What alternative health

practitioners might not tell you

 

ebm-first.com

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Case report and review of the literature: “A 45-year-old woman presented for evaluation to an infectious diseases specialist with chief complaint of "blood parasites." She stated that she had recently gone with a friend to a consultation with an alternative medicine practitioner who performed live blood analysis with a dark-field microscope. After expressing some skepticism, the patient allowed the practitioner to draw a drop of blood from her finger, place it onto a slide and then use a dark-field microscope to provide a detailed analysis. The practitioner identified multiple structures which she identified as red blood cells. She also identified other structures which she stated were parasites, though she could not identify the species. Because the "parasites" were moving during the microscopy session, the practitioner felt that this was clear evidence of active infection. The practitioner recommended a course of treatment which included multiple herbal supplements. After the visit, the patient became anxious about her diagnosis of "blood parasites" and sought a second opinion… Though a PubMed search yields no matches for LBA, there are over 2.5 million hits on Google…While LBA offers the appeal of a scientific approach to diagnosis and treatment, there is no reliable scientific evidence to substantiate the claims made on the internet and elsewhere…LBA appears to be a pseudoscientific sales pitch to get patients to buy equally unsubstantiated alternative treatments.” Zachary A. Rubin, M.D., UCLA Department of Medicine (18th December 2009)