Ersatz is a fantastic word which has almost dropped out of modern English. It is borrowed from German and has the meaning of a ‘replacement’ or ‘substitute’ in that language. In English it has been used in a derisory or ironic way, because of the experiences of POWs in the First World War being given ersatzbrot or ‘substitute bread’ which was made not with good quality flour but with dust, sawdust or whatever extender happened to be on hand. The term became very popular with widespread rationing during and after the Second World War. Ersatz coffee, axle grease, stockings (made from lard!) and other commodities were substituted for the real stuff which had become scarce.

I was reminded of all this while watching the utterly brilliant TV show Horrible Histories on ABC 3 with the kids. If you haven’t seen this show, you are mad if you don’t immediately download both series from your digital provider of choice, even if you don’t have any kids in the house. It truly is pythonesque..

Strangely enough, it also coincided nicely with the ‘release’ of some ‘new findings’ by the Chiropractors Association of Australia, National Branch. Regular readers of these pages will suspect what is coming next…

Not content with exhuming old studies with a tenuous link to the PR point that they want to make, CAA appears to have resorted to spying on schoolchildren for their next stunt. Their PR release is headed

Aussie kids risk spinal damage – observational study

Hello, thinks I to myself, maybe they mean this sort of thing…

Which is of course an idiopathic scoliosis. Or maybe they mean this sort of spinal damage…

Which is of course a complete spinal cord transection of the type which occurs in high-speed trauma accidents.

Being the CAA of course, they don’t mean this type of serious spinal damage. They are talking about kids’ school backpacks. So not actually very serious at all. Or could it be? According to the CAA spokesperson

Putting too much stress on a child’s back at such an important stage of growth and development will result in serious spinal problems immediately and later on in life.”

Yes, but what sort of serious problems???

Some of the problems caused by bad posture at an early age include reduced mobility, possible early degeneration of bones and joints, increased vulnerability to injuries and unhealthy pressures on a child’s nervous system.

So to paraphrase if your kid has too much in their school backpack, and is not strapped into it like an ejector seat, they are subject to ‘unhealthy pressures’ and ‘increased vulnerability to injuries’.

The only increased vulnerability to injury by unhealthy pressure highlighted by this so-called scientific study is me shattering my head through the top of my desk.

How was this ‘observational study’ carried out? By covert chiro operatives it seems.

‘under cover’ research from the Chiropractors’ Association of Australia reveals an alarming 75% of Australian schoolchildren do not use the ergonomic features built into their school backpacks.

 

There is more though (as if that wasn’t bad enough)

An alarming 90 per cent of school children have bad posture when carrying their bags and could experience spinal damage as a result, while 75 per cent are not using their school backpack’s ergonomic features which could prevent such damage, according to an Australian first observational chiropractic study.

They get alarmed quite easily over at CAA apparently. So, what about this groundbreaking study which clearly has significant policy implications for the Department of Health and Ageing? How well do these searing indictments on the parents of Australian schoolchildren generalize to the population at large?

Sadly, I can’t tell you. The PR release is clearly meant for undigested regurgitation by journalists as there is no link or reference provided to the actual ‘study’ anywhere in the piece. It does seem a bit irresponsible for CAA to be sitting on such a major finding without at least giving anyone a look at the paper. It reminds me a lot of this example of prior CAA ersatz research which was marketing research done by a PR firm and spun by the CAA as original ‘research’.

So I did what any responsible aspiring journo or blogger would do, and emailed the PR contact listed in the release to ask for a copy or a link to the original study so I could make a professional assessment of the findings. I have not had a response as yet to enable me to enlighten you all about the details of this study, which is apparently an Australian first if you don’t mind.

The thoughtfully provided Fact Sheet does tell us that 340 children were observed in the field, presumably on their way to school completely unaware they were being surveilled by the backpack stasi. Their parents were then grilled about the children and their backpacks, presumably just before being reported to child welfare agencies for stuffing the backpacks full of harmful stuff like lunchboxes, sports gear and books.

