- Please, do not try these treatments at home.
You have an ailment and nothing the doctors do seems to cure it. At that point, you might consider turning to some alternative medicine practices.
Some of them have a grain of truth to them and may provide some relief. Some are practiced earnestly but do nothing, and some are malicious plots designed to extract as much money from desperate people as possible.
And then there are those that are just plain bizarre.
Here are 7 examples of various alternative medical practices and pseudoscientific theories that will leave you scratching your head.
1. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing
Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) is a form of psychotherapy designed to treat PTSD. In it, the therapist engages in talking therapy about the trauma while the patient follows their finger or another object moving side-to-side with their eyes.
The eye movements are supposed to help visualize the source of the patient’s issues. As such, they should find it easier to deal with the associated negative emotions.
In the field of psychology, EMDR is a divisive practice, to say the least. Some studies and organizations have debunked it as a complete pseudoscience.
Others, however, have pointed out that the therapy has helped patients. However, what has helped is the actual talking part — not the eye movement stuff.
2. Egg Cleanse
Are you feeling down and negative about life? Have you tried rubbing an egg all over your body to extract all that bad mojo?
That’s what an egg cleanse is. This practice is ancient, with records of it stretching back to ancient Mesopotamia, but it’s most popular in Latin America.
You’re supposed to take a raw egg and roll it across your skin, starting from the head and proceeding downward. At the same time, you should recite affirmations that your problems aren’t actually that bad. You can also break the egg into a bowl afterward to examine your absorbed negative thoughts.
Feel better afterward? Well, the egg had nothing to do with. You just successfully gave yourself a pep talk.
3. Magnet Therapy
It’s a fact that magnetic fields are everywhere in nature. So why not harness them to improve our health?
Magnet therapy aims to do that. According to its proponents, using magnets on your body might affect your own magnetic field, guide your blood (which has iron in it) around, or rearrange your chi, chakra, or whatever energy you choose to believe in.
Yet, it just doesn’t work like that. The magnets used in the therapy are so weak that they can’t actually make a dent in your body’s magnetic field or guide blood anywhere. Or have you ever seen blood follow a magnet?
4. Gua Sha
Sometimes, stuck things need a bit of a push to get moving. The Asian practice of gua sha seeks to do that to stagnant knots of chi in your body.
The practitioners will use spoons or other blunt-edged instruments to scrape your skin along the supposed energy pathways. This pressure, they claim, will get the energy flowing again.
All that aside, gua sha typically ends up leaving wild-looking bruises and even wounds on the patient’s skin. As such, medical professionals consider it a health risk, as the broken skin could get infected. If not that, it’ll just be painful as hell.
5. Ear Candling
According to ear candling, you can improve your health by sticking a hollow candle in your ear and lighting it on fire. As the candle burns, it sucks out… Basically, anything the quack doing the procedure wants you to believe, from bad vibes to genuine illnesses.
Would you believe it if I told you that there are no demonstrated health benefits to having a burning candle in your ear? If anything, it’s dangerous, as the melting wax could burn you or the candle could tip over and set your house on fire (it has happened).
Ear candlers (that’s what we’re calling them now) sometimes claim that the residue found inside the hollow candle stem is proof that the method really works. The thing is, that residue is from the candle itself, not your ear.
6. Chromotherapy
Different energies flowing through your body have different colors. Sometimes, those energies get mixed up, causing all manner of ailments.
Fortunately, you’ll feel right as rain again after somebody shines some colored lights on your body.
This is what chromotherapy, or color therapy, claims to do. The therapist will have you lie down and then shine pretty lights over your skin to try and make you feel better.
Shockingly, this doesn’t actually do squat. At least you won’t get burned by a melting candle.
7. Rumpology
Want to know what’s in your future, but you don’t trust stars, tarot cards, or palm readers? Lucky for you, I’m here to tell you about a different way to peek beyond the veil of time: rumpology.
It’s kind of like palm reading, but instead of looking at the folds on your hand, the rumpologist will interpret those on your butt.
No, I’m not joking. According to rumpology, it’s possible to read future events from your ass wrinkles.
If that’s not weird enough, the whole field was invented by Jackie Stallone. Yes, the mother of Sylvester Stallone.
Bizarrely, though, she’s not the only rumpology practitioner to ever exist. Which is probably the greatest mystery about this practice.