Tuesday 23 June 2009

Acupuncture helps, but so does a back rub.

New guidelines tell GPs that they should now offer acupuncture to their patients with chronic back pain. This is the first time an alternative therapy has been backed in this way and smacks of desperation. What worries me most is their reasoning. The guidance says anyone whose pain persists for more than six weeks should be given a choice of several treatments, because the evidence about which works best is so uncertain. Translated for you into plain English it says ‘we have no idea so might as well try them all and hope one works.’ And this is supposed to have come from the National Institute of Clinical Excellence. Makes you think.

Results showing the ineffectiveness of most alternative remedies continue to pour out and so, in what I have to admit is a quite brilliant move, the peddlers of this snake oil have had a change of semantics. Instead of ‘alternative’ the treatments are now known as ‘complimentary’ i.e. they are now supposed to be used alongside traditional medical treatments. If that doesn’t sound like an admission of their uselessness I don’t know what is. (If I sound a little closed to other ways of treating illness then forgive me. I am not. What I am utterly opposed to is the dressing up of unsubstantiated mumbo jumbo witchery as science, coupled with a very selective reading of the ‘evidence’.

The truth is that back pain is difficult to treat and rarely has an easily identifiable cause. It one on a list of many heart-sink complaints that GPs dread hearing, like ‘I’m tired all the time, doctor’ or ‘I don’t feel right in myself.’ For many doctors this decision will come as mana from heaven -finally something to help get the patients out of the consulting room door on time AND they feel like we have actually been helpful. Doctor happy, patient happy, but commonsense, logic and 200 years of medical science have just been shat upon. Trials looking at the efficacy of acupuncture have shown that it helps a bit, for some people, but so does sham acupuncture (sticking needles anywhere) and so does jabbing the skin with toothpicks. And come to think of it so does a cup of green tea, a good chat with a friendly looking therapist and a back rub. And perhaps that is the key: time and a sympathetic ear, certainly lacking from many GP consultations today. If time and money were spent on improving access to GPs and the amount of time they can spend with their patients I’m certain that many chronic conditions would improve, without the need to fool and insult patients with sham quackery.

Tuesday 16 June 2009

Welcome to my very first post

In here I would like to write about things I am so often asked but for some reason have not yet found the time or space to answer.

Thank you all for the lovely emails to my website and messages on my Facebook profile, they really made me realize how keen you are to find out more about getting fully fit, healthy eating, wellbeing and other such stuff. I'm also going to write in general about things that interest me, and hopefully they might interest you too.

This week has been very very busy, filming in Southend on Sea today for my new Channel Four show about cosmetic surgery -The Ugly Face of Beauty. It's going to be a cracking show and I hope will make people realise the crying need for more regulation and control over the cosmetic surgery industry. And we filmed some amazing surgeries too.



Londoners need a trendy sex clinic

Despite decades of pleading from doctors to take the nation's sexual health more seriously, the Government is only just getting round to addressing the issue.
Its answer, as is so often the case, is to throw money at the problem, and so bring on a shiny new walk-in centre in Soho, complete with designer wallpaper and wi-fi access.

The glossy brochure looks like an advert for a new Grouchoesque members' club and its pages boast that "the colours, finishes and quality of materials and furnishings have created an inviting, comfortable, reassuring and stylish environment".


My gut reaction was to groan at the vast sums of taxpayers' money wasted on hardwood flooring and Cole & Son's wallpaper instead of medical supplies but the great difference between sexual medicine and most other specialities is that its success relies on getting people through the door and screened, not on expensive drugs or high-tech equipment.

Many STIs do not cause any symptoms and so people need to volunteer themselves for regular screening if we are to get on top of the problem.

Most NHS clinics I've worked in were around the back of the main hospital building, seedy, dirty, badly lit and certainly not places you wanted to be seen coming out of. Even the discipline itself, ungraciously called veneriology, was part of the dermatologist's remit. It's now a glorious speciality in its own right.
This new clinic offers exactly the same services as most other GUM clinics but the big difference is that it is trendy and welcoming, even, dare I say it, "cool".

Here's hoping that the bright young things agree with me and don't mind being seen coming out, for then our battle is half won.