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The $100B per year back pain industry is mostly a hoax

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Re: The $100B per year back pain industry is mostly a hoax

#81

Post by erentz »

seanwilson wrote: post #45

I thought this community would be more scientific...instead of anecdotes I'd rather see links to rigorous studies e.g. showing acupuncture or chiropractors work especially since these two forms of intervention have been subjected to decades of research already, have no plausible scientific basis and claim to treat many more things besides back pain. They should be held to the same standards as other medicine.

It's disturbing. I suspect most of this community would be anti-anti-vax (pro-vax?). And if one were to suggest on this forum that "I vaccinated my child and they got autism, therefore vaccines cause autism", they would be met with the appropriate skepticism. But in this thread people are professing "I had acupuncture and got better, therefore acupuncture works" and somehow that's considered defensible.

Re: The $100B per year back pain industry is mostly a hoax

#82

Post by CodeWriter23 »

seanwilson wrote: post #45

I thought this community would be more scientific...instead of anecdotes I'd rather see links to rigorous studies e.g. showing acupuncture or chiropractors work especially since these two forms of intervention have been subjected to decades of research already, have no plausible scientific basis and claim to treat many more things besides back pain. They should be held to the same standards as other medicine.

Maybe that's another signal (along with the linked article) that the "science" in this arena hasn't advanced to the point of being repeatable and predictable.

Re: The $100B per year back pain industry is mostly a hoax

#83

Post by HarryHirsch »

joelrunyon wrote: post #55
andreyf wrote: post #6

On the flip side, I had lower back pain of varying intensity for about two years before it got really bad really suddenly and I went to someone recommended by someone knowledgeable in the subject who fixed it in about 30 minutes of some serious stretching and twisting and turning [1]. Two months with not a hint of pain and I'm pretty sure this is yet another example of the medical industry being incentivized into ign…

The problem with doing exercises is it's not as simple as a pill or a surgery - it's a lifestyle change. Don't want to spam HN with this as I mentioned it earlier, but this is one of the issues we're trying to address with http://MoveWellApp.com - which is basically a personal mobility coach.

Get a dog instead. Unlike a stupid app you can't ignore the animal once you got it. I wouldn't have believed it, but walking the dog has improved my physical and psychological health considerably.

Re: The $100B per year back pain industry is mostly a hoax

#84

Post by d3ad1ysp0rk »

briantakita wrote: post #65

Oh, but the subscriptions continue. They "cure a disease" with vaccines my friend...In fact they increase as vaccines are compulsively imposed on almost everybody...Note that the vaccine manufactures are immune from liability, so a vaccine is a perfect injection point for bioaccumulative toxins which create more future customers. > Indeed, and it is surely for the same reason that there isn't yet a pill I can take to…

If you can provide any proof that vaccines cause long term diseases in any significant rate, I would appreciate it.

Re: The $100B per year back pain industry is mostly a hoax

#85

Post by seanwilson »

tptacek wrote: post #23
andreyf wrote: post #6

On the flip side, I had lower back pain of varying intensity for about two years before it got really bad really suddenly and I went to someone recommended by someone knowledgeable in the subject who fixed it in about 30 minutes of some serious stretching and twisting and turning [1]. Two months with not a hint of pain and I'm pretty sure this is yet another example of the medical industry being incentivized into ign…

This argument has always seemed pretty silly to me. Why, if this is how the market for medical services worked, would medical services cure any problem, when they could find ways to milk those problems for recurring revenue? Why aren't malaria or stomach ulcers "chronic manageable illnesses", rather than curable ones?

> This argument has always seemed pretty silly to me. Why, if this is how the market for medical services worked, would medical services cure any problem, when they could find ways to milk those problems for recurring revenue? Why aren't malaria or stomach ulcers "chronic manageable illnesses", rather than curable ones?

Yeah, surely if you were the first company to work out how to cure e.g. back pain or cancer you'd make an insane amount of money so you wouldn't keep it under wraps. Who exactly would stop you going to market with it? It's a silly conspiracy theory in my opinion.

Re: The $100B per year back pain industry is mostly a hoax

#86

Post by [deleted] »

cmurf wrote: post #43
Godel_unicode wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why would anyone ever fix it in a for-profit system? For the same reason any other problem gets solved in a for-profit system; the best solver of problems will be the best getter of dollars. See for instance Apple, Honda, Nike, Harvard, etc.

