Edzard Ernst, scourge of CAM therapists: He recommends St John’s Wort for depression, and other things you didn’t know

Serendipitously, just after I had joined Twitter and was considering writing about osteopathy, a tweet appeared that Edzard Ernst would be giving a talk in Eastbourne to a local sceptics’ society.  Now Ernst was the first ever Professor of Complementary Medicine, at Exeter University.  He is pretty down on osteopathy, and I remember the day…

Three ways to save a life – do them now

This is an update of a previous post, with new material added October 2016. Rod Stewart had a brief stint working as a decorator before leopardskin-clad superstardom struck: “You learn a lot about yourself from doing physical work”, he said, ” and what I learnt was that I don’t like physical work”.  I was reminded of…

How to be an evidence-based cranial osteopath

The enigmatic case of cranial osteopathy: Evidence versus clinical practice Pages 1-4 IJOM September 2016 Rafael Zegarra-Parodi, Francesco Cerritelli Well, and doesn’t this sound intriguing?  It’s the opening piece in the most recent IJOM and seems to have been prompted by the big French physiotherapists’ study of Osteopathy in the Cranial Field (OCF).  The authors…

General Osteopathic Council Meeting July 2016

First things first.  It had been a lively time in politics since the previous meeting, and I approached Tower Bridge Road prepared for anything.  But despite the toppling of leaders, the discombobulation of the political landscape, the intrigue, the treachery, the kitten heels, the venomous, hilarious twitterfest, the sheer unstoppable,  unadulterated drama on the news…