bleeding as treatment to relieve my severe fatigue and joint pain. Heh.
(And, yes. I realize this isn’t exactly the point being made here regarding cupping. I’m with y’all that it sounds like rather a lot of buffoonery.)
#15:
Oh, well then it must be legitimate.
itwasntme, actually research has been done on acupuncture and what was found in the last two properly run trials was that ‘proper’ acupuncture worked no better than fake acupuncture, i.e. it was purely a placebo effect.
Ugh. PZ, Is this that Dr. Phil spin off show ‘The Doctors’ you’re talking about here? It’s horribly cheesy, agreed, and they all display features of ridiculous quackery. I swear the only reason I know of this show is because I happened upon it and got sucked in by its awfulness, and wanted to see how bad it could get. Shows such as these that employ a horribly communicative ER doctor as host and ‘expert on all subjects’, just because he’s got a hot bod and a cute face, that serve to misinform the public should at least come with a very heavy disclaimer.
Chinese herbalism doesn’t use mouse dung: the dung of flying squirrel, and silkworms are used, as is bat guano, though. Also, do remember that thousands of roots in Chinese medicine do provide noticeable effects and benefits (ginseng, anyone?).
With certain exceptions, the Chinese believed that sickness was brought on by an imbalance of bodily energies due to either “external pathogens” or too much emotions, NOT sin. Chinese Traditional Medicine practioners stopped believing that disease was the result of angry gods and malicious spirits over 2500 years ago.
And that is why cupping is not used for inflammation: cupping is used for promoting blood circulation (“blood stagnation” is a Chinese medical term that sometimes refers to poor circulation, which is thought to be one factor that causes pain)
@15
Ah, more ‘alternative medicine’. It doesn’t work. Any alternative medication that has been proven to work is known as ‘medicine’, and is being used by real doctors. The quacks that use this on their patients are frauds, just like faith-healers.
Cupping and acupuncture should be shoved in the same pile as homeopathy and prayer. Pity there are plent gullible people who buy this shit.
Ooops, missed a period on my ellipsis…
On further reflection I have to recant my attack on bloodletting, as it led to the use of leeches which (who?) have been shown to have anti-coagulant compounds in their spit.
Just read an article two days ago that acupuncture is nothing more than a placebo. Who would’a thunk it.
Well, Dr. Tamer, you’re in the right place! Please, tell us by what mechanism cupping affects any disease.
We all understand how cupping is performed, so we don’t need an explanation of that. We also know that there is no evidence for auras, qi, humours, bio-energy, ley lines, etc., so your explanation can’t include any of that bollocks. It has all be well discredited.
So, by what verified mechanism(s) does cupping affect diseases? What diseases is it effective against?
I wasn’t talking about the Chinese.
I can’t agree with those who claim these quack treatments are useless . . . they restore the “$ to brains” ratio in those with too much money for their brains.
Useless? Oh, it’s nothing of the sort. It earns their practitioners wads of money for nearly no real work. It’s surely very useful to them!
I can hardly wait or the return of blood letting to cure disease and drowning to determine demonic possession.
Stanton with the exception of some of the herbs used, which do have active ingredients, most so called Traditional Chinese Medicine is largely a con strongly promoted by Mao in the early days of his China in lieu of the fact that there was no working health service and this at least had the appearance of doing something.
31 has a good point-not all Chinese medicine is bunk. 5000 years of practice has weeded out a lot of non-working “cures”. Back in my dinosaur-hunter days I tried to sell some bone fragments to the local practitioners and was told they don’t use them any more because they learned that “dragon bone powder” was just crushed fossils. I still think most of the “theory” is hogwash, but a few thousand years worth of trial and error has to have some practical results.
Yes ginseng, a “traditional” medicine whose efficacy is not really nailed down but it sure gets a lot of press.
And even if it was a great medicine that means exactly bupkiss on the validity of cupping or acupuncture or other Chinese herbal treatments.
“It’s been used for centuries” is one of those logical fallacy things. Geocentrism was around for a long time too.
i just finished a long-term stay in china and i was frustrated by how many expats actually went to get ‘cupping’ done, afterwards raving at how much good it does.
aaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrggghhh
You’re just not going to the right parties, then. I know of some fetishy types that swear by it.
…granted, they’re after blood flow to a different area entirely…
David @ 26:
This isn’t really bloodletting, though. As KI points out above, it’s used to get the anticoagulant effect from the leeches to keep the blood flowing, not to remove an excess.
I don’t disagree one bit. But those practical results should be easily seen through trials.
Re my acupuncture: the reasons given by the practitioner that it works are pure bunk, I can confirm that. (I asked to read his “doctoral” thesis, and he let me have a copy. Pure crap). And, per suggestion, I will investigate its legitimacy further. I’m not really the suggestible type, although I fully admit to being human, so placebo effect is possible.
The Woo is strong with this Dr. Yang ;)
I suppose that it might make you feel good in the way that a hot pack or a hot bath might.
When it comes to pain relief whatever works works I say.
I can see how it might give some temporary relief, by distracting you from the pain. But wouldn’t a soak in a hot tub or stubbing your toe do the same thing?
Cupping, however, can be used to great effect on Japanese game shows, torturing contestants.
How right! Traditional, archaic “medical” techniques like the use of leeches have no place in modern medicine!
Oh, wait…
I have no interest in that sort of thing myself, and the “theories” proffered by its practitioners are surely nonsense. But acupuncture does seem to help some people, and maybe cupping would too. Probably nothing more than placebo effect; but sometimes placebos work.
And they don’t even have to be administered to the patient. Physician I know did a practicum, during her med school days, with a paediatrician. Parents constantly brought in kids with fevers, earaches, what have you. When there was no clear indication for an antibiotic or some other real drug, he’d often have the parents give the kids a course of homoeopathic stuff (which is, I should note, more popular and marginally less disreputable here than in the US).
“But isn’t that stuff all nonsense?” asked the med student. “As therapy for the kid, almost certainly”, answered the doc. “But as therapy for the parents, it’s excellent. Lots of problems of this sort are best left for the kid’s immune system to clear up on its own — just takes a few days. In the mean time, the stuff does the kids no harm, and the parents think they’re ‘doing something’. If I didn’t give it to them, they’d just go to some other doctor who’d stuff the kid full of unnecessary antibiotics.”
Deception? Of a sort, yes. But I can’t say it strikes me as an entirely unmixed curse.
itwasntme there is nothing wrong with the placebo effect as such for it is surprisingly powerful considering. There is a researcher (sorry can’t remember his name and don’t have the article to hand) who has researched and written widely on the placebo effect and it even works on him when he has self administered a placebo and knows better than anybody how it, theoretically at least, shouldn’t work.
I could be wrong but I think there are some possible (yet not yet totally supported by trials) benefits to increased blood flow at acupuncture sites that may have some efficacy in pain relief. But again the traditional explanations of chi and qi and whatever are totally unsupported.
Itwasntme, there are some indications acupuncture can release endorphins, which is the body’s painkillers. Whether this is due to the puncturing of the skin or the Placebo effect, it is hard to say. Proper studies have not shown accupuncture to effective (see John Phillips #29), but I don’t recall what they were tested against. Personally, I think the needles can increase the placebo effect if endorphins are release. They may have been in your case. It doesn’t work with everybody.
“However, there is a practice of ‘blood-letting’ that IS used that utilizes ‘medical leeches’ as a mechanical and chemical aid to blood circulation in the area of re-constructive surgery. Wikipedia has a good article on it.”
I can confirm that leeches are still used in medicine. However, they are used only under very specific circumstances, to treat hematomae and like conditions, and as you mentioned, to aid in regaining circulation after surgery.
I think it’s kind of cool that a quacky ancient treatment of “humors” has found a real, scientific use in modern medicine.
I only know this because I used to do coding and data entry for a huge trauma center’s ER, and we had a code for “leeches.” It was probably the awesomest code ever.
I was recently in a discussion with someone about homeopathy and asked how anyone could possibly believe that water has memory. The person asked what was I talking about. I explained that homeopathic medicines were in essence water because all traces of the original substance had been diluted down to nothing and that “water memory” was the explanation given by practitioners (read:quacks) and manufacturers (read: Altie Med Big Pharma). The person replied that water memory had to be Big Pharma propaganda and lies to discredit homeopathy. I explained that no, it is exactly what they say. Look it up. There is no conspiracy. I was given one of those superior smirks and the person then claimed that it had to be BS because homeopathic pills aren’t water! At this point I knew any rational discussion was hopeless. Woo believers are like any other magic worshipers. They do not hear reason because they cannot accept they are so woefully ignorant and revel in the trappings of ancient wisdoms and a return to the pure natural garden of perfection from whence we’ve strayed in our cold modern soulless existence.
Lighten up Francis.
The point is that if actual repeatable beneficial results can be shown by “traditional” medicine then they are … wait for it…
MEDICINE.
The problem is claiming results from “traditional medicine” that have not been subjected to trials to show the efficacy of the treatment or have been subjected to them and they’ve failed but continue to be pushed by the practitioners because they either don’t trust the medical community or they chose to ignore it.
For certain uses as an anticoagulant and infection inhibitor during surgery, leeches are considered mainstream medicine. It has nothing to with blood letting.
Witness the healing power of… the hickey!
Nerd Of Redhead one of the trials used proper acupuncture needles alongside a set if fake needles which felt like the real thing. To further confuse the issue, the proper acupuncture needles were used according to the so called ‘magic’ lines on the body while the fake needles were not. The effects of both were as close to identical as made no difference suggesting nothing more than placebo. I haven’t read up on the details of the second trial yet, only so many hours in a day :). However the result of that one also pointed to a placebo effect rather than anything else.
Maggots are also medicinally useful in some scenarios. They eat away dead or necrotic tissue, but not the healthy stuff, and so can be great for wound cleaning.
Doesn’t mean there aren’t about 11 billion situations you would NOT want those maggots anywhere near you.
Look, medical scientists WANT to find more useful treatments. The goal, after all, is to relieve human suffering, and the more ways to do that the better off we all are. So long as there’s a plausible mechanism and the effect holds up in studies, the medicine won’t stay ‘alternative’ very long.
Rev. BigDumbChimp @#60
What he said.
Bingo.
There is no such thing as alternative medicine.
There is medicine and there are old wives tales.
Wet cupping returns some results and claims of efficacy on medline:
[sound of crickets chirping]
Shhhhh! Don’t you know there’s an AMA member who won’t get a new pool if he can’t cut or drug something? For God’s sake, won’t someone think of the poor surgeons!
Seriously though, while some efficacy against carpal tunnel syndrome (and some other chronic pain syndromes) has been shown these were not full up tests and lacked a placebo group. Which means, despite the hyper-conservative bitching and moaning of the people here, that it should be further tested while still viewed with skepticism.
I love the “if it works it’s called..” line. Also, does water have a memory of when it was urine? (Someone asked this question here before, I know). Oh no, bathroom humor in a respectable blog!
@John if it feels like the real thing, how could it be a placebo? The scientific explanation for the acupunture affects are usually regarding their release of endorphins from the pain of the prick. How it feels is probably the only thing that matters.
“Witness the healing power of… the hickey!”
I once dated a girl in high school who was obsessed with hickeys, both giving and receiving. My guess is she now into tattoos, body piercing and S&M.
I guess it depends on the placement of the hickey…
um
too much?
What did you have it stuck in?
It annoys me that he claims cupping detoxifies the blood. Why do so few people know what kidneys do?
I’m waiting for the “Masturbation Causes Blindness” segment on that show. It’s got to be coming soon (bad pun).
Ian the real set of needles penetrated the skin, the fake ones didn’t, just felt like they did. Plus, as I said, the real ones were used at so called acupuncture ‘sites’ while the fake ones weren’t. The results were the same in both cases and no better than one would expect with a placebo effect.
Is this guy a M.D. or a O.M.D. (doctor of Oriental medicine)? Letting people who are trained in oriental medicine call themselves doctor is very misleading, if not out and out fraud.
