Wednesday 13 October 2010

A Handy Alternative Therapy Flowchart

Believe it or not, I don't really have a particular interest in alternative therapies, I just can't help picking at the scabs of alt-med credulity.

However, if perchance you are a little disillusioned with allopathy, here's a handy little flowchart to help you find the ideal alternative therapy to meet your needs.






41 comments:

Paul S. Jenkins said...

Glad you included Reiki, 'cos, you know, you can't touch it.

jaclong said...

Surely ROFL'ing is the best form of medicine - in which case this post is another big healing win.
No Ida what Rolf'ing is all about.

Reafdaw said...

Brilliant. The setting head on fire got me. I bust out laughing.

Diane Jacobs said...

Fabulous. Thank you for building this. You need to make another page for all the ones you missed, but this is a great start. I've linked it around.

William Satire (Jr.) said...

Quite possibly the best thing you've done. Mainly because, in a weird way, it actually works as a flowchart - despite the mickey taking!

Neuroskeptic said...

I was in Vietnam a couple of years back and I noticed that many people there had these perfectly round marks on their skin.

At first I thought it was some kind of (very neat) tropical skin disease, then someone pointed out that it was caused by Cupping.

Anonymous said...

Yes, thanks for putting this out for the world. It's very terrific.

I'd gone to a new age/total body healing kind of show and sale thing a while back and came home with many amusing pamphlets. The only talk I wound up sitting through, though, was the one showing how to get in touch with angels. I tried to keep the snorts quiet but I'm sure my derision was well observed by the people running the session. I don't know what I would have said if either of them tried to insist an angel had my back.

Erik said...

There's a bit of an asymmetry in that one of the fallacies mentioned in your chart, vaccine denial, is an inaction instead of an action and as such unworthy of the "therapy" label also for reasons of an ontological nature rather than only because it's insane.

Am I making sense?

Anonymous said...

This could make an amazing poster - just in time for the holidays. Give a framed copy to your favorite allopath, or better yet, your local energy healer!

zapata131 said...

May I maka a translation to spanish? i write for identidadgeek.com :D

Svetlana Pertsovich said...

Cool! :) I am sniggering! :D
...and have gotten a lot of new info about nonsense ;)

Crispian Jago said...

@zapata131 Yes of course. Send me a link to it.

Anonymous said...

Enjoyed the "how many elements" node in particular. Sincerely, thanks.

Unknown said...

jaclong - brilliant!!
And please, a poster would be awesome :D

zapata131 said...

Man, sorry for my typos over there, well, I'll send you te link ASAP.

Cath said...

LOVE IT!

I'm only disappointed that you leave one thing out. I'm not sure where this goes in the chart, but

Do you care about endangered species?
Yes .. ??
No, kill 'em all! ... Traditional Chinese Medicine.

Example: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jul/18/poachers-kill-last-female-rhino

Grania said...

Love this, sending a link to all my friends.
Let's see how many I have left by Monday. (A lot of them are woo-fanciers)

Anonymous said...

Wonderful. It had me laughing almost immediately with "Can you be arsed to actually do anything?"

Rob Cullen said...

Though I've likely read more naturopathy web pages than anyone else on the planet (I think that's called a symptom), which tends to cover sCAM pretty widely, I must admit I had to look up alphabiotics and wibble.

Great work.

-r.c.

Cath said...

Oh, now I know where my extension goes. It's the decider node between naturopath and TCM.

Bill Bennett said...

It's amazing to see what young people can do with flow charts these days.

I don't see any mention of "laying on of hands" always my favourite form of treatment when attractive members of the opposite sex are involved.

TWForeman said...

Hilarious. Thanks for this! Got the link from JWZ: http://jwz.livejournal.com/1306962.html

Monado, FCD said...

Oh, please put this on Etsy or Cafepress! Or donate some to your local doctors, who would probably love to have it in the waiting room.

Actually the problem isn't only with Chinese medicine. It's also with Chinese cuisine: "If it moves, eat it!"

Dan Gambiera said...

Oh no! Woo conflict!
Non-deterministic finite state machine!

Traditional Chinese Medicine also believes in five elements.

mstefan said...

Brilliant! You have been linked

Yannis said...

You should really find some place on this for trepanning

Anonymous said...

Hmmm Rolfing... I've a nasty feeling it involves kangaroos.

Anonymous said...

It's fecking ace.. I hope you don't mind me 'borrowing' this. I'm from Malta and a lot of people I know are falling for this alternative quackery.

shellity said...

This is superb. Full stop.

Anonymous said...

Fantastic, so good!! I´m going to print this poster to put it in my worck.... i´m a phisician

Just two comments:

1.- The "reconnective healing" is missing: I think it has to be like "moderm" in "Prefered therapy age?"

2.- Homeopathy also has "Invisible life energy".... it´s so powerfull !!

Anonymous said...

Hello,

please, which software have you used to draw the flowchart? It looks very nice.

Thanks,
Enrique.

Crispian Jago said...

Enrique,

Omnigraffle for Mac OSX.

Much nicer than Visio. I also used it for my Modern Science Map.

Albatross said...

Oh my Nobody. I have decided you are my new best friend. I will now go alienate about half of my Facebook Friends by linking to practically everything I've found on this blog.

Unknown said...

nice posting.Ayurveda

Unknown said...

nice posting.Medicine

Anonymous said...

I was going to carry on about a need to represent leeching, but there appears to be an actual medical use for that, so how about a nod to our past by mentioning trepanning and bloodletting instead?

Anonymous said...

It`s awesome, except that Reiki is actually a new age posing as a traditional. I LOLed at how you included chiropractors.

Funston said...

Rumpology would have been perfect for the "Fetish?" section.

Dan Gambiera said...

My one objection to your otherwise excellent chart is herbal medicine. The pharmacopeia is still chock full of plants and plant-derived drugs. It's why the entire fields of ethnobotany and medical anthropology are pretty much underwritten by the pharmaceutical industry and why there have been enormous lawsuits protecting their "rights" to things like the Neem Tree.

It's true, there are plenty of untested plants out there. But when getting through clinical trials costs upwards of $100 million only the Big Boys can get in the game and only for drugs which show a high probability of quick, patentable profits. There's plenty of chaff, but there is a lot of wheat as well.

Anonymous said...

You left out Orthobionomy.
I'm pretty sure that's not used in hospitals yet and not backed by any empirical evidence, so better whack it in the chart with the rest of the faith healing modes.

Fuad said...

Hi There,

Jokes apart, craniosacral therapy is quite effective. Do go through the testimonials...

http://quantacare.org/Testimonials.aspx

Fuad