The journal of alternative and complementary medicine : research on paradigm, practice, and policy
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J Altern Complement Med · May 2006
ReviewEffectiveness of the Chinese herbal formula TongXieYaoFang for irritable bowel syndrome: a systematic review.
Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a common problem, but treatment is unsatisfactory. Although Chinese herbal medicines have been tried, there are limited data to support their usage. The authors set out to systematically review the effectiveness of the Chinese herbal medicine TongXieYaoFang (TXYF) and TXYF with different Chinese herbal additions (TXYF-A) in the management of IBS in order to make evidence-based recommendations. ⋯ There is evidence to indicate the potential usefulness of TXYF-A for IBS patients. The results were limited by the poor quality and heterogeneity of these studies. Further studies with carefully designed, randomized double-blinded placebo-controlled trials will be needed to confirm the effectiveness of TXYF or TXYF-A for IBS.
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J Altern Complement Med · Apr 2006
ReviewEntanglement, knowledge, and their possible effects on the outcomes of blinded trials of homeopathic provings.
In two recent studies of double-blind placebo-controlled homeopathic provings, entanglement was reported to have occurred between verum and placebo arms of the trials. This contrasts directly with the entanglement-disrupting effects of blinding, recently proposed as the reason for the failure of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to demonstrate unequivocally the efficacy of homeopathy. It is proposed here that such entanglement between remedy and placebo during these double-blind placebo controlled provings is the direct result of the blinding process. ⋯ These theoretical findings can be understood in terms of the act of blinding leading to loss of information because of quantum-like state superposition of the verum and placebo proving groups. This is compared to conclusions drawn from the well-known double-slit experiment of quantum physics, and quantum information processing. It leads to a suggestion for testing entanglement in homeopathic provings.
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In this paper, we review research on homeopathy from four perspectives, focusing on reviews and some landmark studies. These perspectives are laboratory studies, clinical trials, observational studies, and theoretical work. In laboratory models, numerous effects and anomalies have been reported. ⋯ It emerges that local models, suggesting some change in structure in the solvent, are far from convincing. The nonlocal models proposed would predict that it is impossible to nail down homeopathic effects with direct experimental testing and this places homeopathy in a scientific dilemma. We close with some suggestions for potentially fruitful research.
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J Altern Complement Med · Aug 2005
ReviewCochrane systematic reviews in acupuncture: methodological diversity in database searching.
Since the early 1970s, the efficacy of acupuncture for treating clinical conditions has been evaluated in several hundred randomized trials. Results from these trials have been synthesized in systematic reviews. A well-designed systematic review provides the highest level of evidence for establishing the efficacy of a clinical intervention. ⋯ Considerable methodological diversity exists in the comprehensiveness of database searches for Cochrane systematic reviews on acupuncture. This diversity makes the reviews prone to bias and adds another layer of complexity in interpreting the acupuncture literature.
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J Altern Complement Med · Jan 2005
ReviewPatients, doctors, and videotape: a prescription for creating optimal healing environments?
Despite repeated calls for greater patient autonomy, shared decision making, and exploration of patient preferences, relatively little is known about how patients actually experience care as a face-to-face interactional process. A selected review of the literature in this area suggests that important asymmetries exist. Key among them is the tendency to report experiences from the point of view of only one member of the doctor-patient dyad. ⋯ This finding flies in the face of traditional sociological thought, which holds that the greater the social distance between actors (doctors and patients), the more difficult it should be to communicate. With respect to being stratified by historical satisfaction scores, doctors with high historical satisfaction were found to comment more often, make fewer assumptions, take longer with their patients, and be more vigilant than doctors with historically low satisfaction scores. We conclude that videotape review is a parsimonious way of integrating face-to-face communication with the participants' lived experience of the care process, a necessary ingredient in creating optimal healing environments.