Researchers at UCLA recently announced the results of a study of mindfulness medication among people with HIV. This isn’t the first team to look at the use of stress-reducing psychological and spiritual practices among people with HIV/AIDs. But it is the first team to look at the right outcome measure.

Studies of the impact of alternative and complementary therapies in immune-mediated diseases (chronic inflammatory processes, cancer, and HIV/AIDS) typically use mortality as the outcome of interest. You can make a good argument that this is fitting: avoiding death is, of course, the most ultimately meaningful outcome. Read more →

The randomized controlled trial (RCT) is the gold standard for evaluating whether or not a therapeutic modality works. In RCTs testing the effect of acupuncture to improve symptoms, researchers often use “sham acupuncture” as a control procedure, on the theory that sticking needles into points that are not on acupuncture meridians should have no effect.

The problem with this approach is that there is really no such thing as sham acupuncture. Read more →

I’ve been looking into violent deaths lately. And now I understand a few things.  Mostly, I understand what we don’t know about violent death in the United States. For instance, consider one of the most horrific kinds of violent death — mass shootings in public places like malls and offices and schools.

How often does this happen somewhere in the United States?

Nobody knows. Read more →

In recent years, there’s been a resurgence of interest in placebos. Not the kind that are used to minimize bias in clinical trials, but the kind that doctors knowingly give to patients.

In a recent survey of more than 200 doctors practicing in academic medical centers, 45% reported that they had given placebos to patients in the course of providing clinical care. Nearly all the physicians surveyed agreed with the statement that “placebos have therapeutic effects,” and the condition for which they believed placebos offered the most psychological and physiological benefit was pain. Read more →

Music not only soothes the savage beast; it heals the critically ill.

A study in Critical Care Medicine evaluated the mechanisms of music-induced relaxation in critically ill patients. The researchers measured blood pressure and heart rate, brain electrical activity, serum levels of stress hormones and cytokines, requirements for sedative drugs, and level of sedation before and after an hour of listening to piano sonatas through headphones. Read more →

I spend my days poring over medical research reports and databases, looking for high-quality evidence to build compelling arguments. And, when it comes to mind-body treatment modalities, I can’t find it. I’m not sure I want what it will take to get it, either.

I find small studies that lack control groups or testing for statistical significance. I find review articles that end like this: “More trials are needed” or “Future research… must be more rigorous in the design and execution of studies and in the analysis and reporting of results.” Read more →