6 quack treatments
Medicine is developing rapidly and is now capable of combating such phenomena that until recently seemed like a sentence. We are no longer surprised that people with artificial joints and limbs can play sports, organ transplantation has become a routine, and the latest cancer drugs have reduced mortality tenfold. The wonders of plastic surgery, thanks to which people in 60 years old shine with beauty and freshness, are no longer a sensation. Another thing is surprising: in parallel, there exist and even are popular methods of treatment that do not stand up to criticism, based on dense ideas, and most importantly, they do not provide any result, in addition, sometimes they are harmful to health. Distinguishing charlatan methods of treatment from real ones is not so difficult: the former promise complete,quick cure at relatively low cost, and one and the same remedy is offered for almost all diseases.
Urine therapy
It is difficult to say who first came up with the idea of urine treatment, but it is known that in Russia experiments on using urine internally as a therapeutic agent were carried out at the beginning of the 20th century and reached a wide scale. Among the patients of the famous urine therapist Zamkov at that time were Soviet leaders of such magnitude as Maxim Gorky and Vyacheslav Molotov. Unfortunately, celebrities can be deceived like everyone else, but their involvement and patronage gives charlatanism unprecedented popularity. The more convincing was the sobering up: not a single proof of the effectiveness of the method was obtained, the urinotherapy clinic of Dr. Zamkov was closed, he himself was exiled to the camp. The story of state support for urine treatment is shyly hushed up, and if it is mentioned, it is only as an example ofhow convincing charlatans and gullible simpletons can be.
In fact, together with urine, the body gets rid of toxic and unnecessary substances. It is completely unreasonable to return them. From an aesthetic point of view, the method of treatment is also, to put it mildly, far from perfect. By the way, recently scientists from the University of Chicago have refuted one of the postulates of urine therapy about urine sterility. It turned out that urine is not sterile even in healthy people, not to mention those who suffer from urinary tract infections.
However, it should be mentioned that topical application of fresh urine (treating minor burns, cuts, insect bites) can be effective. This is due to the presence of corticosteroid hormones, which are excreted in the urine from the body: they have a wound-healing effect (for example, the hormone prednisolone is part of medicinal ointments).
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Kerosene treatment
Kerosene is a technical liquid, a product of oil refining with a characteristic odor, used in the old days in kerosene lamps. They also fueled it with a primus stove, a prototype of the current gas stove. Great-grandmothers remember what a unique "aroma" was in the dishes cooked on a primus stove. In folk medicine, kerosene has traditionally been used "to treat the throat," that is, to treat the throat for tonsillitis and diphtheria, as an external remedy for psoriasis. Like many other technical fluids, kerosene is an antiseptic. Apparently this, as well as the fact that it was always at hand and cheaply, explains its use as a medicine.
Modern healers have gone further. They are by no means limited to the treatment with kerosene of sore throat or skin diseases. It turns out that "miraculous" kerosene can treat almost everything - from age-related changes to cancer (the drug Todikamp is notorious among oncologists, which is kerosene infused with black walnuts).
In fact, kerosene is poisonous. When taken orally, it primarily affects the nervous system - both peripheral nerves and the brain. The body gets rid of kerosene, removing it through the respiratory tract and in the urine; both the lungs and the kidneys are damaged. If a single dose is large (the toxic dose is 20-50 ml) or poisoning occurs regularly in small doses, kidney damage becomes irreversible, and renal failure develops. When applied externally, kerosene is also toxic: constant exposure to it on the skin causes severe dermatitis, and sometimes eczema.
Soda treatment
Unlike previous "medicines", soda does not have an unpleasant odor, it is non-toxic, you can buy it at any grocery store, and a pack of soda costs the same as a loaf of bread. Is this not a miracle drug? Soda is proposed to treat cancer, obesity and much, much more. The theory of the need for alkalization of blood led to the popularity of soda as a medicine: such blood acquires the magical property of curing everything in its path, "running" through the body.
In fact, baking soda (like any other substance that enters the body through the digestive tract) does not penetrate directly into the bloodstream at all. It passes into the stomach, where gastric juice is located, which has an acidic reaction due to the hydrochloric acid contained in it. When an acid interacts with an alkali, a neutralization reaction occurs (that is, the alkali neutralizes the acid). The acidity of gastric juice decreases, and it loses the ability to digest food efficiently. In addition, bacteria now survive in it, which earlier, with normal acidity, could not have been. If this happens regularly, the appearance of diseases of the digestive system is inevitable. Once again: soda does not enter the blood and cannot get into. For soda to enter the bloodstream, it must be injected into the body intravenously. (Attention! Dangerous to life!) But even if she got there,then the theory of magical alkaline blood is devoid of any foundation, since blood already has an alkaline reaction.
