Synthesis Health Lab

The most common mistakes I see people make while trying to recover their health

The most common mistakes I see people make while trying to recover their health

I've been at this a while. Reversing complex chronic illness - both for my own health and that of 100s of patients. I've seen trends come and go and I see a lot of mistakes that very intelligent, well-meaning, driven, determined people make when trying to recover their health. Here

Methylation and Autoimmune Disease: What Functional Medicine Gets Wrong

Methylation and Autoimmune Disease: What Functional Medicine Gets Wrong

Just because someone has low methylation does not mean that this is the cause of their health problems or that it's helpful to boost methylation with supplements. Let me explain. The other day, I received a newsletter from a well-respected immunology course highlighting a paper on the association between low

Key References for the Cell Danger Response

Key References for the Cell Danger Response

I speak a lot about the Cell Danger Response, which is the three step process that all cells go through once triggered by stress, injury or infection in order to heal. This evolutionarily conserved sequence has been developed by Dr Bob Naviaux, MD, PhD and his team and is actually

Leucine: An Interesting Example of the 'Vegetarian Agenda' at Work

Leucine: An Interesting Example of the 'Vegetarian Agenda' at Work

I'm far more tolerant of different eating patterns than I was when I first trained in nutrition. Really, if you can mainly eat real food that's not been processed beyond recognition, you're well-ahead of the curve and the specific composition often becomes academic. Especially if you're in decent health. However,

How the World Came to Ice

How the World Came to Ice

As someone fascinated by the epistemology of medicine, I frequently come across an intriguing, pervasive value judgment that Industrial Medicine inflicts on traditional methods of caring for the sick, which is that direct observation and anecdote is to be scorned and rejected, even if it constitutes billions of observation points

Butts, Prions & Lethal Fraud

Industrial Medicine

Butts, Prions & Lethal Fraud

There is nothing cynical or impressionable in recognizing that the tobacco industry is corrupt and used its considerable resources to influence public policy for its own benefit, resulting in deaths and harms of millions of people. It did this by creating fraudulent research, paying scientists and politicians, and spending $billions

My Grandmother was a Law School Dropout

My Grandmother was a Law School Dropout

I had always thought that my grandmother had never gone to college, but that wasn't actually true. As a child growing up in a small village in Alsace, France, my grandmother wanted to be a journalist. She carried a notebook with her and enjoyed capturing stories of the happenings around

Neurologists “discover” acupuncture for headaches in 2022?!!

Neurologists “discover” acupuncture for headaches in 2022?!!

Dear Scitechdaily, I read your recent article “Doctors Discover that Acupuncture Can Significantly Reduce Chronic Headaches” with great interest. The article covers a randomized controlled study published a few weeks ago in the American Academy of Neurology Journal that included 218 participants and found that 68% of those receiving true

Is ADHD Primarily a Sleep Disorder?

Is ADHD Primarily a Sleep Disorder?

ADHD, while a bit of a mixed bag, is primarily (for about 80% of people with the diagnosis) a sleep disorder characterized by circadian disruption. Melatonin release is delayed by a couple of hours and sleep onset takes longer for these folks than healthy controls, showing low melatonin sensitivity. Most

Is ADHD mainly a sleep disorder?

Is ADHD mainly a sleep disorder?

ADHD, while a bit of a mixed bag, is primarily (for about 80% of people with the diagnosis) a sleep disorder characterized by circadian disruption. Melatonin release is delayed by a couple of hours and sleep onset takes longer for these folks than healthy controls, showing low melatonin sensitivity. Most

Clinical Training as a Form of Dissociation

Clinical Training as a Form of Dissociation

In the Integrative and Chinese medicine fields, it's incredibly common that the original drive to train and practice this type medicine came from the practitioner's own experience of illness and receiving help from these approaches where industrial medicine was limited. This was certainly true for me. I had quite a

Probiotics and Systems Behavior

complex systems

Probiotics and Systems Behavior

If you want to understand what the purpose of a given system is, then you need to look at its behavior. Recently, I read about the long-standing, wide-spread use of probiotics and prebiotics in the poultry industry. Chicken is the number one source of animal protein in the US and

According to the evidence, of course doctors should recommend acupuncture for pain

According to the evidence, of course doctors should recommend acupuncture for pain

Last week, the BMJ published an invited head to head debate as to whether doctors should recommend acupuncture for the treatment of pain. Below is my rapid response: What’s most interesting about this discussion of whether or not doctors should recommend acupuncture for pain is a total lack of

How to Summarise the Evidence Base

How to Summarise the Evidence Base

Earlier this week, a survey of the content of local acupuncturists websites performed by Daniel Ryan, a computer developer, was published in the New Zealand Medical Journal. The article was full of inaccuracies of all shapes and sizes and its successful journey through the peer-review process left many scratching their

What is the ‘Science-based’ treatment for the prevention of migraine?

