There is an interesting article which you might like to view and comment on in the Guardian at the end of November by George Lewith,writing about the need for appropriate research in the EU about CAM. What do people think about this? We have to have the right kind of research. I tried with my local hospital to have a large trial on using shiatsu in post term pregnancies but we were not able to get the funding for this, despite it being submitted by the Hospitals research department.
We did manage to get an audit published. This was based on the audit carried out by a midwife who did my Shiatsu for midwives course which I ran at St Michael’s Hospital in Bristol. It is on the effects of shiatsu on post term pregnancy carried out at where I ran some courses
Ingram, J., Domagala, C., Yates, S., 2005. The effects of shiatsu on post term pregnancy. Comp. Ther. Med. 13, 11 – 15
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0965229905000063
Apparently George Lewith has joined the CNHC board to help support the registered therapies guide how research can be produced which is admissible/acceptable to the ‘scientific community.’ This feeds back to what is admissible in relation to advertising.
I am on the Shiatsu profession specific board of the CNHC: does everyone in the UK know about this? You might like to check out their website http://www.cnhc.org.uk/
The Complementary and health care council was set up in the UK along with the Department of Health to regulate complementary therapies.
Related articles
- Why we need to research the use of complementary medicine (guardian.co.uk)
There is definitely a need for more high quality research, and it’s definitely difficult to get the funding for it. If the CAMbrella project leads to more funding opportunities it will be positive for complementary medicine. Did your audit get published before or after your unsuccessful funding bid Suzanne? It’s the sort of thing that helps to secure funding, as it shows positive findings that need further investigation.
I met George Lewith at a CAM research conference last year – he seems a much more positive person than Ernzt who spent many years being the most common research commentator on CAM.
I think one of the most challenging things about researching CAM is the complexity of the outcomes we are looking for. Birth related interventions maybe less so – in that case we are clear that the main focus is on a good birth, so it’s a good area to investigate, I would say.
I was lucky enough to be the main researcher on a project into shiatsu a few years ago…
Cheers, Hannah
Thanks Hannah for commenting on this. It is good to air the discussion from time to time. The audit was published as part of the process of trying to secure funding. And that is why we did it!!! Sadly one of the reviewers for the proposal could not see any mechanism by which shiatsu could possibly have an effect and so voted against funding!!! Maybe things are slowly changing. I hope so.