@itwasntme: Pain management specialists will sometimes do a procedure called “Trigger Point” injections, which involves injection of saline into a painful area. Some doctors will also do “dry trigger point” injections. I don’t recall the medical rationale (it’s been a few years since I did pain management review), but for some reason, inserting a needle into an irritable muscle helps with the pain and will calm the muscle. This is an accepted medical practice. But, unlike acupunture, it involves inserting the needle into the painful area, rather than along a chi line (or whatever they are called).
@Ian
But the practitioners of acupuncture aren’t claiming it’s just the endorphin rush from being poked with pointy things. They’re claiming that poking at SPECIFIC points is, by mechanisms either woo-woo or unknown, effective at healing specific things.
Poking at random points is certainly a control placebo for poking at the specific points.
my élan vital
I also have hemochromatosis! But I have to go and get bled a pint every single week, not just a few times a year! Lucky…
@Richard Smith
Witness the healing power of… the hickey!
Right on, brother!
Cupping is useful! It lets the world know you got some last night…
***snif*** Of course, I haven’t seen that kind of evidence involving myself in years, but I do have this on good authority…
Sigh….I am hesitant to dip my toe in these waters but here’s the argument that you all seem to be neglecting.
Medical Doctors, be they “traditional” or “alternative” are not scientists in the strictest of terms. They utilize science certainly but their job is TREATING PATIENTS. In the case of the individual cited above, the treatment advised by Dr. Yang (I do not know if he is an MD or what) could be effective for her.
Whether the effectiveness is based solely on the Placebo Effect or if there are other advantages as well that have to do with monkeying around with the local circulatory system and perhaps some similiar benefits to massage, if the patient benefits than it doesn’t flipping matter why. Re-read that and recognize that a Practicing Physicians job is different from a research scientist. After all, their are people who swear by bee stings to treat chronic arthritis pain and while I acknowledge that their does seem to be some pharmacological effect from bee venom, the patients positively respond to the treatment. I’ll stick with Ibuprofen and exercise to keep my muscles happy but I don’t begrudge the “Sting junkies”
I believe the summary argument goes something like “Results people, results”
Now, is chi, qi, etc. in the province of the wackaloonery? Certainly appears to be. That however is not the argument that most of you are making. Moreover, Dr. Yang’s advise to Tracy was made from a therapeutic as opposed to scientific viewpoint. Does that mean we should simply ignore the underlying mechanisms that seem to give people relief? Well, no, but I don’t see where “The Doctors” stated that.
Way to stir the pot Professor ;)
John Phillips, I recall reading a summary of the experiment, and maybe even of the second one, in Skeptical Inquirer. But that was a while back, and my memory, while good, isn’t perfect. I will take your word for the details of it. I do recall that it wasn’t more effective than Placebo. I would not use acupuncture myself or recommend it to anyone.
I have seen repeated reports of acupuncture increasing endorphin activity, which is also seen with the Placebo effect. Separating the Placebo effect from the puncture itself is difficult. And if the Placebo effect is already taking place, the punctures may enhance it, which is all I was trying to say to Itwasntme. Sorry if I was sounding like a woomeister.
Arghhhh!!!!!
Cupping is nothing other than vitalism/magic. That it should get anything other than scorn from doctors is execrable.
Stupid wordpress. My apologies to those of you who actually got around to making the same argument whilst Firefox and I had duel. Carry on ;)
A quick search on pub med lead me to these papers, “Cupping therapy-induced iron deficiency anemia in a healthy man” “Acquired hemophilia A associated with therapeutic cupping”. Sure they’re anecdotal, but anecdotes are all the purveyors of woo have.
Bah. If you want hickies, just date a teenage.
@#67, If there is no good research, then “doctors” shouldn’t go around telling people it works. It’s irresponsible. Also, I’m sick and tired of people saying the AMA is keeping alternative medicine down… the AMA sucks, but it’s the reality-based education of good physicians and scientists combined with the fact that none of it works that is keeping fake medicine down.
Now that you’ve said it PZ, the goat thing will probably happen. ;p
“Acupuncturist Dr. Michael Yang”
Well there’s your problem. Somebody got confused and gave a quack an actual degree.
Maytagman
If the patient benefits it should be able to show the mechanism for it. If it can be shown then tah dah! You have an actual treatment.
It’s the claims of treatments without any backing by trials or in spite of them that is the problem.
If a treatment or a medicine has demonstratable efficacy then you should be able to show and reproduce it via trials. At that point you are practicing medicine.
If you can’t reproduce it or refuse to test it properly then you are at best practicing old wives tales that may or may not work. At worst… well.
Nerd Of Redhead I didn’t think you came across as woomeister :) I just thought I would add a FYI to my previous post. As I said in a previous post to itwasntme, however it works, the placebo effect can be remarkably powerful and can even work when the patient is aware that it is a placebo as long as it is presented in the right manner.
I tried acupuncture once for an annoying twitching muscle in my arm/shoulder that had lasted over a month and the treatment actually worked.
You should have tried a shot of Jack Daniels’… It’s cheaper and it works just as well. (Alcohol makes a great placebo! Especially the foul-tasting stuff like Unicum or Laphroiag)
@#82, I see your point, but it’s irresponsible of someone calling themselves “doctor” telling people that it works and making a story up about how it works. If cupping is the right placebo for their pain, they can go to their local fake medicine store and get a treatment, but it shouldn’t be called medicine and it shouldn’t be provided at a doctors office. If you think that’s ok, then there’s nothing keeping doctors from using prayer, astrology, etc. to “treat” their patients.
Some traditional remedies DO deserve a little more looking at. I have personally had good success with some of the things most of you would pass off as quackery.
I came down with a UTI after a kidney stone once: went to the doctors, went on vacation, forgot my pills. Let me tell you the burning sucked. All the women I knew were telling me to drink cranberry juice. I tried it. Less than three days later I was symptom free.
Two different times I went to a chiropractor, once when I threw out my back and once when I threw out my neck. The muscle relaxers didn’t do crap except make me groggy (though it felt good washed down with a beer). The visit to the chiropractor freed up both my neck and my back after the first visit. I will say though, when i chiropractor says he can cure my rhinitis with thrice weekly visits for the rest of my life, I think they’re full of shit.
St. John’s Wort I have used for SAD. I got good results. I am totally willing to admit placebo on this one, though, and I don’t care. It worked for me.
Then there is the issue of red yeast rice. Strains have been shown to have a naturally occurring statin: lovastatin. http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/red-yeast-rice/NS_patient-redyeast
What pisses me off about the red yest rice is that the FDA has banned it, forcing producers to create strains that don;t produce the lovastatin at the behest of the pharmaceutical companies.
I am just curious what other “folk remedies” might have some benefit that are either being ignored in studies or (and I hate to sound like a conspiracy theorist) suppressed by the pharmaceuticals. I do agree that all these things need to be tested for efficacy before they are considered medicine, but to what degree are people dismissing it out of hand before the study even gets going?
As the placebo effect can make a person think they are getting better, can’t a closed mind also effect the way a study is performed and therefore the results of the study?
Back on topic,
I can;t actually see any benefit to a hickey.
seriously, to get any effect how MUCH blood would you need to displace?
@Rev.BigDumbChimp#60
Actually, I think YOU need to lighten up, since I agree with you wholeheartedly.
My point is that these things should be investigated – if cupping appears to relieve suffering from migraines or low back pain, then it is worth investigation to see if it can be applied, as you put it, as MEDICINE.
I was offended by PZ’s claim that cupping is “absolutely useless, an artifact of old, discarded theories about humors…” Similar things were said about leeches a decade or two ago, and now their use is accepted medical practice.
Have proper trials been done so that PZ can claim cupping is “absolutely useless”? It doesn’t appear so… and we should hold off completely discarding an idea until it has been tested, even if to show that it is merely a placebo. It seems you’d be in agreement with me, Rev.
Also, cupping is a direct intervention with the human body, unlike PZ’s false analogies of goat-sacrifice and chanting. Biological hypotheses can be made based on effects of cupping on the human body, and then tested.
(On quick glance, I see three pubmed entries claiming positive medical changes based on “wet cupping”, all from the same lab. I remain skeptical.)
The Petey.
If the benefits of the things you list above can be shown to have actual effect, then there’s no problem.
And just because it isn’t a drug made by a pharmaceutical company doesn’t mean doctors, medicine or science don’t know about them or use them.
I’m willing to bet (but have no actual knowledge of this mind you) that the reason the FDA wants lovastatin produced instead recommending red yeast is that it can be done under strict guidelines that provide consistent results in strength and safety.
I think some homeopathic remedies are proven.
Our pediatrician has us put Mullen Oil in my sons ears of he’s had a cold for a while and looks like he might get an ear infection.
@#95, cranberry juice and St. John’s wort have been studied and their mechanisms of are (somewhat) known (though St. John’s wort interacts with lots of other medicines and can be potentially dangerous). So, while they may not work as well as real medicine, it may have a little effect (of course, your UTI could also go away on its own in 3 days)… but you can’t say the same about the vast, vast majority of alternative treatments. As for your last sentence, I don’t exactly understand it. Sure, you could be biased in your study design and interpretation, but a reader (or reviewer) should able to easily pick it up.
Have you ever seen Stripes? That line was more a joke. Sorry if it offended.
I do but I think the default position should be to be skeptical of something working rather than accepting of it before any trials have been conducted.
I’m confused, do I do the cupping before or after my dried gall bladder of snow leopard tea, and does it mean I don’t need to eat the beating panda hearts anymore? And does it work for my yang as the powder tiger penises?
The Petey, there is NO ban on red yeast. There is no ban on producing strains that produce lovastatin.
There is, however a ban on advertising it as a treatment or cure.
Closed minds have no effect on a double blind study.
2 more comments, then I’m gone:
1) People have to stop bringing anecdotal evidence. It’s meaningless.
2) The burden of proof is on the proponents of the treatment. You can’t tell us that we can’t badmouth a treatment because there’s no evidence that it doesn’t work. You need to find reliable evidence that it does work before staring a debate with those who don’t support it.
Mu LOL
At the risk of sounding like a broken record…(too late?)
If an “alternative” or “Ancient Chinese secret” or “natural” remedy can be shown to have actual benefits then it no longer is alternative. No one (I hope) would argue that just because it comes from traditional medicine that it should be ignored.
It’s the attitude that some hold that because it is a traditional or natural or chinese or [pick a claim here] treatment that it should be given more lee way than every other proven or supported medical treatment that has been subjected to the rigor of trials and comes up showing repeatable and predictable results.
I’m curious why chiropractors are considered woo. I had some lower back problems, went to a guy who was recommended, and he took x-rays which determined that my pelvis was misaligned and my last disc (at the bottom of my spine) had degenerated. He adjusted my pelvis and gave me a series of exercises to strengthen my lower back muscles. He also saw a slight curve caused by years of pelvic misalignment and so gave me a lift to correct this, which eventually came back into line. I now see him every couple weeks to check on my progress, and get a back massage which is probably the most effective thing now that I’m better. I consider it preventative maintenance. He has never claimed to be able to cure anything other than to put things in their proper place. We discuss wholistic ideas, but I can’t see how nutrition or stress relief is antithetical to medical practice, or scientific methods. Do other chiros make specious claims or is there something I’m missing here?
thousands of roots in Chinese medicine do provide noticeable effects and benefits (ginseng, anyone?).
What non-placebo benefits are measurable from taking Ginseng?? Other, that is, than transferring money into the pockets of ginseng sellers?
DrBadger at #104, well said sir. Though if only :(
KI
Read this
The problem with red yeast is it very hard to control the amount of lovastatin per “dose” and lovastatin at high doses can be toxic.
Aspirin was a traditional medicine, but im going to take the extracted aspirin, not chew on some bark.
Do you really want to get medical advice from the “dude” at the health supplement store who thinks you should “totally rip your quads”?
I’ve seen Stripes; not recently enough.
Plus, my brain translated “Francis” to “Francine”.
Agreed: skepticism should be the default position. However, I think it is unfortunate that many traditional medical techniques are discarded out of hand because of the layers of woo icing that have been schmeared on them over the years.
Whenever I see another scientist use words like “never” or “always” or “absolutely useless”, my SIWOTI syndrome kicks in…
“I’m curious why chiropractors are considered woo.”