The only somehow justified use of soda inside is its use for heartburn precisely in order to neutralize gastric juice. However, doctors do not recommend doing this: the interaction of alkali with acid occurs with the release of gas, which does not at all improve the sensations in the irritated heartburn of the esophagus. It is better to use medicines intended for the treatment of heartburn, and if they are not at hand, drink a cup of warm milk.
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Bioresonance therapy
This method of treatment differs from the previous ones in science, misleading the simple-minded followers who believe: since the method is described in complex scientific terms, and "supermodern" equipment is used for treatment, its effectiveness is beyond doubt.
Bioresonance is the mysterious ability of biological objects, including the human body, to enter into resonance with certain electromagnetic (as an option, torsion) fields emitted by special devices. By adjusting certain frequencies, supposedly you can achieve changes in the body - both positive and negative. According to the followers, bioresonance medicine is engaged in positive changes (for completeness, it should be added that, according to the same theory, negatively influencing radiation uses all kinds of hostile forces, depriving people of health).
The phenomenon of bioresonance has not been scientifically proven, but as a method of treatment it has been refuted more than once. There is not a single confirmed case of cure by the method of bioresonance, but the business of selling devices for bioresonance therapy, including for home use, is flourishing. It is not known what waves these devices generate, what frequency, what they affect, since the method is recognized as pseudoscientific, which means that this equipment is not subject to standardization and certification for all medical devices.
Homeopathy
Talking about quackery in medicine, it is impossible to ignore homeopathy. Surprisingly, this method, with absolutely unproven efficiency, or rather, with fully proven inefficiency, survived centuries.
Homeopathy is a treatment with highly diluted poisons, but it will not be a mistake to say that this treatment is highly diluted "everything in a row": for example, scabies nosode (scraping from the skin affected by an itch mite), crushed clay, extract from plants. The only condition is for the remedy to be natural.
Proponents of homeopathy are wasting their time trying to refute the relentless criticism of evidence-based medicine advocates, as the one who presents irrefutable proof of the effectiveness of homeopathic remedies has been awaiting a $ 1 million prize for many years. It is better to direct your energies towards receiving the award, at the same time and the critics of homeopathy will be defeated.
In some countries homeopathy is prohibited, in others it is allowed, but separated from mainstream medicine. Unfortunately, doctors of the post-Soviet space actively use homeopathic remedies in their practice along with conventional medicines, since their appointment is not regulated by anything. What they are guided by in this case, one can only guess.
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Treatment with dietary supplements
Dietary supplements, or biologically active additives, are another popular, but useless group of drugs in treatment. It is known that most of the substances necessary for the body are consumed by a person with food. Supplements are intended to enrich food and create favorable conditions for the body's fight against diseases (or for their prevention). Ideally, with the help of dietary supplements, you can only "feed" the body with useful substances, they do not have any other effect, and they should not. Nutritional supplements do not undergo certification, which is mandatory for drugs, their composition is not investigated and is not confirmed by anything other than the annotation provided by the manufacturer.
Dietary supplements are widely included in our life, and just like homeopathic remedies, doctors are willingly prescribed to their patients. Few people know, but vitamin complexes are also dietary supplements, since they contain vitamins in doses that are much lower than therapeutic ones. This means that there are too few vitamins there to have any effect on the body, but it is for the best, because large doses of a mixture of vitamins could lead to serious disorders.
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Supporters of these methods will object that they personally, as well as their friends, some kind of "treatment" helped a lot, which means that there is no doubt about the effectiveness. This is not true. An effective remedy is not one that helped someone, but one that has more or less the same effect, if not on everyone, then on the majority. Neither faith nor knowledge about the mechanism of action of the drug is required in this case: aspirin, for example, knocks down the temperature, regardless of whether you believe in it or not. A placebo, a dummy drug, has been found to "work" in about 10% of cases. This means that 10% of people, ingesting a sugar cube that imitates a pill, feel relief, and sometimes recover - such is the strength of the psyche. Why is the mechanism of action purely mental? Very simple. Charlatan miracles are not used by veterinarians: no effect,the body does not react properly, and animals, unlike humans, do not perceive "hanging noodles".
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Maria Kulkes Medical journalist About the author
Education: First Moscow State Medical University named after I. M. Sechenov, specialty "General Medicine".
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