What is the ‘Science-based’ treatment for the prevention of migraine?

Dear Science Based Medicine, Over the years, I’ve followed your work with great interest in an effort to better understand ‘real’ medicine and how it is that treatments can consistently do well in trials and yet, according to ‘Science,’ not really work at all. It’s been very informative

“Prevention of Migraine”: Acupuncture is Conspicuous by its Unexplained Absence

“Prevention of Migraine”: Acupuncture is Conspicuous by its Unexplained Absence

Last month, JAMA published a clinical summary of treatments for the prevention of migraine, a reprint from a publication called the Medical Letter. What’s amazing about this summary is that it manages to include a mind-bogglingly diverse collection of treatments – everything from drugs to supplements to experimental head gadgets,

Is ‘The Butcher of New England’ Harming Patients with Undisclosed Conflicts of Interest?

Is ‘The Butcher of New England’ Harming Patients with Undisclosed Conflicts of Interest?

Migraine is a common, debilitating condition that is notoriously difficult to treat1. While conventional treatments offer a poor effectiveness versus safety profile, acupuncture has been demonstrated to be at least as effective if not more effective than medication with far fewer side-effects2. For this reason, acupuncture is recommended in official

Wikipedia, We have a problem

Wikipedia, We have a problem

In a nutshell: Acupuncture has been increasingly embraced by conventional care as an efficacious treatment for a variety of conditions. Evidence of this support comes from recommendations for acupuncture in numerous medical guidelines, Cochrane systematic reviews demonstrating clinical effectiveness, and an explosion of research interest into acupuncture’s effectiveness and

The Trouble with your analysis, Dr Labos. Point by point.

The Trouble with your analysis, Dr Labos. Point by point.

This past Sunday, the Montreal Gazette published an opinion piece by a local doctor, Christopher Labos. The main thrust was a rehash of arguments made by a small group of self-proclaimed skeptics who are intent on explaining away the evidence of acupuncture’s effectiveness, such as the Cochrane Systematic Reviews

Professor Ernst, a few questions about the new NICE guidelines

Professor Ernst, a few questions about the new NICE guidelines

Dear Professor Ernst, I appreciate you’re busy, but I was wondering if you could explain a few things to me. As the only professor of complementary medicine on the planet, you have unique insight and perspective on the new updates to the NICE Guidelines for low back pain. I

The NICE Low Back Pain Guidelines: A Big Misunderstanding

The NICE Low Back Pain Guidelines: A Big Misunderstanding

On 24 March, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), a UK based organisation tasked with providing evidence-based clinical guidelines for the National Health Service, released a draft of its updated guidelines on the management and treatment of low back pain with and without sciatica. The biggest news

The UK’s Top Migraine Charity is about to reveal an effective, drug-free treatment for Migraine . . .

Did you know that there are 190,000 migraine attacks everyday in the UK? Or that an estimated 25 million days are lost from work or school every year because of migraine? 1 How about that preventative treatments for migraines include antidepressants, antihistamines, anticonvulsants and, for the 5% of migraineurs

Hello, my name is Normal

Biochemical Labs

The Problem With Being Normal

Many of us remember the desperate desire to fit into the crowd during our formative years, perhaps even to the point of doing things that in retrospect were not such a clever idea (I’m lookin’ at you, Barbed Wire Tattoo). And then, as we get a bit older and

Acupuncture, Science based medicine, and UFOs

Acupuncture, Science based medicine, and UFOs

Dear Dr Crislip, Thank you so much for your thoughtful response. I know you are a very busy man with many responsibilities and I really appreciate you taking the time to read and respond to my questions, as silly as they might seem to someone as accomplished and prestigious as

Dear Science Based Medicine, Just a Few Questions About Acupuncture

Dear Science Based Medicine, Just a Few Questions About Acupuncture

The folks at the Society for Science Based Medicine have some strongly negative views about acupuncture. I’m fairly sure that none of them have actually tried it, but acupuncture sounds pretty unscientific, doesn’t it? Anyways, I’m sure they’re right about everything (groups with ‘Science’ in the