“I now see him every couple weeks”
One of the cornerstones of chiro is that all manner of ills such as asthma and diabetes can be treated with spinal adjustments.
fascia = connective tissue. Dr. my ass.
I saw Anthony Quin do this to a fat lady in a movie when I was very young. The cups weren’t heated per se, They were flamed to create a partial vacuum.
Cupping: snort!
Chiropractic: Bunk with a side order of massage.
Herbs: Lots of molecules made by plants and animals have the potential to be drugs, and many are used commonly now. There is a big difference though between taking an aspirin and boiling up some willow bark tea, namely you can give yourself an accurate dose, containing only the molecule you are interested in ingesting. Even if you know an herb to contain a desirable compound, there is no good way to be certain of the concentration, or even the bioavailability.
KI actually yes, at least in the UK anyway. For while there are ethical chiros like yours, who are effectively very good physios there are others who are just woomeisters. Conning people that everything wrong with them, even when there is nothing at all wrong with them, is down to something wrong with subfluxions in their spine. These type of woo chiros have even caused the deaths of people by over manipulation of their necks and the like. IIRC there was quite a notorious case in Canada not so long ago and I believe there have also been similar cases in the UK leading to prosecution.
More fun on Chiropractors (yes it is a blog post so verify if you are skeptical of it)
Crap, I missed this.
Too much woo, too little time. I just can’t keep up with it all anymore. (Actually, I never could; there was always too much woo, too little time.)
In any case, this is even worse than the time The Doctors featured antivaccine apologist Dr. Jay Gordon. Ugh.
I’d be perfectly happy to admit that it was placebo, but I had something similar done to me in physical therapy. My physical therapist used a plunger as a means of massaging my quad. I haven’t looked, but I have been told that there is somewhat good evidence that massage is effective in preventing injury in athletes.
It felt good. I don’t know if it cured me. PT’s are pretty good at admitting that they just try stuff until you feel better.
Hmm. I’m not sure I’m with you there, PZ – the mindless babbling about chis and psis and phis and whatever else have you is idiotic, of course, and the idea that cupping actually has any medical effect or use is also pretty far-fetched (I don’t know whether it’s actually been studied, and I don’t want to dismiss it entirely and a priori, but I’m skeptical, to say the very least); but on the other hand, chronic pain can be a real bitch, and if this is put by people on the same level as massages and the like, that’s OK with me.
I mean… massages *are* nice, and it’s only quackery when you ascribe effects to them that they don’t have, right? In other words, “this massage will heat your kidney disease” is rubbish (and dangerous rubbish), but “this massage will relieve your back pain” may not be. Cupping may be similar (although I doubt it would *actually* have any beneficial effect the way a massage does: it sounds rather unpleasant and not at all relieving.)
Also, I’m sick and tired of people saying the AMA is keeping alternative medicine down…
YES! Thank you. When some altie says that big pharma has been keeping altie medicine down you can simply respond, “What? You just told me that it had 5,000 years to prove its effectiveness in China, didn’t you?”
If accupuncture worked (according to its own “theories”) a practitioner could use deliberate ch’i blocking to get you stoned, dead, or stupid. After all – if it can cure things, it ought to be able to break them in equally creative ways. If it worked, people would have been using it for 5,000 as a tool for assassination, sexual seduction, getting wasted, etc. Why are there no “overdoses” on accupuncture (other than the patient going broke from paying too much to the accupuncturist)? The reason there aren’t is pretty clear, if you think about it for a second.
My dumb ex-wife used to take a homeopathic sleep aid and was horrified when I, just for fun, gackked down 50 times the official dose. She was equally horrified when, 45 minutes later, I suggested she try taking 50 ambiens if she still wanted to see the difference between actual science-based medicine and faith healing.
If the only observable effect of a treatment is to transfer wealth from the patient to the practitioner, it’s either religion or woo.
I know it’s nonsense, but people really believe it.
I saw this video before where there was 2 girls and only one cup, and it got pretty ugly.
Ummm… It makes me feel vaguely creepy to be (as far as I can see) the first to mention this, but isn’t cupping a form of BDSM play?
Who knew anyone took it seriously as medicinal? ;^)
BTW, Rev. BDC, thanks for reminding me of Stripes. I’ve never looked at a spatula in quite the same way since I saw that, and motorhomes make me nervous (“What we have here is one heavily armed recreational vehicle!”).
Pointless Anecdote Syndrome strikes again!
110,113,116
Thanks for the education. I had no idea I got so lucky to find someone who limits their practice to what they can affect. He fixed my pelvis, and as I said, I go for the massage now, just because it feels good. The exercises keep me in good health. The rest of these claims-yow what hooey! Now I get it, thanks again.
If you want the ‘benefit’ of placebo, then take REAL medicine. That way you get the benefit of the placebo & the medicine both. But don’t just take homeopathic pills with no medicinal content. That would be retarded. And yes placebo by definition involves deception. Otherwise you wouldn’t be deceived and instead you’d be eating sugar. (unless of course you have hypoglycemia)
The Petey, St. Johns wort has been found to have better than placebo effect against mild (but not severe) depression, and SAD. The active ingredient is thought to be hypericin. Hypericin is an extreme photosensatizer, which may explain its SAD effects. With a sufficient amount in your system, which is very little actually, you can get sunburned by short (5-10 minute) exposures to direct sunlight, so nobody will sell purified versions of it.
Oh thanks. I was just starting to eat my lunch.
One more thing, my chiro won’t do any neck work without an MD doing a complete checkup first. I don’t know if this is because of the case in Canada, or he’s just conscientious.
“I think some homeopathic remedies are proven.”
No they are not.
homeopathy |ˌhōmēˈäpəθē| ( Brit. homoeopathy)
noun
the treatment of disease by minute doses of natural substances that in a healthy person would produce symptoms of disease.
Unfortunately “homeopathy” is becoming a more common generic term referring to any type of herb or naturally occurring medicinal substance. That is making it even more difficult to have a rational discussion about homeopathy because the uninformed assume it is an attack on all “natural” medicines and feeds the conspiracy paranoia.
Heh heh… I don’t know if anyone has already mentioned this yet, since I haven’t read through all the comments, but cupping sets are SEX TOYS!! Yes, sex toys sites sell them as bondage gear. You use them on nipples, buttocks, clitoris, and penis. I think the theory is that the blood flow increase to the cupped area enhances sexual arousal. Also, the bondage enthusiasts get off on the pain from the suction. You can find them in the bondage categories of many sex toys shoppes.
cupping. . . is that what they did to poor little Fredo in Godfather II?
Good point Mayhempix
Alternative Medicine! The Alternative to Medicine.
Obama ends funding ban for abortion groups abroad
“WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama on Friday will lift restrictions on U.S. government funding for groups that provide abortion services or counseling abroad, reversing a policy of his Republican predecessor George W. Bush, an administration official said.”
It so strange to hear executive orders being used for positive results instead of suppressing factual information and tossing political red meat.
From Quackcast, I had heard there have been cases where people have gotten severe infections and even died (from various methods) because of acupuncture. Since some accupuncturists don’t believe that diseases can be caused by bacteria, they don’t sterilize properly. Sort of like the lower-quality tattoo parlors. I think there are posts online with further links, so I’m sure someone can find them if they want to spend the time.
Francine DuBois writes:
Have proper trials been done so that PZ can claim cupping is “absolutely useless”? It doesn’t appear so… and we should hold off completely discarding an idea until it has been tested, even if to show that it is merely a placebo
Um. Fail.
By that logic, we should expend time and money trying every possible thing, because – after all – we might be overlooking the medicinal effects of wearing rolled-up playing cards in our ears, or our underwear on our head.
If there is any indication something is medically effective, then there (might)(ought to be) some theory of action that will or won’t justify further experiment. An earlier poster described the cranberry/UTI “cure” – the theory of action for that cure is that it makes the urine more acidic and less hospitable to bacteria. That theory would be fairly easy to test.
The problem with a lot of these old-woo practices is that their theory of operation is not only wrong but in some places contradicts the rest of reality, including aspects of reality that have been observed experimentally. Given that, a scientist is justified in discarding them without further experiment. Homeopathy is a great example: for it to work, a lot of physics would have to be wrong, including stuff that works well enough that we’ve built a high-tech civilization on top of it. Ch’i, if it existed, would have been found by now, or we’d have a predictable and testable theory of its operation.
When the process of vulcanizing rubber by adding sulphur to it was discovered, it was an accident and the mechanism by which it worked was initially unclear. But – here’s the important part – it worked measurably and predictably. Scientists (unlike what woo-peddlers seem to think) can accept things that work predictably before they’ve come up with an explanatory theory. After all, people used gravitation “a whole lot” before Newton explained it. The chinese doctors have had (as woomeisters like to point out) thousands of years to come up with an explanatory theory for accupuncture and the best they have come up with is something that flat-out contradicts what we now know of the body. They fail.
I think it’s James Randi who says it:
We have to be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains fall out.
All homeopathic remedies that are just high dilutions with water are simply dihydrogen monoxide. And have no effect other than Placebo.
I prefer my dihydrogen monoxide with a little sugar, fruit juice, and distilled alcohol of choice.
Nerd of Redhead,
that makes sense. Since I’ve moved to Texas my SAD has pretty much disappeared. There is a difference in the amount of light from NJ to TX in the winter. Also I can spend more time outside here before I get frostbite.
I can also see your points about controlled dosages. I will incorporate that into the way I look at things. I keep forgetting that while some may be able to self regulate and evaluate what is going on with some things and keep in mind the possible adverse effects what what they take, many people don’t. Like guarana, where if three pills did A that 12 pills must do 4*A; instead of over stimulating you into a heart attack.
In the case of chronic pain, the line between relief from pain and the experience of pain is a really fuzzy one. For example, I haven’t been to the dentist in ages, and I’m fairly sure I have a cavity or two, because one day in every one or two months, my tooth hurts in just that way. As the day proceeds, the pain subsides. Within eight hours, the pain is gone. My nervous system has become accustomed to it. I know it’s still a problem because whenever I eat any very sticky food that pulls or even contacts the sensitive tissue for a prolonged period of time, it hurts like hell. But I feel no pain habitually.
Now suppose I went on painkillers for some extended period of time (some clinician can help me here, I’m guessing a month?) and then came off of them (that is to say, started taking placebo pills). Would my aching teeth start flaring up again, and then subside? I don’t know the answer to this, but my guess is probably yes. I’ve never tried this, admittedly, but I’d be willing to if someone could dispense me the appropriate placebos and mix them up without my knowledge.
I’ve tried to provide evidence for how it is possible for identical physiological states on the level of the affected tissue to cause different experiences of pain because said experience is modulated by the brain. My hypothesis is that acupuncture as a method of pain management probably involves manipulating this effect. That would explain why it doesn’t matter where the needles are stuck, just that they’re stuck somewhere.
Assuming you could normalize the experience of pain to a default state by administering painkillers, you could test this hypothesis. Administer painkillers to two populations over a sufficient amount of time to “zero” their pain experience. During this period, you begin acupuncture, both fake and real. At some point, discontinue some of the treatments. You end up with a bunch of groups:
Variable 1: painkillers discontinued/replaced with placebo/continued throughout expt.
Variable 2: fake/real acupuncture administered
Variable 3: “acupuncture” discontinued/continued throught expt.
The discrepancies in the experience of pain between these two groups would show the effectiveness of acupuncture administration to induce a placebo effect while controlling for the placebo effect of painkillers.
Incidentally, there is an attitude in Western medicine that dismisses any placebo effect. I understand how it got that way: pharmaceutically speaking, that’s a sound policy when it comes to the evaluation of chemicals. But when it comes to the practice of medicine, the most important metrics are patient recovery and the quality of post-treatment QoL, upon which the placebo effect is very real and very exploitable.
I feel safe in saying that most traditional medicine lies in a combination of nutrition and the technique of successfully inducing a placebo effect. My SO and I have a saying that Chinese medicine is 50% chicken soup (nutrition in an era when meat was scarce), 40% bullshit, and 10% herbs that actually do things (tienchi root powder, for example, was historically graded on its ability to dissolve a pork blood sausage when sprinkled on top).
To say that qi is the physiological basis of acupuncture’s effectiveness is probably charlatanry.