Except that's not what's happening. There's a massive pile of patients who will try literally anything, they are a price and solution inelastic market, and like they say, there's a sucker born every minute. Except the sucker is a patient that isn't ever allowed, by this particular market, to get a refund for bad advice and procedures. You have to basically be injured by the doctor to have standing to sue. The idea of…

[deleted]

Re: The $100B per year back pain industry is mostly a hoax

#87

Post by gopalv »

mamcx wrote: post #58
erentz wrote: post #47

http://sciencebasedmedicine.org/acupuncture-doesnt-work/

Not work? But except for the parent and a lot of other people.

> But except for the parent and a lot of other people.

I've seen placebos work too - most of my childhood homeopathic medication was probably placebos.

For a single person, the important factor for treatment is outcome - not statistical significance. If something makes you feel better, the outcome is achieved. I've also seen doctors exploit it, because their goal is aligned with your outcome - not studying the causation.

However, the problem is when you offer advice to a skeptic, the placebo effect is out of the picture.

And it can be worse, the time spent with the placebo might be lost time to the sufferer where it plays out as "If only you'd come to us earlier" elsewhere.

There are long-term consequences, when you offer medical advice without the expertise beyond your outcome ... outcomes heavily bifurcate for people who trust you (strong placebo effect or time lost waiting for results).

Re: The $100B per year back pain industry is mostly a hoax

#88

Post by CodeWriter23 »

erentz wrote: post #81
seanwilson wrote: post #45

I thought this community would be more scientific...instead of anecdotes I'd rather see links to rigorous studies e.g. showing acupuncture or chiropractors work especially since these two forms of intervention have been subjected to decades of research already, have no plausible scientific basis and claim to treat many more things besides back pain. They should be held to the same standards as other medicine.

It's disturbing. I suspect most of this community would be anti-anti-vax (pro-vax?). And if one were to suggest on this forum that "I vaccinated my child and they got autism, therefore vaccines cause autism", they would be met with the appropriate skepticism. But in this thread people are professing "I had acupuncture and got better, therefore acupuncture works" and somehow that's considered defensible.

"Anecdotal" is not the correct term. "Testimonial" is. People are relaying the truth they observed, which is testimony. Anecdote means more along the lines of hearsay, or repeating something from a third party as if it were testimonial.

Re: The $100B per year back pain industry is mostly a hoax

#89

Post by seanwilson »

CodeWriter23 wrote: post #82
seanwilson wrote: post #45

I thought this community would be more scientific...instead of anecdotes I'd rather see links to rigorous studies e.g. showing acupuncture or chiropractors work especially since these two forms of intervention have been subjected to decades of research already, have no plausible scientific basis and claim to treat many more things besides back pain. They should be held to the same standards as other medicine.

Maybe that's another signal (along with the linked article) that the "science" in this arena hasn't advanced to the point of being repeatable and predictable.

> Maybe that's another signal (along with the linked article) that the "science" in this arena hasn't advanced to the point of being repeatable and predictable.

Why would there be a treatment right now that works well but can't be shown to work in a controlled study? There's nothing special about back pain that makes it impossible to scientifically study.

Personally, I think the signal you mention is more because back pain is susceptible to placebo effect, coming and going by itself, clearing up by itself or because something else you recently changed around the same time is helping it. These reasons and more are why you have to do large scale controlled studies to find out if something works rather than relying on anecdotes.

I don't see many people giving anecdotes for how alternative medicine fixed their broken leg or cured their cancer.

Re: The $100B per year back pain industry is mostly a hoax

#90

Post by rwh86 »

briantakita wrote: post #56
tptacek wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument has always seemed pretty silly to me. Why, if this is how the market for medical services worked, would medical services cure any problem, when they could find ways to milk those problems for recurring revenue? Why aren't malaria or stomach ulcers "chronic manageable illnesses", rather than curable ones?

It's funny that we have billions poured into cancer research yet we still can't find that cure. I guess we need another cure cancer walkathon with pink ribbons cause those smart scientists almost have that cure... Perhaps there is a cure (or at least the causes are well-known), but it's being withheld from the public. Why would we ever want to fix problems that employ so many people & give them nice houses & yachts?

Actually, cancer treatment has made huge progress in the last decade or so. Melanoma, in particular, has gone from a virtual death sentence to being one of the more treatable forms.

The idea that we haven't found "the cure" to cancer is silly because cancer isn't one disease, it's many, down to the point of everyone's cancer being genetically different, and in fact different cancer cells being genetically different within an individual.

Cancer is all statistics. You slowly accumulate mutations in your tissues over your life time and if you accumulate enough mutations (especially in oncogenes[1]) you will get cancer. The only way to avoid it is to die of something else first.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oncogene

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