Osteopathic and naturopathic approaches to Influenza: Part 1

NOTE: Part 2 of this posting can be found by going to this link
http://massagemag.com/massage-blog/bodywork-blog/
A reality check this morning (Sunday Times, London) put into perspective the questionable severity of the impending pandemic:

• In the past week around 17 people have died from this strain of flu, allegedly caused by the H1N1 virus (aka Swine flu, or Mexican flu).
• In the same week approximately 5000 people have died from conventional, common-or-garden flu (and a further 35,000+ from AIDS!)

Yes I know, it's early days, and we may indeed see this turn into a devastating world-wide event - although to be sure it's not so long ago since we braced ourselves for the arrival of so-called Avian (aka bird) flu - linked to the H5N1 virus.
Will swine flu go the way of bird flu?

Possibly, but not until a huge amount of economic damage has been done to whole economies (Mexico) and to numerous industries (travel, entertainment, catering, farming etc) with a balancing vast increase in profits for various drug houses (and face-mask manufacturers).
It's just a few days since my last post but I feel somewhat exercised by the whole influenza hysteria that's been bombarding us from all sides for the past 10 days - and am moved to use part of this gloriously sunny Corfu afternoon, to offer a few thoughts and references.
As the title suggests there is a part 2 of this post - because I am using this topic to also involve a second blog, written under the umbrella of Massage Magazine:Chaitow's Bodywork Blog, where I have expanded on the information provided in this post.
Before setting about the highlighting of possibly useful, hopefully interesting, information about osteopathic and naturopathic perspectives on influenza in general, and pandemics in particular, I want to mention a news report that caught my eye today (London, Sunday Times).
This represents a variant on the old idea that a dog biting a man has limited newsworthiness, whereas when a man bites a dog ... that's news!

The headline was:

Man infects pigs with swine flu on farm in Canada

The story informs us that a farm worker in Canada has infected a herd of pigs with swine flu, the first documented case of the virus being passed from humans to animals.
The herd of pigs tested positive for the H1N1 virus after the worker returned from Mexico with the disease.
The herd has been quarantined...... and both the man and the 200 pigs are recovering.

Osteopathy and the great flu pandemic of 1918
As mentioned above...there is more information on this topic in my other blog.
I strongly recommend a diligent read through of an article written in 2007 by two leading American osteopathic physicians (Raymond Hruby and Keasha Hoffman), entitled: "Avian influenza: an osteopathic component to treatment"
This carefully crafted article includes a summary of the data (see below) as well as the methodology employed - various manual modalities that enhance immune function and increase resistance.
They note:
"The known data regarding the success of DOs [Doctors of osteopathy] treating influenza were gathered from the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic and was first presented by R. Kendric Smith, MD, in a paper in which he described the "osteopathic conquest of disease in which medicine has failed" [Smith 1920]. Doctor Smith reported that the mortality rate for a total of 110,120 patients with influenza treated by 2445 DOs was 0.25%. Mortality due to influenza in patients receiving traditional medical care, however, was estimated to be 5% to 6%. Patients with pneumonia treated with standard medical care had a mortality rate estimated at 33% overall, and as high as between 68% and 78% in some large cities. Of 6258 patients cared for by osteopathic physicians the death rate due to pneumonia was 10%.
In a paper delivered at the American Osteopathic Association meeting in Chicago in 1919, Riley [1920] reported similar low rates of morbidity and mortality from influenza in patients under the care of DOs, in large cities such as New York and Chicago. This information suggests that DOs achieved a high success rate in the treatment of patients during the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic. This may have been due in part to their use of an additional effective therapeutic method – osteopathic manipulative treatment (OMT)."

Hruby and Hoffman are NOT suggesting that these methods alone should be employed currently - nearly 100 years later - but that they do deserve to be incorporated into management of both influenza and pneumonia.
There is abundent evidence of the usefulness of osteopathic approaches in pneumonia, in where marked reduction in antibiotic use as well as far shorter hospital stays, resulted from introduction of OMT (osteopathic manipulative treatment). [Noll et al 2000]
Hampton et al (2003) - and others - have shown that aspects of immune function are improved, albeit for a short time, after the osteopathic treatment methods are used.
I touched on some of the evidence in my April 9th post, in this blog, which asked whether osteopathy in the UK was 'losing its' soul?

And also....
Other aspects of defence against possible infection - particularly related to viruses - should include consideration (and implementation - if you're convinced) of naturopathic methods, such as :

• Forms of hydrotherapy that have been shown in clinical trials to improve resistance to infection
• Supplementation, with vitamin D in particular

I'll have expanded on these, and other, topics, as well as the idea of osteopathic preventive methods, in my other blog.