To say that acupuncture can be an effective method for managing chronic pain might not be.
Morgan @ #46
That is sort of true… yet:
While it is not the removal of blood by the leaches that helps in the healing of a wound or a surgical procedure it is the anti-coagulant effect of the leaches saliva(?) that keeps the blood flowing in that small region. This effect keeps the blood flowing (and bleeding) in the area of application AND relieves the pooling of venous blood in the area. Please read the article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirudotherapy#Today
I am not trying to conflate (or inflate) this use of promoting bleeding in a small area of a patient in order for the wound (such as re-attachment of an ear-lobe or digit) to heal more rapidly and completely with ‘bleeding the patient’ in order to remove ‘humors’ (or some other woo.)
-DU-
yeah Kalirren cuz if my arm hurts, im going to PAY someone to stick fucking needles in it. That’s really smart.
Countess (@132):
I don’t know about great minds, but clearly dirty minds think alike! ;^)
I’m curious why chiropractors are considered woo.
Because chiropractic is based on a theory of operation that has no connection to observed reality.
For example, chiropractors can’t even explain a “subluxation” consistently, can’t explain how to reliably measure one, and can’t even agree what one is or how it affects the body. Variously, “subluxation” is defined as “a structural displacement” or “dislocation” – yet – amazingly, chiropractors can feel them through flesh but they don’t show up on X-rays. So, either the chiropractor is correct, or the X-ray machine is.
Subluxation = Ch’i = soul = random words for unobserved unmeasurable imaginary bullshit.
@Nerd #139
See my post @#59 if you haven’t already read it.
To some degree or another, all of the modalities which fall under the umbrella term “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) are undergoing a Weberian rationalization, partly in response to external pressures from patients, health-care providers, and third-party reimbursers, and partly from within the professions themselves, as they seek evidence for their efficacy. For example, one of my service commitments is to a research and educational foundation which is seeking to integrate the evidence for and against massage into a set of open-access best-practices guidelines, for clinical and educational purposes, something which has not existed until now. Not only do patients, doctors, nurse practitioners, and so forth want that guidance; massage practitioners themselves are asking for it to provide guidance in practice, and access to the research evidence that is being carried out on massage.
All the CAM fields are feeling that pressure, to some degree, although some fields (massage, herbs, for example) find more grounding in the evidence than others (homeopathy, for example), and there is no denying that there is a lot of pushback as well against this pressure. So you will see debates in the literature such as the following (article available free here through PubMed Central).
So, it depends on which side of the debate a particular chiropractor lands on; the “woo” evaluations come from large part out of the overstated claims about subluxation in the past.
From a philosophical point of view, I would agree with you. But from the point of view of knowledge transfer and patient access via physician referral and insurance reimbursement, the process is nowhere near that instantaneous. So I am hesitant in saying that it is no longer “alternative”, when–for example, even though massage has been shown to be more effective for low back pain than certain conventional treatments [bibliography omitted, to try to avoid ScienceBlog’s spam filter]–a patient’s orthopedist doesn’t prescribe it, and the insurance won’t pay for it.
[1]Keating JC Jr, Charlton KH, Grod JP, Perle SM, Sikorski D, Winterstein JF. Subluxation: dogma or science? Chiropr Osteopat. 2005 Aug 10;13:17.
As for the cranberry “cure”. I don’t think I called it that. I said it worked for me. Whether it was a “cure” or not is up for debate and study. One proposed mechanism is the increased acidity. Another theory I’ve heard is that there are molecules that cling to the same sites the bacteria do, thus decreasing the surface area that the bacteria can grab on – similar to the zinc theory with common colds. I am not a doctor or a biologist so can’t pass judgment.
I prefer spooning.
“Incidentally, there is an attitude in Western medicine that dismisses any placebo effect”
Wrong: 50% of doctors perscribe placebos
The problem with accepting herbs is not the herbs themselves, its with the herbalists.
I doubt most herbalists know the pharmacology or contraindications for St. Johns Wort, or Red Yeast. I doubt most acupuncturists know when that nagging pain might be cancer.
Traditional/Oriental/Alternative Medicine is just a dangerous extension of anti-elitism and anti-intellectualism.
Hey folks, I have a post up about using CUPPING AS A SEX TOY!!! I was even kind enough to include instructions. :)
Check it out:
http://trishwilson.typepad.com/blog/2009/01/cupping-is-more-than-quack-medicine-its-a-sex-toy.html
I’ve never actually tried cupping myself, and I probably wouldn’t like it because I hate hickeys. but apparently there is pleasure in the pain. :D
On chiropractors, I will say that on other occasions where I have thrown my back out I have been able to yoga poses and stretches and had the same effects as when I went to see a chiropractor.
#143
You could say the same thing about massage, which I (and many others) find extraordinarily painful and uncomfortable. Yet for some reason, massage is accepted in Western medicine and acupuncture isn’t. The standard that separates these two is purely aesthetic, and may have to do with the relation of culturally-derived aesthetics to the inducibility of the placebo effect.
This doesn’t weaken my point at all – it highlights it.
Bill Dauphin @144:
I agree. Plus, us dirty minds have to stick together. :)
@The Countess
What’s your take on vacuum pumping for extreme swelling of vulvas?
to Marcus at #138:
Wow. You wasted a helluva lot of time and energy arguing against something I never claimed.
– I never claimed we should investigate any and all random ideas.
– I never claimed we should investigate without a hypothesis.
– I never supported woo like homeopathy or Chi.
Thus, YOU fail. Unless you think writing a treatise against wholly invented strawmen is a success?
The only claim I made is that PZ’s claim that cupping is “absolutely useless” is unscientific, and that we should not wholly discard untested ideas.
Also, when you claim that anti-scientific woo-theory regarding techniques means “a scientist is justified in discarding them without further experiment,” you have already been proven wrong. Medieval “doctors” had no clue about the effects of anticoagulants, yet they play a key role in the positive medical use of leeches today.
There is often a biological basis for quasi-medical techniques with positive effects attributed to woo.
#153
It might just be because massage stimulates blood flow to the region being massaged rather that claiming it channels a mysterious life forces
A guy in Oslo, Norway caught fire when his chinese doctor/acupuncturist cupped him. The poor guy got severely burnt.
http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/oslo/article2558688.ece
Cupping as medicine is bunk.
Cupping as a massage is kind of relaxing, but that’s about it.
Yes I agree and my quote does make it seem like I meant instantaneous. That’s however not at all what I think / know. There is a process that it must go through.
I actually own a cupping set– Mrs. Mjfgates insists that it helps with her migraines. Yeah, woo, placebo effect, all that… but it’s easier to stick things to her back than it is to argue about it. Plus I get to say things like “Rar, giant octopus attack!” while I’m doing it.
By the way, it’s easy to get acupuncture needles on Ebay. They come in cool boxes of 100 in pre-sterilized packages. I was curious and bought a box (they’re something like $5 for 100) and experimented with spinning them into a few places on my arm and hand. It’s kind of cool – you can feel around for a point where the tip (they are incredibly thin) dents the skin but you can’t feel it. I guess that’s an area between nerves – it’s harder to find “blank” spots on the hands than the arms – and if you spin the “handle” it drills quite easily into the flesh. I put one 1/2 inch into my upper thigh muscle and didn’t feel a thing, and it left a tiny dot that faded in 10 minutes, upon removal. It seems as if the needles are so thin that they don’t make enough of a hole to let blood out. My sweetie was fairly horrified by this and took the needles away from me, then proceeded to repeat the experiment on herself.
So, my experiment in “inacupuncture” was moderately interesting and showed me that any idiot can painlessly shove very thin needles into flesh without causing obvious adverse effects. It was creepy to see needles sticking out of places needles aren’t supposed to stick out of, and I can see how the weak-minded might be impressed by that sort of thing.
PS – my penis did grow another 4″ the next day, but I attribute that to the wooba-wooba bark tea I drink.
Mayhempix @155:
I’ve never personally tried it because I don’t like the idea of a suction like that on my erogenous zones (plus I abhor hickeys), but I know that lots of people get off on it. I do think the increased blood flow would make you feel more sensitive, though. And then there is the placebo effect. Rather than cupping, I prefer to use a sensitizing cream or gel. Same effect. No pain. :)
#157
And so does cupping, which is often a part of acupuncture routines. I suppose this brings us full circle. You still haven’t broken the symmetry.
Just like #156 said, “There is often a biological basis for quasi-medical techniques with positive effects attributed to woo.” I can’t say it much better than that.
ha!
I actually own a cupping set– Mrs. Mjfgates insists that it helps with her migraines.
I once convinced one of my girlfriends that orgasms cured migraines. And, probably thanks to the placebo effect, they did.
True story.
Mayhempix, I acknowledge your priority. And sorry, I missed it. Good post.
PZ: Lots of things have been around for a long time, but that doesn’t make them correct. What’s he going to do next, sacrifice a goat, do a magic dance around the patient, and make her drink a potion made from mouse dung and boiled roots?
And it’s just as effective (and less damaging) than many, if not a majority of treatments, folks under go.
Don’t pretend that medicine is science — some of it may have a scientific basis, particularly simple mass health treatments like vaccines and exercise, or on an individual basis some surgeries, but a lot of it is just random application of treatments until “something works”, which is more likely than not the old adage: the patient eventually dies or gets better. Much of it’s efficacy is exactly placebo effects (how many folks are given antibiotics against a flu?)
Pretending that we don’t all practice some woo some of the time is just silly (or extremely, radically unself-aware).
Chiropractic works to the extent that massage or physiotherapy work. The nonsense surrounding it manages to survive because there is a small core of success.
In Wisconsin, their biggest success was forcing insurance companies to pay for their ‘treatments’.
@The Countess
I prefer strategically placed and sensitively applied mouth suction.
;^ )
Sure, but that is different than knowingly pushing unproven or failed woo.
Humm after reading what I wrote, woo is by definition unproven. so ignore that.
Marcus @93,
foul-tasting stuff like … Laphroiag
Laphroaig, foul-tasting? Just because it’s filtred through a sod of turf wrapped in surgical gauze does not make it “foul-tasting”. Don’t mind the stuff at all, though I concede that, if I had to choose one Islay malt, I’d take Lagavulin instead.
Ah well, de gustibus non disputandum. After all, I can’t stand gin myself.
Slàinte mhath!
Francine DuBois
Don’t be so defensive. I hadn’t called you an idiot yet.
The only claim I made is that PZ’s claim that cupping is “absolutely useless” is unscientific, and that we should not wholly discard untested ideas.
Yeah, I got your point. You just made it poorly. “Untested ideas” means, to me, that there’s no basis behind it other than that someone just cooked it up. If you see that whenever a leech bites someone they don’t stop bleeding for an unusually long time you may not understand anticoagulants but it’s not an untested idea: after all, it’s based on observations of actual reality. When you said “untested ideas” I thought you meant, um, “untested ideas” – like someone just cooking up something out of thin air and accusing those nasty rationalists of being “unscientific” for not testing it.
That’s a real problem in dealing with woomeisters — they’d be perfectly happy to suck the government funding teat (NCCAM anyone?) by trying to get research $$$ spent on whatever crackpot they think up next – even crackpot like homeopathy, accupuncture, and chiropractic that have no theory of how they operate that doesn’t contradict some well-established theory based on measurable results. Of course they’re perfectly happy to perform the research anyway. It beats having a real job.
So I was just reacting to your unclear use of “untested ideas” Don’t get your panties in a wad.
Damn I actually like Laphroiag.
I did this cupping thing to my hand once with a flaming sambucca that I didn’t realise had been on fire for far longer than you’re supposed to leave it before you stick it to your hand. Natural reaction when it started burning me was to wave my hand about, but it just stuck fast, which amused my friends immensely. The embarassing circular blister lasted for ages.
This sounds dangerous! There is recorded PROOF that cupping can kill!
well… almost kill….
JC
DarthWader: I doubt most acupuncturists know when that nagging pain might be cancer.
Do you know any acupuncturists? They’re actually much more likely to recognize it than a GP, for the simple reason that they’re paying more attention — that’s their business. GP’s mostly respond to acute health conditions — they see you once a year for 15 minutes running between room. A decent acupuncturist is seeing you once a month or week for an hour and really focusing on clinical history.
