What I never understood about the arguments surrounding CST is that two different “medically trained” people can differ on the basics of whether the bones at the back of the skull are moveable or not.
Well, not exactly.
Bone has a certain amount of flexibility, I will certainly grant, but the idea that you can move the plates of the skull around by pressing on them, and that this will treat the usual huge range of chronic diseases, has not been proven.
It seems to depend on your definition of “moveable”. If you mean that you can cause a certain amount of flexing in cadaveric bone, yes, it is moveable. Bone is not perfectly rigid - nothing is. The idea that it is normal for your skull plates to flex noticeably along the cranial sutures, and that this is what is causing your migraines/backache/chronic fatigue syndrome/dandruff/whatever is a couple of orders of magnitude different.
Regards,
Shodan
Only anecdotal information here. My wife, who is a massage therapist, had terrible back pain at the point where the hospital inserted the epidural during labor. After fourteen months of pain, during which she has seen other massage therapists and a chiropractor, she had a session with a CST practicioner who was a friend from work. One session with her knocked it out, and I have no reason to believe it was anything other than CST that helped her.
Now I’m a skeptic, and I’ve had CST from this practicioner before. While nothing was wrong with me that needed to be fixed, I did have an overall good feeling after the session. But if it works for my wife, I’m not going to tell her she can’t do it. Better than hearing her complain about her back pain…
Might the placebo effect be a reason?
I am certainly glad your wife is feeling better.
But in the abstract, what I (and others) are arguing is that there is no evidence that CST is what “worked for your wife”. Just the opposite, in fact. If this CST person were actually able to move the plates around in anyone’s head, your wife would probably have forgotten all about her back in the general unpleasantness of dealing with a skull fracture.
But what should always be kept in mind is that there are other things that are responsible for the apparent “success” of lots of quack treatments - [list=A][li]Most problems, especially chronic ones, come and go over time, and/or resolve on their own, and[*]the placebo effect.[/list][/li]
The way to tell what really works, instead of apparently works, is to do double blind testing. Which does not seem to indicate that CST actually does anything beyond what I mentioned above.
Regards,
Shodan
Actually, the whole quote from the BCC study is:
So that pretty much sums up the problems, as well as the reasons why I don’t feel I can totally dismiss the whole thing right now (everybody has to make up their own mind on this one, of course.) The argument against it has always been that the cranial bones are totally fused in adults and there is no cranial rhythm, and both of these are now known to be incorrect statements. However, there’s a very big leap between that and proving that anybody can detect a rhythm with their hands or affect the movement of the bones, or that this cures anything. That is absolutely true. I really don’t know why researchers are still arguing against this therapy on the basis that its two main tenets don’t exist (and obviously I’m not talking about people on this board,) because much better grounds do exist on which to build that argument, as we can clearly see. I still want to find those articles, though. I’ve been on a search for the journals. 
The regular library doesn’t have them, but Vanderbilt does, and one of the best-kept secrets in Nashville is that they HAVE to let you in to do research whether you paid $40,000 a year to go to the school or not. 
I think the difference between “totally immobile” and the degree of mobility detectable in the studies cited is mostly a matter of semantics. It’s sort of like saying, “I can tear this bridge apart with my bare hands, because the steel suspension girders are flexible”. Yes, steel is flexible, and skull bone is, too. But that doesn’t mean that you can tear apart bridges, or that CST works.
If you see my point.
For all practical purposes, the plates of the skull cannot be moved by CST. Fortunately, since otherwise CST would likely be fatal in a large number of cases. And there is no effect that CST can produce that has been shown to be greater than placebo. Thus, by Occam’s Razor, we conclude that there is nothing to it.
The basic tenets of CST have been disproven - they cannot detect any “rhythms”, they cannot move the plates of the skull in adults thru hand pressure, and misalignment of skull plates has not been implicated in the origin or progression of any of the diseases CST claims to treat.
I wouldn’t exactly recommend “keeping an open mind” because you can flex cadaveric skull bone a few milli-microns in an engineering lab.
Regards,
Shodan
Oh, hi. Massage therapist weighing in.
In my Complementary Modalities class, we had a mini-course in CST. Can’t vouch for the efficacy one way or another, because I haven’t ever had a full-on treatment, and I haven’t actually used CST in my practice, but…
I have felt the cranio-sacral pulse, both on myself and on classmates (it’s easier to feel on someone else). And I have moved cranial bones. We’re talking very, very slight movement here, something on the order of one hundredth of an inch, but feeling someone’s frontal bone move under your fingers is a very freaky sensation. We’re also talking about very light pressure and lots and lots of patience, so, no, skulls do not get fractured.
I think a lot of the problems with research on hands-on modalities are related to the fact that, well, how do you do a double-blind study? Either you’re touching the person or you’re not. You can’t really give someone a “fake touch” as a placebo, the way you can give a person an inert substance instead of a real drug.
The only way I can see of doing a study on touch centered modalities is to compare them with people who received more conventional treatments and/or people who weren’t treated at all.
Actually, with CST, you probably could do a study with a phony treatment, by placing your fingers at the center of the frontal and parietal bones, instead of along the sutures.
