The Dr. Grisanti site(s) Bridget Burke linked to provide a good indication of the parade of woo that underlies “functional medicine”. Chiropractic, homeopathy, dubious nutritional advice…apparently just about anything can be given a gloss of respectability if it’s labeled “functional medicine” and used to demonstrate how nasty Western Allopathic Physicians are ignoring the Root Causes of disease*.
If you follow the magic link to another of Doc Grisanti’s sites, there’s an entertaining graphic showing a horrific cesspool of subterranean causes of disease, including “Toxic Emotions”, “Toxic Chemicals” and “Detoxification Imbalances”.
Fear of imaginary and unproven “toxins” is a major obsession in multiple forms of woo, and "detoxification’ is a lucrative means of [del]fleecing the unwary[/del] drawing out the bad humors.
No doubt Dr. Grisanti does indeed have access to an “avalanche” of citations and quotes he thinks support his claims. Woo-ists often cut-and-paste lengthy lists of articles in an attempt to overwhelm critics who cannot realistically investigate and debunk every one in the span of a forum discussion. Typically, such citations are 1) outdated, sometimes ludicrously so, 2) irrelevant, or 3) involve small pilot studies, often in cell cultures or rats, and are not extrapolatable to humans.
It would make for an interesting discussion if Grisanti could point to real differences in how “functional” doctors supposedly practice (as compared to mainstream physicians), and show that such differences translate into significantly improved clinical outcomes (using large-scale controlled trials as evidence).
Don’t hold your breath though.
*the word disease is often rendered as “dis-ease” by wooists for some peculiar reason. If you see a practitioner and/or website going on about “dis-ease”, it’s a prime indicator that you have entered the Woo Zone.
Oh, sure, but no echoes.
Here’s an example of a practice that has glommed on to “functional medicine” in a big way.
Notice the heavy emphasis on innovative “nutrition” (inventing deficits that would have nutritionists shaking their heads, or maybe banging them against walls), “detoxification” (your poor liver has no idea of how to process toxins unless it’s helped by special foods and supplements) and other services to help achieve Integration and Synergy (including the therapy dog, a fawn pug named Baby who is available on request).*
*I sort of like the idea of therapy dogs in general, but a pug strikes me as a disaster, especially if you have respiratory problems and there’s a pug snuffling and wheezing in the background.
That’s Johns Hopkins, thank you very much. I spent 8 years there, learning from the likes of Victor McKusick, Philip Tumulty, Sol Snyder, J. Alex Haller, Hamilton Smith, and other giants in their fields. One thing I learned from them was critical thinking.
You’ve never heard of John Hopkins medical school in Tijuana?
Science is a process, not a thing to be proven. First you come up with a hypothesis and make your predictions, and you test your ideas, and revise both your tests and your theories as necessary.
You’re right on; if all these people have is a hypothesis that has not yet been tested, it’s not science.
Well, if functional medicine can get rid of Dane Cook, I may have to rethink the whole thing.
:smack:
Ooh, I forgot about that one. And I applied there, too…
What has become of Dr. Grisanti? I sure hope he didn’t get buried in that “avalanche” of overwhelmingly supportive scientific literature he was boasting about.
This does appear to be mostly crock, but a couple of things they raise about individualized medicine are cutting edge science. There is a movement particularly in the cancer field to tailor treatments to individual patients rather than using a one size fits all treatment regimen. As we gain better molecular understanding of disease cause we might be able to treat different patients differently based on such things as their sensitivity to medication, tolerance to chemo therapy side effects, or the molecular pathway that caused their cells to become cancerous. So this may be where the “scientific-based” claim can come from.
That said, treating imbalances of this or that without proper peer review, sounds like going back to Humorism
M D Anderson Cancer Center has an Institute for Personalized Cancer Therapy.
Rather different from what Doctor Grisanti is peddling.
Number of times “imbalances,” a non-scientific and undefined term, is mentioned in the Institute for Personalized Cancer Therapy Page: 0
Number of times it is mentioned in the Functional Medicine page: 14
Here’s my new slogan: “Humorism – it’s a hoot!”
Sounds like an imbalance to me…
So, how are things going at old F. U. ?
Just to be absolutely clear, I was in no way suggesting that there is anything at all to recommend Functional Medicine. Rather that there is an aspect of true science that they are badly misconstruing. In the same way that certain people having reactions to vaccines is real science, but the anti-vaxers are full of it.
There’s a page on the Functional Medicine University website (it’s an online “institution”, by the way) where you can search for FU grads in your area to get personalized imbalance therapy and suchlike.
Using the maximum 250 mile radius, my search came up with approximately 20 people whose degrees I recognized.* 16 were chiropractors, 3 were naturopaths, and 1 was listed as an MD.
I detect a pattern…
this is a problem in evaluating practitioners. What to make of someone who calls herself Dawn Cutlet, N.D., N.B.I.L.D*., M.I.D.C.T.***?
**Naturopathic Bozo Interested In Large Deposits
***Master of Imbalance Detoxification and Crystal Therapy
I hope the last one wandered in there by mistake.
It starts well and then goes downhill really fast
Within 100 miles of me, they have 4 listings - 2 are chiropractors in the region, 1 was a chiropractor in Singapore (wtf? - so not within 100 miles), and 1 is a “M.S., N.H.D.” I have no clue what that is - acronym finder lists the folowing possilities:
National History Day
National Hydrography Dataset
Natural Heritage Division
Non-Homogeneity Detector
Neocron Holo-Deck
National Heritage Database
So I’m assuming that it’s some kind of woo-generating holodeck.