A lot of their treatment is probably placebo. But in terms of long term attention to clinical history, from scent to color of the sclera to changing moles, they’re much more likely to recognize a cancer (or diabetes early on). For the cancer case, a decent one will send you right away to an MD; for incipient diabetes, nutritional and exercise advice is much more efficacious than pharmacological treatment.
What’s up with “toxins” being the new buzzword with quacks lately? It’s like every seaweed wrap or fad diet or bleeding with leeches is aimed at removing mysterious, malevolent boogeymen from your body. Nobody ever really identifies these toxins or quantifies how well the therapy works (oh but you can believe them, it WORKS). It all sounds a lot like smoke, mirrors, and exorcism of demons to me.
Marcus @#174,
True, you didn’t call me an idiot, only a failure. Don’t know how that could possibly have made me defensive…
I went back and reread my posts, and don’t think I made my point poorly. Especially since you say:
“”Untested ideas” means, to me, that there’s no basis behind it other than that someone just cooked it up.””
Nope. “Untested ideas” means – ideas that have not been tested (scientifically is my implication given context). If you read more into it than that, then that is your issue.
You leech example is anecdotal and an example of observation, and does not meet the criteria of scientific testing (hypotheses, controls, etc). If your example IS valid, then surely observations collected thus far on cupping would also be valid. (To be clear, I am not claiming this.)
Honestly, I have little use for someone who doesn’t enjoy a good Islay malt. Good day to you sir.
(And stop telling me what to do with my panties.)
Laphroiag? Lagavulin ? Either is quite nice – but I prefer Bunnahabhain myself. Mostly just because I can spell it.
JC
Because it’s so believable. People can make the “yeah that sounds right” check in their head and then believe these snake oil salesmen.
True, you didn’t call me an idiot, only a failure
Idiot.
(N)FL @169,
The nonsense surrounding it manages to survive because there is a small core of success
And that small core of success comes from the small part that isn’t nonsense. Some chiropractors (like, apparently, the one KI describes — a minority in the US, I take it?) eschew the ludicrous doctrines and make no pretence that they are doing anything other than a sort of physiotherapy. But it does seem to help some people with back problems. I don’t doubt that KI might have been helped by being twsisted into a pretzel shape (but that exercise regimen is probably the main source of benefit over the long term).
Where I live there are virtually no chiropractors. (The few that exist are generalised merchants of new age woo, and that’s just one of the many nonsenses they peddle. Go to them for the spinal manipulation; stay for the crystals and ear-candling.) But chiropractic manipulations are used a lot, by real orthopaedists, as just one of many therapeutic tools. They don’t believe in subluxation, don’t think manipulations can cure diseases, indeed don’t think they do anythinng at all except, in some cases, temporarily relieve back pain. Over here, if you suggested that subluxations cause disease or what have you, you’d be laughed at even by (almost all) the people who use chiropratic.
Not that we should get cocky. Homoeopathy is hugely popular here: otherwise qualified and well-trained pharmacists openly sell the stupid little water vials and sugar-pills, and otherwise intelligent and well-informed people gulp the stuff down at the first sign of a cold.
Caol Ila is my fav…
Well educated and typically intelligent people can be tricked by slick marketing. My wife for example takes EmergenC whenever she is feeling ill.
I’m not sure how much is pure annoyance of her husband telling her that it doesn’t do anything and that bastard telling her that it’s essentially the same thing as Airborne which just got busted or how much of it is her belief in its ability to help.
Probably some of both.
Marcus, Mrs. Tilton, Rev. BDC, et al.:
I haven’t ever tasted a single-malt scotch I didn’t like; I guess I’m just a whisky slut, eh?
I do also like gin, though (Bombay Sapphire or Hendricks, depending on how botanical I’m feeling). Hell, I even like Unicum, which I discovered by happenstance years ago, when one of my wife’s students gave her a small bottle as a farewell/thank you gift.
And BTW… mmmmm, Negra Modelo!
Rev.BDC @ 186 –
Vitamins and electrolytes (especially taken with lots of water) can make people feel better, even if they aren’t curing or preventing colds.
I have found no better hangover cure than a couple of packets of EmergenC – I’m guessing it’s the sudden jolt of B12.
That I understand, but that is not what the claims being made by EmergenC and Airborne were making.
Bill @187
yeah I’m pretty much the same. But I’m typically more of a bourbon drinker.
I love gin and am one of the seemingly remaing people on earth (or at least in my social circle) that drinks gin martini’s over vodka ones.
Hendricks. Yum
I think a study should be done on the correlation between the price of medicine/medical insurance and the rise of these “alternative” treatments.
Some of these treatments, I’m sure, are more expensive than going to a real doctor; however, imagine going to a store and buying a bottle of St. John’s Wort for $20, as opposed to an uninsured doctor’s office visit (if they’ll even let you in without insurance) for $120.
Bill Dauphine:
Do yourself a small pleasure and try Citadel. I have given up on the (slightly higher priced) Bombay Sapphire for my martinis. 19 purported botanicals. Yum.
Oh – and I agree totally on the single malts. Negro Modelo isn’t bad – if you don’t mind thin beer. ;-)
JC
Woe to him who adds limes to his Negra Modelo (or Bohemia)! About as bad as putting ketchup on a Chicago dog!
I see this thread changing directions so I won’t … ok yes I will.
beer – too many good beers out there to list one but… 90 Min IPA by DogFish Head brewery is currently up on the list of beers to have in the fridge at all times. And there’s a growler full of Sierra Nevada BigFoot Ale in the fridge too. That will change tonight.
now back to your regularly schedule woo bashing.
Those stupid woosits and their dumb woo.
Dummies.
I keep emergenC for hangovers
’bout it
RBDC: You are not alone! I refuse to give ground. There is no such thing as a Martini that is made other than with gin. And if you haven’t seen Alton Brown’s segment on martini-making (Raising the Bar), you owe it to yourself.
We may quibble on the ration of gin to vermouth (I use Noilly-Pratt), but it MUST be gin-based.
I have just come off oncall and I certainly plan to have the one I missed last night … tonight.
JC
I have seen it and I love watching Alton. Mrs. BigDumbChimp and I refer to him as “the dork”.
Sacrilege!
Rev:
It’s possible to make a martini with something other than gin? Who knew? ;^)
JOOC, do you use bitters in yours? For years I’ve had a sort of minimalist view of a martini as a chilled glass full of gelid gin with just the barest rumor of vermouth… but lately (not entirely coincidentally, since I started listening to Rachel Maddow) I’ve gotten interested in the art of the cocktail, and have been looking at classic recipes (i.e., with larger proportions of vermouth, and using bitters). It turns out to be difficult to lay hands on any sort of bitters other than Angostura… but teh intertoobz is your friend.
Click on my name and scroll down a couple entries for a cocktail I call the Sardonic Buddha, made with rye, Zen green tea liqueur, and green Chartreuse. Enjoy!
For all you Martini drinkers. Best homeopathic concoction out there.
JC
Rev, if you get a chance try Shiner’s 100th anniversary brew, it’s a “stark” ale.
Off subject as well, I just saw Ann Colter on the TV in the break room.
If hypocrisy has a face, truly it be that of a horse.
A vodka and vermouth is not a martini, its a vesper. Gin is the only true martini base.
New reality show for Fox: “So you want to be a witch doctor?”
RevBDC: To defend a favorite product of mine: Airborne is marketed as a cold-medicine; EmergenC is not.
to all of the boozehounds: Scotch/bourbon/tequila/cachaca are my loves.
Gin is an occasional departure – Malawi Gin is my hands-down favorite, is only $7 a bottle, and is unfortunately only available in East Africa (if anyone knows where I can score some in the US, I will give them several shiny new internets as a reward…)
Never understood Vermouth and Martinis – they simply disgust me. Pretty much the only form of ethanol that I wholly fail to appreciate.
Nobody, I mean nobody puts ketchup on a hotdog.
That’s my style. Shaken like hell.
(for thread congruity)
Stupid wooists.
Somebody brought up Dogfish Head brewery. Might I add that many of their labels are designed by this guy? For the few who don’t know who that is, educate thyself!
Jack, Rev, et al.:
Re beer, Negra Modelo is only my favorite Mexican beer (and I agree about the lime thing). I like to match ethnic foods with beer from the same country: Tsingtao with Chinese food, Kingfisher or Taj Mahal with Indian (my favorite new Indian place doesn’t have a liquor license yet… grrrrr), OB with Korean, Singha with Thai (actually, Singha is one of my overall favorites), etc. But yes, there are too many good beers to list; almost every time I buy beer in a liquor store, I’m trying something completely new to me.
Re Alton Brown: I love pretty much everything he does, but I’ve missed the martini episode (and Good Eats doesn’t seem to be available on OnDemand). Is it available online somewhere? Are Good Eats episodes out on DVD?
PS: Putting ketchup on anything is sacrilege. I might reluctantly agree to dispensation for fries, but nothing else. So mote it be!
Francis
Granted. What does it actually do?
What does that mean?
Bill
Never heard of it, but now I of course want to try it.
Bill
You know – I actually deleted the line I was going to add earlier that noted that I use a drop of ORANGE bitters in my martini. I felt that maybe I would be taken to task.
I got the idea from some of the history of the drink given in my Mr. Boston Platinum. I use Fee Bros Bitters (I have mint, orange, peach, lemon, “veg” (similar to Angostra) and the veg aged in oak.
Fee Bros are not at all far from me – and I simply called and ordered. Surprisingly, they sent me about $30 worth of bitters unpaid – they included a bill which I promptly paid. Amazing to find trust like that in this world – particularly in NY. Those little bottles will probably be willed to my grandchildren.
I have REALLY got to find a local Drinking Skeptically group! Nearest one is in NYC – too far to go for a nice tipple.
Home made nyquil – Booze and an aspirin. Who needs homeopathy?
JC
Rev. BigDumbChimp…insanity due to excessive enjoyment… ah, finally, a goal worth striving for!
Back when I was more-or-less a kid, I saw a an old set of equipment for “cupping”, which my grandfather had turned up in his attic. Besides a dozen or so “cups” (rounded, wide-mouthed bottles about the size of shot glasses), there was a wide leather beltish thing, with two parallel rows of holes sized to fit the cups. Presumably, that was used for placing and/or holding the cups against the body (same pattern as in PZ’s linked photo).
Bill
try some 33 export next time you have Thai (or more correctly Vietnamese but it goes great with both).
Yes Good eats is available on DVD
Well I’ve certainly been enlightened today, I thank you all. Mrs. Tilton @ 184 pretty well sums up my experience (my first “adjustment” being the most beneficial, the followup exercise preventing a return to the maladjusted state), and I may refer to my chiro as a “spine mechanic” from now on.
As to whisky, I’m for single barrel bourbons, Evan Williams my fave (each bottle has the barrel number and bottling date hand-written on the reverse label), neat, or in a Manhattan (I use a couple drops of cherry liqueur instead of a maraschino cherry).
JackC @209: “Home made nyquil – Booze and an aspirin. Who needs homeopathy?”
My homemade nyquil is absinthe. Just don’t buy the stuff from eastern Europe. It’s nothing more than green dye and artificial flavouring.
Me loves the green faery. :)
Bill
You and I (and a number of others apparently) would get along famously in a pub. I am always having a Negro Modelo at the local superb Mexican cantina – and all your other associations I find nothing whatsoever wrong with.
See my post 200 for the AB show link – if you haven’t already.
Rev, Guy, et al: If you like the Dogfish 90, find the 120. I am an absolute nut for barleywine. Not so much hops, but with 120, it is almost a requirement. Sierra Nevada mentioned earlier is mighty fine. My fridge was only recently depleted of same.
Anything Ommegang or Unibroue as I am also partial to Belgians.
If only you could shake any of these up in gallons upon gallons of water and have the water retain the characteristic components. Wishes and pigs with wings.
JC
> Airborne
Bzzzt!
http://www.google.com/search?q=airborne+FDA
So, what’s _in_ “bitters” exactly, does anyone know?
I can trust they are, as old recipes, Generally Recognized as Safe and so grandfathered …. but what’s in’em?