Conspiracy?
Without wishing to raise the possibility of a conspiracy theory, linked to the prospects of mammoth profits for pharmaceutical companies associated with anti-flu medication, and ultimately of course mass vaccination products - a question raised by a reader in The Sunday Times (Sven, from Stuttgart), does strike a chord:
"I would really like to know more about ties between WHO officials and certain parts of the pharmacological industry? "

Hmmmm
...and by the way, go to you-tube to see an instructive clip from a US Congressman on the topic of 'the pandemic'

References
Hampton D, Evans R, Banihashem M: Lymphatic pump techniques induce a transient basophilia.J Osteopath Med (Australia) 2003, 6:41
Noll D Shores J Gamber R et al 2000 Benefits of osteopathic manipulative treatment for hospitalized elderly patients with pneumonia Jn Am. Ost Assoc. 100(12):776 -782
Riley GW. Osteopathic success in the treatment of influenza and pneumonia. JJn Am. Ost Assoc. 2000;100:315–319. [August 1919. Reprinted in JAOA] Smith RK. One hundred thousand cases of influenza with a death rate of one-fortieth of that officially reported under conventional medical treatment. JAOA. 1920;20:172–175. [Reprinted in: Jn Am. Ost Assoc, 2000;100:320–323]

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The nonsense of "evidence based medicine": Meet PieMan

Its the 1st of May, and today in Corfu it's been intermittently blustery and baking.
Alkmini busied herself making a traditional wreath, constructed from leaves and flowers, gathered as we wandered through the spring abundence of our garden and orchard.
Then it was back to work to complete a tedious task, trawling through revision of page-proofs for the 3rd edition of Fibromyalgia Syndrome(FMS): A practitioner's Guide to Treatment, due out early next year.
Sasha's back in Athens .... teaching, translating, painting, organising a conference .....so we wont have the joy of her company as we did last Mayday - see her last year's effort above!

The essential procedure of proof-reading involves numerous simultaneous areas of focus - looking for typos; ensuring that captions to illustrations actually match the pictures they describe; being sure not to miss the cryptic "see page 000" messages, that require identifying what page 000 actually is in the manuscript, so that cross referencing takes the reader to the right page; marking carefully in the text where the publishers should place icons to inform the reader that an accompanying video clip is available to demonstrate the particular topic (for example autogenic training relaxation, or breathing rehabilitation, or a specific manual method of treatment)..... and so on and on, through the 400+ pages.
And then it was done....and ready for electronic transmission back to Edinburgh, chapter by chapter, via the wondrous technology, we now work with so casually.
Because of excessive pressure on the local network I avoid using email attachments and simply upload to the excellent "yousendit" website

One of the most important processes in revising a text such as this is to supply validation - as far as it exists - for the numerous therapeutic methods discussed. Of course, individual chapters authored by others (see below) require that this task falls to their attention as they produce their particular focus on this widespread condition.

• What are the possible causes of FMS?
  
• What methods have been shown to be useful in treating FMS?
  
• The link between FMS and CFS; Manual methods of treating FMS
• Differential diagnosis & the use of dry needling for FMS (Jan Dommerholt and Tamer S. Issa)
• Integrated medicine and FMS
  
• Hydrotherapy and FMS (Eric Blake)
• Therapeutic Touch and FMS (Pat Winstead-Fry and Rebecca Good)
• Acupuncture and FMS (Peter Baldry)
• Microcurrent and FMS (Carolyn McMakin)
• Cognitive Behavioural approaches to FMS (Paul Watson)
• Metabolic rehabilitation (i.e. thyroid) and FMS (John C. Lowe)
• Fibromyalgia and the endocannabinoid system (John M. McPartland)
• ....and more

For those chapters that I am responsible for (those above with no author name) this task is fascinating.
Key words inserted into various data bases yield literally thousands of pieces of research, through which it is important to search for up-to-date information that might be useful to the reader of the book.
Meet Brian Kaplan's Pieman
Thinking about this brought my mind to the current efforts of a colleague with whom I work as part of the New Medicine Group, when I am in London - Brian Kaplan MD.
Brian - a fellow ex-South African - is a fascinating practitioner - who employs, among other approaches, homeopathy and Provocative Therapy (a form of psychotherapy).
He's brilliantly outspoken in his antipathy to the demands of mainstream medical science, who - he points out with gusto - have not looked at their own seriously deficient lack of evidence for many of the methods used regularly by GPs and specialists alike.
Look at the pieman chart above - and you'll see that, based on evidence published by the British Medical Journal, current orthodox, mainstream, medicine can claim that there is 'good evidence' that roughly 13% of what it does is useful.
For the rest, the proportions of commonly used medical treatment, that is supported by good evidence, looks like this:

• 23% is likely to be beneficial
• 8% is a trade-off between benefits and harm
• 6% is unlikely to be beneficial
• 4% is likely to be ineffective or harmful
• 46% is of "unknown effectiveness"

So, the next time you hear an 'expert' saying that alternative, complementary or integrated medicine has no foundation, and is based on little or no evidence - think hard about who is saying this, and why?
For my part, having spent many months trawling 'the evidence' in relation to FMS, I know with certainty that much can be done to help sufferers....I've seen, and reported the documentation!

So my Mayday rambling blog post has taken us from the making of wreaths in the garden in Corfu, to my revision blues, and the coming of pieman (via Brian Kaplan's efforts)

I hope it's been amusing, illuminating - and wish someone would comment as to which....

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