Summary
Alternative healer Hongchi Xiao was sentenced to 10 years in prison in the UK for manslaughter by gross negligence after Danielle Carr-Gomm, a 71-year-old diabetic woman, died during his “slapping therapy” workshop in 2016.
Xiao encouraged Carr-Gomm to stop taking insulin, leading to her severe deterioration and death on the fourth day of the retreat.
Xiao, previously convicted of manslaughter in Australia for a similar death, showed no remorse and continued promoting his unscientific therapy in prison.
The case highlights the dangers of unregulated alternative treatments.
HN, you’re so kind to ask. I love it when people are curious, legitimately curious, about the world around them. Humans, as it turns, benefit from touch in a whole host of contexts, and throughout life. And while I wouldn’t presume to search PubMed for you here, as I suspect you are actually capable of doing it yourself, and are not trolling, nor being anti-Asian racist, in the least at this moment, so here are some examples which you might find of interest.
The Effect Of Percussive Therapy On Musculoskeletal Performance And Experiences Of Pain: A Systematic Literature Review https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10069390/
Acute Effects of Two Massage Techniques on Ankle Joint Flexibility and Power of the Plantar Flexors https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3794491/
Therapeutic effect and safety of Tuina on sciatica https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9191340/
Tuina for lumbar disc herniation https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7793356/
Efficacy of Tuina in patients with chronic low back pain: study protocol for a randomized controlled trial https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7077020/
Thanks for asking, as it always adds to my archive when I get asked to answer basic questions, and to explain the simplest of concepts to those that lack understanding. We all have much to learn.
Do you get adequate touch in your life?
TLDR: sometimes massage feels good?
and improves function. It’s funny how hard this is to accept by otherwise intelligent people. But hey, we need to do the study to define in what ways, and to what extent it’s beneficial. Most studies incrementally improve our understanding of the world, just a tiny bit, and it’s the rare study that shows us something we never knew or expected.
I looked at the studies, here’s my take on each one:
The Effect Of Percussive Therapy On Musculoskeletal Performance And Experiences Of Pain: A Systematic Literature Review https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10069390/ A literature review, which isn’t preferable when talking about a treatment in this context. It refers to a relatively small pool of 13 research articles, of which it says “all studies had limitations in methodological quality or reporting of findings”, which you don’t exactly want to hear, followed by “but still included contextually-rich details that contributed to the overall narrative synthesis”, which implies bias on the part of the researchers (why would you write a literature review on a subject with only 13 relevant articles, none of which had a non-limited quality of methodology or findings). Thus, I am excluding this article from the current topic
Acute Effects of Two Massage Techniques on Ankle Joint Flexibility and Power of the Plantar Flexors https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3794491/ Made in 2007, much too old. If this was used in a current literature review, it would be denied. Thus, I am excluding this article from the current topic
Therapeutic effect and safety of Tuina on sciatica https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9191340/ This is a protocol for a systematic review. The researchers are putting forward their methodology for a future research paper. Thus, it has nothing to add to the current topic due to it not showing any results.
Tuina for lumbar disc herniation https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7793356/ This is another protocol for a systematic review. See the above article.
Efficacy of Tuina in patients with chronic low back pain: study protocol for a randomized controlled trial https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7077020/ This study saw applicants split into two groups: one where they were given tuina treatment by a trained professional, and one where they were given an education class on what they can do at home to help their chronic low back pain. The astute among readers may notice a couple problems with this protocol - there’s neither a placebo, nor a control group. The two groups they’ve made a basically receiving completely different forms of treatment, and are unable to be compared at all
It would be much better if the education group was removed, and the following groups were used instead:
First, we must define our independant variable as the type of massage the patients are subjected to
Thus, our dependant variable is the degree to which patients say their pain is relieved
The following groups would be used:
To finish off, I must ask-did you read through any of these articles? Of them, two weren’t even presenting anything, one was ancient, one was a heavily biased literature review, and the only one that could have been relevant to talk about didn’t even attempt to compare tuina massages to other massages.
You’ve wasted an hour of my life. Congratulations. I’m usually a bit more composed, but unfortunately I’m currently absolutely livid
(Evidence)based
I was livid, too! I picked the best of the search results, omitted repetitions. A system of medicine that’s been in existence for at least 2500 years. So where’s the literature? dafuq? China, I see reports, is putting out more lit. than any country in the world. Manual therapy just doesn’t get the kind or quantity of research funding that other methods, especially drugs, receive. Could just be my search skills, as I just used DDG, didn’t have time in the moment for more than that.