RevBDC asks “What does it actually do?” in regards to EmergenC.
It is simply a vitamin and mineral supplement. I guess I don’t understand what the big to-do is, or why someone should be criticized for using it? Vitamins aren’t woo.
No wine drinkers on Pharyngula?
Hank:
Mostly alcohol and flavour :-)
Depending on the bitter – in my case, orange – it may be basically a concentration of the peel of that from which it is named for.
The Fee Bros site I linked to above has some information – and wow! Cherry bitters! I have to revisit my order I think!
JC
No they aren’t but claims of boosting your health are a little more than, “take your vitamins”. Whatever. My wife takes it so I can’t complain too much. It’s the way it’s marketed that gets to me.
no no. When asked “what do you drink?”, I reply “everything”.
Currently I’m on a Malbec tear but I love a good meaty Cali Cab or a good Zin. My current favorite Zin is Red and Green.
Why do so many people not care for gin, or prefer vodka to gin? I’m not a big hard liquor drinker, but I like both. Just curious as to why gin isn’t nearly as popular.
Bet you dollars to doughnuts Dr. Tamer in post #15 is the guy who wrote this self-published breakthrough on the efficacy of cupping, The Complete Guide to Cupping Therapy: http://www.pr.com/press-release/97406
What an objective source.
Up until recently we couldn’t get any beer above 5.7% ABV in South Carolina. Now we can. /cheers
Unfortunately Dog Fish Head does not have a distributor in SC so I have to pick up some when I go to NC to see the famdamnly.
Unfortunately, 120 IPA (20% abv)is above the allowed alcohol content for NC so I have yet to experience it.
Countess,
I had absinthe for the first time a couple weeks ago, yowza! What’s with that wormwood stuff? My tongue and lips got all numb and tingly and there was this sparkly unalcoholish buzz for about fifteen minutes. I can see where you could get in big trouble with that stuff.
Francine
Fortify it with some real alcohol, and you have my attention! I love me some port, brandy, sherry, all that – but the real money (literally) is in the high distillates.
I like me some wine as well though – but I was much more knowledgeable about it in my younger years. I am trying to improve my palate with respect to rum and Bourbon/whiskey (KI – I am originally from Louisville. It’s in my blood) having recently been introduced to Ron delBarrilito.
Countess: Only recently tried Absinthe- some French stuff. Can’t abide it, but then, I never was a licorice fan. Friend of mine does it straight with a little sugar though. Way too much money for something I don’t really enjoy. More for you!
I am running out of platitudes to make it look like I am trying to follow the main front of this thread, it being all kinds of hijacked and all. Woo!
JC
Bah “Red and Green” should of course be “Green and Red”.
Ahh yes the Green Fairy. it’s a treat occasionally but not something I could sit down with for a while.
> bitters
I didn’t find much at that site, do you have a pointer to a specific list of ingredients I missed?
Oh, wait! (Wikipedia)
“… dissolved in alcohol or glycerine … formerly marketed as patent medicines … goldenseal … wormwood …. ”
Tempting though.
Rev,
Guess I never took the ‘boosts your health!’ statement as anything but a marketing slogan – if I was trying to seriously defend it I could say it provides nutrients essential to human life, which it does. But really, it’s pretty meaningless, sort of like milk’s also nebulous motto “does a body good”. Ick. Milk.
I too have had a few Argentinian Malbecs lately that were surprisingly nice for the price. I may try the Red & Green if I see it – I haven’t had a Zin in a while.
To all those Islay malt lovers, try to get your hand on a bottle of the 21 year old Laphroiag Cask strength bottling. Imagine 20 lbs of peat boiled down into a single tablespoon of goodness.
Laphroig != foul-tasting, at least for all values of Laphroig and all values of foul-tasting I have encountered. I submit that there might be a test case where that might be true but I have yet to encounter it in 25+ years of testing.
However, I tend to think that Islay malts are not the specific for incommodo sapor; Speysides are far more effective.
I had some bruising recently (dropped some lumber and banged myself up) and some well-meaning nitwit kept offering me arnica montana, even after I showed her evidence that its inefficacy is well-documented. Got the “Big pharma suppresses” excuse….sigh.
@Nerd #167
Thanks for the acknowledgment but the issue of priority didn’t concern me. That happens all the time. I just wanted to make sure you hadn’t misinterpreted my stance on homeopathy from a later post.
Woo is woo.
;^ )
Laphroig != foul-tasting, at least for all values of Laphroig and all values of foul-tasting I have encountered. I submit that there might be a test case where that might be true but I have yet to encounter it in 25+ years of testing.
However, I tend to think that Islay malts are not the specific for incommodo sapor; Speysides are far more effective.
I had some bruising recently (dropped some lumber and banged myself up) and some well-meaning nitwit kept offering me arnica montana, even after I showed her evidence that its inefficacy is well-documented. Got the “Big pharma suppresses” excuse….sigh.
KI @225:
The Count accidentally downed a huge mouthful of my absinthe once when he mistook my bottle for his sherry. He was completely out of sorts from that point until sometime the next day. He now has sworn off absinthe. Yay! More for me. :)
I like the wormwood and other herbs in it. You can buy absinthe in the U. S., but the herbal mixture just isn’t there. Plus U. S. absinthe has no wormwood in it. I served it the traditional way – with two sugar cubes and about 1 part absinthe to 2 parts water. Sometimes when I’m feeling especially naughty I pour the absinthe over the sugar cubes, and then light up the cubes before I toss them in the absinthe. It gave me a nice buzz. Great stuff to write erotic fiction by. No wonder so many artists and writers love the stuff.
Hey Mu,
I’d be happy to bum some 21 year Laphroiag cask off of you, but at almost $500 a bottle I don’t think I’ll be getting my own any time soon.
Hell, for $500 I could probably find a cheap air ticket to Scotland and just stick my tongue directly into a peat bog.
Countess@220 – If I had to guess, I would have to say either prejudice, or the botanicals, which I personally love. I never try to get someone to drink something they just don’t like – but those botanicals in some nice gin are just the ticket for me.
I also like good vodka – my favourite right now is any of the Russian Standards – particularly the Imperia, but even the Standard Original is better than almost anything else. I put it easily on par with Ciroc – and it is WAY cheaper.
But a martini it does not make. Frankly, with RS, I love just drinking it straight. It just vanishes in almost anything else. Which could be the point, I suppose.
JC
Yeah that’s the think about Malbecs is you can generally find a decent one for a good price.
Another great Zin vinyard is Ridge (they make a great Cab as well). I can’t say I’ve ever had one of their wines I didn’t love.
Countess@233
My music partner’s daughter brought back a bottle from her recent Parisian vacation, so it was the real thing. Good for me too, I don’t think it would be a good thing to have access to on a regular basis.
I’ve tried Dogfish’s 120 Minute IPA. Pricey beer, but at about 21% ABV, one was more than enough for an evening.
And speaking of Alton Brown, I’m almost positive he is a Born-Again™ Southern Baptist. For all he dedicates his show to the science behind cooking, I’m curious about his views on evolution and the age of the Earth.
Mu
I really hope you were kidding, or perhaps engaging in a little poetic waxing, about that “20 lbs of peat boiled down into a single tablespoon of goodness” quip. You DO know that the peat is not what makes the liquid, I hope?? Please say yes….
Of course, it wouldn’t be the same without the peat – but the only peat in the drink is the flavour imparted to the grain through a smoky roasting over the peat fire.
JC
As long as it doesn’t interfere with his show, I couldn’t really care less.
And my guess is that if he’s religious he’s probably on good terms with science as much as is possible.
I just checked out the site for his church, Johnson Ferry Baptist Church, and I don’t see any statements specific to scientific issues.
Again though, I don’t watch him for his religious beliefs just his food knowledge.
As long as they don’t intermix, I don’t care.
JackC @235, that actually sounds good to me. I forgot that gin is derived from juniper, and I love juniper berries in my meat and marinades. It’s great on game. I haven’t had either gin or vodka in a long time, but I have a feeling I would prefer gin.
KI @237, I bought my last bottle of absinthe online from France. That’s supposed to be the best place to get it. It was incredible. And it lasted a very long time. :)
Countess, people might prefer gin to vodka because gin is an acquired taste whereas vodka has very nearly no taste at all, beyond that slight alcohol burn. (Or, to anticipate the protests of any Russians or other vodkaphiles on the thread: OK, vodka has plenty of taste, but it’s subtle.)
All the Hendricks fans in the thread, yiz are welcome to drop by for a glass any time you’re in town. Got a bottle of the stuff some eight years ago as a gift, and I don’t think more than an inch is gone since then. (Got a bottle of Armadale at the same time. The Countess might be interested to hear that that one didn’t last quite so long.)
A few posts back, I almost apologized for contributing to thread drift… but then I decided that thread drift in the direction of booze and kinky sex is probably a Feature, Not a Bug™. ;^)
Jack:
Yeah, it was that intro section of Mr. Boston’s Platinum that got me interested in the old classic recipes, too. I even turned my mother on to real Manhattans (i.e., made with rye and bitters) instead of the plain bourbon and sweet vermouth she’d been drinking. I found both orange bitters and Peychaud’s bitters online, from the Sazerac folks in N’Awhluns (I’d provide a link if I weren’t on a firewalled computer).
Rev:
Zwack Unicum is a dark, thick, bitter liqueur; definitely a quirky taste that might not appeal to everyone… but I tend to be perverse that way.
Darth:
I could’ve sworn there was more to a proper Vesper than just a vodka martini… now I’ll have to look that up when I get home.
KI #130
Pain can come from conditions that chiropractor’s manipulations can worsen. People have become paralyzed from spinal manipulations when the underlying problem was a spinal injury. It’s rather like a fitness trainer refusing to give people hard core exercise routines without first making sure they don’t have a heart condition. Since a chiropractor, unlike a fitness instructor, is claiming to be a medical professional their liability is much greater.
Vesper?? Isn’t that a teensie Italian motorbike??
OK – I apologise. A little.
JC
@240 (RBDC): Of course. I just noticed the born-again thing when I plugged his name into Wiki after watching his show. If it weren’t for the fact he seems to dedicate a certain portion of each show to the science of cooking, his views on evolution and the like wouldn’t have interested me at all, nor would they stop me from watching his show. It’s not like I’m watching Everyday Italian looking for evidence that Giada de Laurentiis is a Catholic. I watch her for (two) entirely different reasons…
Yeah sorry if that came off like an attack. Wasn’t mean to.
I watch Giada for those very same reasons I’m sure….
Getting back on track…
I can think of at least one more instance where ‘blood-letting’ is extremely effective. I was taught this by my father who is an MD.
When you a finger or toe nail with a hammer, cr door, whatever… and the pressure of fluid (blood) builds up under the nail causing excruciatingly deep throbbing pain simply heat one end of paper clip and push it through the nail right on the center of the darkened area… instant relief from the pain. The sensation of the release of pressure is almost like an orgasm (gore-gasm?). It is a simple procedure that can be done by anyone.
There are probably many other procedures where relieving the blood pressure due to build up of non-circulating blood in a certain area will be beneficial. I would leave those other operations to a competent doctor.
Of course this does not mean that if you have a headache that plunging a red-hot paper clip into your skull will help with the pain… other than possibly killing you that is.
-DU-
Damn, I leave to actually accomplish something and the thread goes to sex and single malt whiskey.
Alas, I have to make do with the Glens -fiddich, -morangie or -livet.
must. resist. punchline… much. too. easy.
Question: Why does my wife want me to caress her Volvo, when she drives a SAAB? Women can never get cars straight. ; }
Mr Boston says a Vesper is:
3 oz gin
1 oz vodka
.5 oz Lillet Blond (which I have to look up – I have no idea what that is… Aha – vaguely like a vermouth – white wine and brandy, French of course.)
So – looks kind of like a mixed-up not-quite-sure if it is a martini or not. But heck – the proportions are just about right.
Boston refers to a 2:1 ratio vodka/vermouth as a Kangaroo Cocktail.
I have to admit I am somewhat taken aback at the recipe in Mr Boston for “Vodka on the rocks”…. “Put two or three ice cubes in old-fashioned glass and add vodka” Well DUH!