Also, I think CST would only be effective in treating certain ailments if that particular ailment was actually caused by poor movement in the cranio-sacral system. So, to pull a figure out of thin air,let’s say, 10% of ADHD cases are caused by restrictions in the movement of the cranial bones. If the patient (or his/her parents) have tried the more conventional treatments and they either didn’t work or had side effects that were worse than the condition that they were supposed to be treating, what the hey, why not try CST? The worst that could happen is that you’re out the price of the treatment and have been subjected to some pleasant human touch. At best, the patient is one of that particular 10% and the condition is successfully treated.
How could you possibly tell this? Such a tiny distance is imperceptible to human touch.
If light pressure can cause these bones to move, won’t that happen every time you brush your hair, put on a hat, or go to sleep? Wouldn’t the entire human race be suffering all these symptoms all the time?
Definitely making the case for making sure your hat fits properly.
Actually, yes, that tiny movement is palpable. It feels like the bone is moving a couple of inches. And, like I said, it takes a lot of patience- I’ve sat for several minutes with my hands on a head waiting for that bone to move.
Personally, I don’t think it’s so much the pressure causing the bone to move as it is the warmth of the hands and just the fact that being gently touched helps a person get their mellow on warming the surrounding fascia and muscles (yes, we do have scalp muscles, kids) and allowing the body to relax to the point where the bones move on their own. In other words, the therapist is simply facilitating the body doing what it does naturally.
But since the bones don’t move naturally, you aren’t doing anything of the sort, are you?
Regards,
Shodan
So, are you asking me to deny the evidence of my own senses, or calling me a liar?
The cerebral/spinal pulse does exist, the bones do have natural movement. The proof? You can feel it. Go ahead. Try it. Gently rest the tips of your fingers along the sutures around your frontal bone (or borrow a friend’s frontal bone- it is easier to feel on other people, dunno why). Sit quietly for a few minutes.
It’s palpable. The bone rocks ever so slightly as the cerebrospinal fluid flows from the spine into the skull and back again.
This isn’t some kind of esoteric energy woo-woo thing, it’s a physical phenemonen that anyone with fingers and a bit of patience can feel.
Is it possible that after sitting there for several minutes waiting to feel the bone move your subconscious mind fills in the feeling of movement where none has actually happened?
It’s kind of the same idea as putting people into a house or abandoned institution and telling them that there are ghosts, that there will be strange noises and strange sightings, and then waiting for their minds to start ‘playing tricks’ on them. The mind certainly does have the power to create the perception of something being there when nothing is.
There is a long history of people’s sense being fooled when they want to detect something. People saw canals on Mars when they looked hard enough, but they just weren’t there. The sensation seems more likely to come from you, rather than the patient since objective tests cannot detect the movement.
You did mention that you could feel the bones move “a couple of inches”, which is what triggered my response. This “pulse” is the same sort of thing as the movement of the bones of the skull in adults - you need some pretty damn sophisticated equipment to detect it, and people who think that they can feel it are fooling themselves.
Besides, the notion that your hands are warming the bones and muscles and making the plates move is equally foolish. By that reasoning, going out in the sun without a hat would cause your skull to deform. Warming, right?
:rolleyes:
Regards,
Shodan
Um, go back and read my post, you know, in context?
As for the sun “deforming” the skull- well, most likely it would expand slightly, as just about any other substance would. They put expansion joints in the sidewalk for a reason, you know. Most likely this expansion would result in the cranial bones moving more easily.
As for the “fooling myself into feeling it” issue- sorry, but I’m just not that suggestible. I actually wish I was, since my self-hypnosis tapes would be a lot more effective. In that same Complementary Modalities class, we had a unit on Polarity Therapy, which resulted in my arriving at the conclusion that PT was a crock. If I tricked myself into being able to feel the CS pulse, and into feeling my classmates cranial bones move, then I should have similarly been able to fool myself into feeling more relaxed and energetic when my classmate alternately squeezed my wrist and elbow, or rocked my leg and hip, etc.
Actually, you are. I am. Everyone is. This is why we have double blind testing and objective measurements.
I did. “A couple of inches” is context?
Regards,
Shodan
I see several worrisome indicators in Anise’s posts. There’s the false argument that a questionable treatment must be “proved worthless” rather than proven to be valid (the basis of all legitimate medical investigation). Then we have willingness to overextrapolate from scanty data (the existence of a “rhythm”). Finally, when science provides contrary answers, there’s the seeking out of anecdotes:
I participate in an herbalism forum which frequently goes off an various alt med tangents, and this is a standard response to exhaustive debunking of all sorts of dubious remedies ("Well, you didn’t have it done yourself, so I want to hear from someone who did, even though I know that such anecdotes are essentially worthless).
The trap that I see Anise falling into is wanting to believe in this badly enough to keep searching out contrary opinions and studies until some flimsy supporting structure looks attractive enough - ignoring the large body of contrary evidence and common sense.
As Telemark points out, unfortunately everybody is that suggestible.
I would have said the same as you a few years back, I really believed I was the least suggestible person imaginable. I believe in nothing supernatural, I don’t see the “looks” in people faces that others do (that coincidentally affirm their preconceived notion, as in “he looks guilty!”). All that good stuff.
But, when I was in high school (I think), and going to have a filling done, the dentist put the mask on my face to give me “laughing gas”. I almost instantly started chuckling and laughing.
Well,
- It doesn’t really make you laugh.
- He hadn’t released the gas yet.
I was quite embarrassed, you can imagine. But I learned that if you are human, you are susceptible to suggestion.