So there you have it. If science is scarce and difficult to produce, like it is for the sultans of subluxation, you can just produce ersatz science and try to put it over people as the real thing. Non-published, non-peer-reviewed marketing data is not science and never will be. However, if you have a product to sell, perhaps even a CAA-endorsed backpack or something like that, perhaps just the media release to scare conscientious parents is good enough.

With the festive season upon us, and feats of gluttony that would boggle mind and roll back the eyes being perpetrated at parties and gatherings around the nation, it seems like a good time to dive back into the wunnerful wurld of woo with a probe into the brown and murky depths of what is euphemistically called ‘digestive health’.

First up…diarrhoea. Where else does one turn for secret knowledge about natural health than secretsofnaturalhealth.com ? Intriguingly, it seems our host Dr Singha is of the opinion loose bowel actions involve the lungs, liver and colon. One out of three ain’t bad I suppose. If you name internal organs at random you are bound to end up with some that are relevant. I’d have thought ones in the abdomen rather than the chest might be more plausible candidates. Displaying the dangerous simplicity at the core of most alt.med, Dr Singha opines that

Diarrhoea is nature’s way of getting rid of food which your system has reacted to. It is therefore a cure rather than an illness.

I’m sure he might at least consider rotavirus an ‘illness’ rather than a ‘cure’ given that it kills 435,000 children every year.

The most unintentionally ironic ‘natural treatment’ for diarrhoea belongs to these guys.  Using Rice Water to treat diarrhoea is simply rehydration therapy, as they themselves almost acknowledge.

And why rice water instead of rice to stop diarrhea? Probably because in water or soup form, the “essence” of the rice is more readily absorbed. In Chinese medicine, a lot of remedies are taken in the form of soups and herbal brews.

Not really. Water prevents dehydration, rice does not. The carbohydrates in the rice water may have an osmotic effect which may reduce the severity of the diarrhoea, but it gets better anyway as most cases are self-limiting. It really is nothing at all to do with the essence of rice. I do however agree with them that

diarrhea can be considered to have expanding / downward / rapid energy.

Expanding downward rapidly is right, especially during norovirus season (spring) which is drawing to a close here in Australia.

Next up……constipation.

If you were just sitting there in the long interval between bowel movements fiddling around trying to spend your time wisely, you would naturally type www.overcomeconstipation.com into your browser and straight away you’d be transported to a world where even your colonic peristalsis has political and social ramifications.

Good ole Vitamin C gets a run, as do the usual suspects of foods with skins made of indigestible starches, eg dates, prunes, sultanas etc. I am intrigued by their mention of yoga as a good treatment for constipation. Apparently

The yoga poses squeeze the body parts in certain manner which relieve tension and make the digestive organs work more efficiently and improve digestion and elimination.

This gives me a horrid mental image which I can’t quite unsee. I hope the yoga mats they recommend are easily cleanable. Further down the same page I came across a paragraph so hard to understand I’m quoting it in full.

5. Controlling Old Cough – Although this is not very common, many naturopaths also emphasize a lot on elimination of old cough.  The reason for this is old cough stick to the intestines and gradually the feces also start sticking to the intestinal walls which can cause water loss in the intestines and chronic constipation.

I was once told that Guinness ‘sticks to ya ribs’ but I cannot fathom exactly what ‘Old Cough’ is and why it should stick to anything at all, let alone the intestines. O_o all round. I do love the little matter-of-fact anti-pharma rant at the start especially. Makes having an enema seem like stickin’ it to da man. #OccupyMyColon anyone?

Thanks to all regular (and casual) readers. Have a great break and see youse all next year, when we will have only until the 21st of December to mend our unhealthy ways…or something.

And as a final treat, to help with your ‘digestive health’ here is a piccy of the Bristol Stool Chart which all doctors have to learn by heart