JC
If Chinese medicine is so damned potent, why have modern Chinese citizens suddenly begun living much longer lives since the introduction of modern, western, scientifically based medicine?
E.V. — Thanks! I needed that!
JC
And now something from modern era, from the pseudo-science called (neo)darwinism:
(Entomologist Franz Heikertinger who dismissed the whole “natural selection” explanation of the mimicry had once a great fun of it):
Darwin was once puzzled by the conspicuos coloration of some larvae. He tried to solve the problem with Wallace and Bates. Darwin himself was so perplexed at first, that he was even afraid of the validity of his beloved “natural selection” fantasy. He wrote in one of his letter:
“My difficulty is, why are caterpillars sometimes so beautifully and artistically coloured?
….I could not answer, but should maintain my ground.”
(btw. that’s the strong argument of “credulity” neodarwinists still use.)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/2429339/The-L … Dodo-Press
So Darwin visited Bates but he also didn’t know the answer (1867). Bates reccomended Darwin to ask their friend Wallace. Wallace responded that only he -Darwin- was the man who always know the right answer.
But Wallace thought that conspicuous coloration might have some “warning” meaning. So those three famous men came to the conclusion that the problem could be explained by “unpalatability” of catterpillars.
But actually it was Bates himself who proposed such hypothesis some years ago (Bates 1861) in his “mimicry” concept of the conspicuous coloration of butterflies Leptais .
So those great darwinian sclerotics reinvented in 1867 again the theory of warning coloration which was proposed by one of them in 1861.
Your post didn’t come off as an attack at all, but I believe there is a law that states any internet discussions touching on the Food Network must include an allusion to Giada De Laurentiis’ boobs, and some sort of knock on Rachael Ray. So to get the second part out of the way – Rachael Ray is annoying and would merchandise her very soul if at all possible.
And now something from modern era, from the pseudo-science called (neo)darwinism:
(Entomologist Franz Heikertinger who dismissed the whole “natural selection” explanation of the mimicry had once a great fun of it):
Darwin was once puzzled by the conspicuos coloration of some larvae. He tried to solve the problem with Wallace and Bates. Darwin himself was so perplexed at first, that he was even afraid of the validity of his beloved “natural selection” fantasy. He wrote in one of his letter:
“My difficulty is, why are caterpillars sometimes so beautifully and artistically coloured?
….I could not answer, but should maintain my ground.”
(btw. that’s the strong argument of “credulity” neodarwinists still use.)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/2429339/The-L … Dodo-Press
So Darwin visited Bates but he also didn’t know the answer (1867). Bates reccomended Darwin to ask their friend Wallace. Wallace responded that only he -Darwin- was the man who always know the right answer.
But Wallace thought that conspicuous coloration might have some “warning” meaning. So those three famous men came to the conclusion that the problem could be explained by “unpalatability” of catterpillars.
But actually it was Bates himself who proposed such hypothesis some years ago (Bates 1861) in his “mimicry” concept of the conspicuous coloration of butterflies Leptais .
So those great darwinian sclerotics reinvented in 1867 again the theory of warning coloration which was proposed by one of them in 1861.
Yeah ignoring the 150 since then…
years
HI, there cpmes “the useless fact of day!”
Here in Finland this cupping = “kuppaus” (i am seein the etymology or what?) is not so rare. I actually suprised a bit, when it is described as sopething unusuall. Yes, it is totally placebo.
It is ironic that finnish word “kuppaaminen” means same time the action when “healer” uses the “art” of cupping. It means also “doing nothing”, “being lazy” and “being slow(speed like walking, not IQ -thing)”. Perhaps our ancestors are clever enough and see cupping is just like praying: Doing nothung but still believing you are helping :)
@255: How original.
Lilet is a wine, I don’t think they are in business though
Have you ever experienced this technique you are railing against?
I am an atheist a skeptic, and have experienced enough alternative “medicine” in my life to recognise it for the quackery it is but I have also had this done to me and I can tell you from first-hand experience that it is neither painful nor ineffective. The cups aren’t hot when they go on – that scene in The Madness of King George was obviously done by someone who had read about the technique and thought the cups themselves were heated. It’s just the air inside that is heated slightly so that when it cools it creates suction.
A couple of years ago I suffered a soft-tissue injury in my neck and shoulders that was causing debilitating nerve impingement, and the physiotherapist who treated me used cupping as part of the treatment. It worked precisely as advertised – sucking large amounts of blood into the affected muscles (after stretching and massage) which, when the cups are removed, helps flush the metabolic products of overused muscles out of the tissue which helps allow them to relax.
Is it a cure? No. Is it a useful technique to allow further work on badly knotted muscle tissue, oh yes indeed. It also left my back looking like I’d been recieving enthusiastic hugs from a large octopus, but that’s not it’s primary benefit.
Countess:
Re the lack of “real” absinthe in the U.S., the times, they are a’ changin’ (note the last sentence of the intro). I’ve seen several brands of absinthe (I mean real stuff, with wormwood, not the faux types or substitutes like Pernod) in my local liquor store. I haven’t bought any yet, because it’s expensive… but I’d love to try it sometime, just to see what all the fuss is about.
Jack:
Sorry I didn’t realize you’d already posted a link to the AB martini episode: I never click on YouTube links from this computer, because they don’t make it through the firewall.
IIRC (though I can’t recall the precise details) there was a recent scientific assay of an old bottle that concluded absinthe owes its reputation more to extremely high proof than to any hallucinatory qualities in wormwood.
Guy Incognito:
Franz Heikertinger: Das Raetsel der Mimikry und seine Loesung, Jena 1954, page 16-17.
Ooops! In my last (@262), the paragraphs got switched around somehow: The last graph was supposed to have been the second full graph (i.e., it was part of my reply to the Countess re absinthe). Sorry for any confusion.
Darth:
I have seen several flavors of Lillet in more than one of my usual liquor stores… so if the original company is out of business, somebody else has taken up the brand.
BTW, anyone know of a source for Canton ginger liqueur? I’d like to try a Debonair (single-malt scotch and Canton) but have been unable to to find the stuff. I’ve tried subbing ginger-flavored brandy in the recipe, but I doubt I’m getting the intended flavor that way.
Bill Dauphin | January 23, 2009 3:03 PM
“A few posts back, I almost apologized for contributing to thread drift… but then I decided that thread drift in the direction of booze and kinky sex is probably a Feature, Not a Bug™.”
Not just a feature… it’s a necessary feature!
Plus I love the fact that it probably confirms every fundie troll’s worst nightmare about the moral and sexual depravity that atheism inevitably produces.
Bill
The local supplier of note indicates they have it. You aren’t all that far from me (about 2 hours?) – if you can’t find any, we may have to arrange a little meet. I will probably need a Designated Driver….
JC
It looks like it’s supposed to work on the same principle as those penis enlargement machines… I’m guessing… since I’ve never actually seen one.
First time I heard of cupping was a few years back, from an off-the-boat girlfriend. She described it to me- her nephew had a cold, and her sister was doing it. FSM, I thought she was describing some Polish voodoo. At least she was doing it at home, not paying some glorified houngan an ungodly sum to do it.
When Gwynneth Paltrow was photographed with circular bruises on her back, I knew exactly what had gone down.
Would I be an infidel (duh) If I mentioned Tanqueray 10 as one of the smoothest gins I’ve ever tasted?
I always appreciate the American beer/canoe joke. Negro Modelo is bliss compared to Coors & Bud.
On a side note, it looks like we Americans have once again exploited the charms of Italy by flooding the market with Prosecco and Limoncello. Will there be unscrupulous bastardizations just like Modena’s aceto balsamico knock-offs? Yup, no one has ever lost money underestimating the pretentiousness of the American public (who don’t really care if something is pirated as long as kith and kin think that it’s genuine).
Isn’t cupping part and parcel of a reach around?
E.V. – not at all. I came to Citadel by way of T-10 and passing through Bombay Sapphire. 10 is quite nice, but for the money, I really enjoy Citadel. ($24 for Citadel vs $32 for 10 in a 750 ml)
Side by side, the only difference I can tell btw BS and C is just a hint of edginess on the palate.
American Beer jokes – sure, nost high-traffic American beer is it’s own joke, but only with most of the ridiculous stuff we were saddled with following depresss…er… repressi.. er… prohibition – yeah – that’s it! Yuengling is “original” and really quite good – but the real mastery is in what has been done in the last 15-20 years – including the Sam Adams line, of course, Anchor Brewing and many, many other micros and regional brew pubs and breweries.
I will not admit that those two things you mentioned after Modelo are “beer”. They don’t qualify. But a Brooklyn Brown Ale or an Arrogant Bastard is quite nice – as are hundreds of others. (I once read something by Michael Jackson [not THAT one!] concerning bringing Bud to a beer judging in Germany. He had to smuggle it in and indicate that it was not there to indicate what beer WAS, but what beer WAS NOT. That was absolutely worst thing I have ever heard MJ say about ANY beer. RIP Mike.)
Even though it is “Belgian Style” – Brewery Ommegang is in Cooperstown NY and they don’t have a single thing I don’t love to drink. If you like something big, deep, dark and a bit spicy, Ommegang Abby Ale is wonderful. Hennepin is a bit lighter and lovely – hell – it is all lovely. It’s made here, so it must be American, right?
I have a bit of some Limoncello purchased over a year ago – somewhere. It isn’t bad when I feel like I want a little candy.
But how about some Viking Blod? Mead and hibiscus. I am drooling now. Where are my cups? I want to be in my cups. Is that cupping? Large cups preferable – say about 38DD. Where’s Luigi the Sail Maker?
JC
EV
“it looks like we Americans have once again exploited the charms of Italy by flooding the market with Prosecco and Limoncello. ”
Down here in Argentina I ran across Pomelocello which is made with grapefruit.
Let me get it out of the way: NEGRA MODELO IS AMERICAN BEER TOO, YOU IGNORANT UNITED STATES-IANS!111!!11
Carry on…
Guy.
Guilty as charged.
perl -p -i -e ‘s/American/USofA/g’ all.my.posts
JC
I was under the impression that several studies showed that acupuncture actually did do something, though there isn’t a clear consensus on what the precise mechanism of action is. Also, didn’t the NIH release a big long document basically saying, “Yeah, it looks like it does something. We’re going to investigate this further.”
Yeah, i’m not the first to mention this, but cupping is a common form of play in BDSM,. I’ve seen it done and it doesn’t hurt, but it also doesn’t do anything other than make you look like you were attacked by an octopus.
TuringE
It is kind of hard to tell – from Wikipedia: (under NIH Consensus Statement”)
In truth it appears to my reading that the “jury is out” but that there does appear to be some efficacy to acupuncture.
It quite brings to mind the situation faced by J. Harlen Bretz when he presented his theory of how the Scablands of what is now Washington State were created
He was met with ridicule and basically ostracised for his concepts. Being RIGHT didn’t seem to help the situation.
JC
I can’t speak for anyone else but there’s a simple reason that I don’t like gin. When I was 17 some friends of mine and I got a fifth of Beefeater’s Gin and some 7-Up. We then got very drunk. I was extremely, violently ill and had a hangover that lasted two days. Since that time even the smell of gin turns my stomach. And I’m not fond of junipers either.
However, I’m another single malt aficionado. In honor of this thread I’m presently sipping The MacAllan, an 18 year old sherry cask Speyside.
JackC @277,
For some values of “efficacy”, maybe.
I quote Rev BDC @#23: “Go do a search on Orac’s blog for acupuncture.”
I also suggest looking here.
John
No contest. I was not offering my own opinion on the matter, only my evaluation of the teensie, insignificant and possibly even inaccurate bit of reference I read. I will read Orac on it as well (tomorrow – I have quite had enough of today), but please try to understand what I said earlier about Bretz as well.
I personally am not out loooking for any vindication for accupuncture, cupping or any other alternative medicine form.
I do not much care for blatant dismissal based on bias that does not examine evidence, however. Sometimes, it just takes persistence.
JC
JC
“It would probably make for good TV.”
Saw it on, I think, CSI New York or Law & Order a couple of weeks ago.
Sounds like the hot stone massage “therapy”.
JackC, no rational person “much care[s] for blatant dismissal based on bias that does not examine evidence”, most commenters here included.
The evidence is there, and the links we’ve provided can guide you to much evidence (from the references therein).
Check out this post by Orac:
“Indeed, there was a time when I, the arch-skeptic, the guy who has built up one of the top skeptical blogs out there, the person who three years ago took over the Skeptics’ Circle willingly and enthusiastically when its founder, a blogger known as Saint Nate, decided that personal reasons prevented him from continuing to maintain his blog or the Circle, was less skeptical of acupuncture than I am now. I know, I know, it’s hard to believe, but it’s true.”
Shall we move on to moxibustion?
‘Tis:
I have a story very like that, involving an evening event with my high school German Club, which accounts for my total inability to even look at a bottle of Southern Comfort.
Thank FSM it didn’t happen with gin or scotch!
Ok. Devil’s advocate here for a moment.
Yes, I agree. This is pure quackery. But as to the problem of people taking it seriously, I can’t really chalk it up to stupidity and laugh about it.
That these practices are popular means that they are serving a role in society–they are filling a blank that normal science for whatever reason won’t fill.
I would be curious to know whether accupuncture and “cupping” are as popular in countries where healthcare is less of a financial burden.
Sure, it’s expensive to pay a quack–but paying a quack once for what’s advertised as a pain panacea probably seems like a good deal after having been to the real doctor several times at a couple hundred dollars a pop and brushed off with a “there’s nothing wrong.” Paying a homeopathic nutritionist to help you permanently change your diet to cure your depression seems like a smarter thing to do financially than to pay a therapist $250 a session indefinitely, and pay $150 a bottle for SSRIs.
Most people I know who try such “therapies” do so as a last resort. These aren’t people who are hypochondriacs. These are people who know that something is wrong with them but for whatever reason feel like they’ve been failed by real medicine.
With the “Wham Bam Thankyou Ma’am” approach to real medicine in this country, I think that real doctors and to a greater extent insurance companies have a part to share in the blame for the popularity of quackery.
After thinking a bit, I think the problem is this.
Most people don’t have the biology and biochem education to understand why or how modern medicine works. This is especially true of the older generation, which got even less than the newer generation got. They don’t really understand it enough to be able to read the evidence for it. To these people, both real science and quackery are voodoo. And if you’ve got friends who’ve testified to the effectiveness of the later, they’re voodoo on equal footing.
This is a problem with pre-college science education in the US. We need a curriculum which provides a solid base upon which to self-learn or be taught biology at a higher level, and we don’t get that. Example. Biology at the highschool level was completely optional for me, and it shouldn’t be in this age. I’d also like to note here that I don’t think most alternative medicine practitioners are out to fleece people. I think a lot of them probably believe in the voodoo they’re selling–they just don’t know enough about biology to be able to call bullshit, either.
Sadly, for most people, modern medicine boils down to how much you trust your witch-doctor, and here, we fail as well. Medicine is prohibitively expensive as I’ve mentioned before, so I’m not going to dwell here, except that if you have to go to several different doctors because of a wrong diagnosis, and the money adds up substantially, and trust takes an exponential hit. People start trickling off to alternative medicine for their lesser ailments.
Another major hit to trust is that our medical education programs seem to select for sociopaths. Add to this a slew of undergraduate professors who act like they’d rather drill their own teeth than teach basic biology to a bunch of snot-nosed premeds, who have no office hours, no TAs who speak English, and do not give a crap whether a student likes or understands the material they’re covering with one hand while erasing the blackboard with the other, and you end up with an undergraduate education system that weeds out a lot of people who want to understand the way biological systems work at a level deeper than memorizing the text book.
The result is that a good many of the doctors that come out of this system aren’t the sort of people who are easy to trust, and this is of paramount importance since, as I said before, use of real medicine versus quackery boils down to trust in most cases.
In conclusion, as I mentioned before, everyone I know who is into alternative medicine got there as a last resort. People are encouraged to trust science (something which needs to end…people need to know it’s true and why), but one expensive misdiagnosis from a condescending, unsympathetic asshole doctor is all it takes for that trust to be transferred elsewhere.
I’ve read all the comments here and, for what it’s worth, I’m going to offer my experience with acupuncture.
When I was pregnant with my only child, 30 years ago, I got psoriasis. Started out with just a few plaques here and there. Three years later, I was covered in cracked, bleeding sheets of it, head to foot, and thinking seriously about suicide, just to escape the pain.
I went to multitudes of doctors, drowned myself in prescribed (expensive) soaps, and covered myself in prescribed (expensive) lotions and ointments, cooked myself in light boxes and took tons of pills. Nothing science could offer made a bit of difference, and many of the therapies had some potentially pretty distressing side effects, like aplastic anemia.
Then a coworker who also had psoriasis (although not nearly as severe) mentioned that she had gone to an acupuncurist, and that it seemed to be helping. Keep in mind that this was in the early 80s, when acupuncture was much less acceptable even than it is now. I went for the hell of it, but I knew it wasn’t going to work, because it was voodoo. I maintained that attitude until after the 4th of 10 scheduled appointments, when I notice that the sheet on my arm looked a little less raw. I still didn’t believe it. All I can tell you is that about six weeks after the last appointment, I didn’t have psoriasis anywhere. It had completely cleared up.
My doctor told me that I would probably need maintenance appointments from time to time, and that turned out to be a couple of appointments once a year or so. Every time I went in there, I just knew that it was voodoo and it wasn’t going to work this time, and every time, it still did.
After all these years, I still can’t explain it, and don’t care. If this be a placebo effect, then I’m fine with making the most of it.
All humans are just made of chemicals so naturally only chemicals can fix them?
owlbear1, you may have come late to the game not read all the posts. Some things, like chiropractic manipulation of the back for back pain work to a degree. Acupuncture shows interesting results, but its claims are overdone. Cupping does nothing except transfer some of your money to the practitioner.
Here’s the question for you, if you have a heart attack, would you want blood thinners followed by stents, or homeopathic remedies?
“Acupuncture shows interesting results, but its claims are overdone.”
Something that could never be said for ‘real’ treatments?
“Cupping does nothing except transfer some of your money to the practitioner.”
It continues to work for me so I’ll continue the transfers. I think it has to do with the endorphins the process generates and the inflammation caused at the location. The body reacts to the trauma with more blood flow.
Finally the article was about treating pain not heart attacks.
Owlbear1, I asked the question to see if you favor real treatment versus fake treatment in a real health emergency. What is your answer? Real medicine or a fraud? If you prefer fraud, make sure not to call the EMTs if anything dire happens to you. Get my point?
And why does acupuncture have to be a panacea?
You are demanding that it be used for everything.
Why aren’t splints applied to everyone who has a cold?
I googled “APTA and cupping” to see if the American Physical Therapy Association made any mention of cupping. The only thing there was just a passing mention in an article on “Research in Minority Health Disparities.” However the third site down on the google search was alkimi.net/bodywork.html now there you can find a whole smorgasbord of alternative stuff (from just the bodywork page alone, check out the rest of the site too for alchemy and readings etc.) to spend your good money on.
I guess if the demand is there these things will always stay around. From the site under “Technique Descriptions” are “Swedish massage, polarity therapy, oscillations, acupressure, cupping therapy, acupuncture, Chinese herbs, moxabustion, sacred henna tattoos, and ear coning.”
I think it might be just the place for PZ because it is “A Sacred Space for Transformation.”
Owlbear1, nonsense argument. Put something else out there.
If declare that I would go to a hospital if I had a heart attack do you plan to argue that discredits acupuncture?
Why do so many people not care for gin?
Personally, a cold gin and tonic with ice and a slice of lime is my favourite drink of all time.
This should be something easy to show.
Any studies supporting it?
OK, my mistake. I thought you were talking about cupping, which is what the thread is about. I have commented on acupuncture above and won’t repeat myself here. I will note that my health insurance provider allows for acupuncture treatment in cases like yours, but that may be because it is cheaper than repeated doctor visits.
“Any studies supporting it?”
Well, all the sites I have links to have a decided bias.
http://acupuncture.com/newsletters/m_mar05/res.htm
http://www.ocom.edu/page/630/Research_Projects.htm
But here is one from the Baltimore Sun on general treatment of pain.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/health/bal-te.pain11dec11,0,7983851.story
I am all for being skeptical of alternative medicines, but the majority of commenters seem to be too harsh on this cupping procedure. So let me tell you what I know.
I’ve had the procedure performed on me, as a child in Russia. It was a pretty common method for treating coughs. So for one, it is not painful. Those people with painful-looking bruises must be overdoing it. It may leave some marks, but they are not bruises, and are gone in an hour or two. Second, it does not syphon off money, as it can be performed at home for free (except, I guess, for the negligible cost of buying the cups).
As far as the theory behind it, it’s not spirits flowing or any such nonsense. The idea is similar to the procedure of applying heating patches – namely, to get more blood to come to the back/lungs area. This helps fight the pathogens with heat and the immune cells in the blood.
Anonymous, you gave us the alleged reason for cupping, now you need to show the evidence that it does exactly what the claims are: that is does bring increased blood flow to the lungs. Any citation for that?
I was referring to cupping owlbear.
I just came to this thread and I’m shocked, shocked I tell you.
People don’t like Gin?!?!
(Oh and Stone Brewing is the king of beers, sharing the throne with Dogfish Head. Carry on)
I’m in favour of more tupping.
I just “discovered” stone brewing.
LOVE IT.
Speaking of I might have to crack open and Arrogant Bastard Ale.
grr
and / an
damn it
Rev., you also didn’t capitalize the company name. Arrogant Bastard Ale. Sounds interesting. Let me know how it goes down.
Arrogant Bastard is nice – oh and you should see this (not sure how that link will behave – since you have to “accept” that you are over 21 before the site lets you in. If it does not work properly, go to http://arrogantbastard.com directly and find “Animated Arrogance”. The site has some absolutely top shelf April Fools jokes as well!
Try a Double Bastard, and the Oaked Arrogance is really good.
I learned about this stuff from a biking buddy (bicycle, not motor, thoguh I do more of the latter these days) – he wanted their cycling shirt – but it has the brew name on the sleeves – not on the back of the shirt where he wanted it!
JC
you.. YOU just be quiet.
Crapola, the Stone Brewing beer/ale isn’t available in my area. I need to go a state or two over. My dad lives near a distributer. If I stop to get some wine for the Redhead, she can’t complain.
Rev., how good was it? (then i promise to be quiet.)
It’s good stuff. Everything I’ve had from them is fantastic.
The Ruination IPA is really really good.
Nerd of Redhead: Be warned – Hopheads only need apply. The name is apt – this stuff IS Arrogant!
If you like your beer only slightly hoppy then be warned! Too much to go through here to find out if you were one of the folks who appreciate Dogfish Head – if so – “Nevermind!”
And yes, I have had hoppier – but I am not really a fan of heavy hopping. I prefer a maltier brew, but that is just my particular taste.
But I will drink an AB or even a Maharaja – without too much prompting!
JC
PZ!!! I am shocked, I say, absolutely shocked!!! that you disagree so strenuously with cupping. Regardless of why one does it (beliefs in curative powers, hey it feels good, or as a BDSM technique in a dungeon — I’m not kidding about that last one, a good friend of mine is a dominatrix), it is the results of a cupping session that I think you would whole-heartedly support.
Namely, when one has finished a cupping session, whether the cups involved were fire cups or the suction-pump-operated kind, one is left with lovely, long-lasting round red marks all over one’s body. In short, one ends up looking like they escaped the embraces of a large, overamorous octopus.
Marvelous!!!
PZ!!! I am shocked, I say, absolutely shocked!!! that you disagree so strenuously with cupping. Regardless of why one does it (beliefs in curative powers, hey it feels good, or as a BDSM technique in a dungeon — I’m not kidding about that last one, a good friend of mine is a dominatrix), it is the results of a cupping session that I think you would whole-heartedly support.
When one has finished a cupping session, whether the cups involved were fire cups or the suction-pump-operated kind, one is left with lovely, long-lasting red marks all over one’s body. In short, one ends up looking like they escaped the embraces of a large, overamorous octopus.
Marvelous!!!
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