It felt like a Roswell alien was throttling the back of my neck, sending a negative aura all the way to my eye, where a Chupacabra continued the attack.

The only time I’ve had a worse headache was the time I sauntered into a low-lying steel beam. For every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction, but I’m convinced I got the worst of the head-steel beam matchup.

This latest headache came and went, usually throbbing in the morning, with flares throughout the day. Some days were almost symptom free, others were tough to get through. The worst pain came about 36 hours before my doctor’s appointment. But within 12 hours, the pain was completely gone. Owing to the headache’s cyclical nature, I kept the appointment. The relief could have been just a lull, the eye of my headache hurricane. My physician recommended a prescription medication. Partly because I thought the headache was probably over and partly because I’m cheap, I decided to eschew picking up the prescription and waited to see if the pain came roaring back.

The headache stayed away. Had the appointment been 24 hours earlier, I would have picked up the prescription and been amazed at the medicine’s power. Similarly, this is how alternative medicine treatments can seem wonderful.

Pain usually fluctuates, and people are more apt to try unorthodox treatments when its gets unbearable. The pain then goes away, as it might have naturally, and the person becomes a committed user. Compounding this are similar stories from fellow believers. Now, couldn’t one say the same thing about legitimate medicine, such as my-never-picked-up prescription? Perhaps, but with a substantial caveat. Such medicines have been subjected to randomized, reproducible, double blind studies. Post hoc reasoning can result, but only infrequently. By contrast, alternative medicines are seldom put to a scientific test, instead resting on testimonies and communal reinforcement.

Once metadata of double blind studies confirms a product’s effectiveness, it is no longer alternative medicine. It is simply medicine. Another reason it is no longer “alternative medicine” is that it loses its appeal among those in that community who distrust modern healthcare.

Before going further, let’s define the term. Alternative medicine refers to treatments or practices that are unproven (probably even untested), and that are based on no known science. The ideas may even be unscientific.

Sometimes, it is labeled complementary and is used in conjunction with real medicine. When this is done, there is no way to test the effectiveness of the alternative product, or know if it’s any better than using the medicine by itself.

There are scores of alternative medicine practices, but some of the more well-known include acupuncture, aromatherapy, chiropractic, most herbs, homeopathy, and reflexology. These practices are not backed by randomized, double blind, reproducible tests. There are thousands of glowing testimonials, but as James Randi notes, the plural of anecdote is not data. The reason science prefers double blind studies is because they eliminate biases, pressures, and selective memories.

We will now look at the warning signs that one is dealing with alternative medicine. This is my duty as a member of both the sheeple and Big Pharma Shill communities:

• It is labeled completely safe. Almost all medicine is going to have some risk, however slight. These dangers are often negligible, or at least manageable, and the reward may greatly outweigh the risk. But if it comes without a warning label, it is not medicine. By contrast, reiki.org boasts, “Reiki can never do harm. One never need worry about whether to give Reiki or not. It is always helpful.” Meanwhile, the hawkers of the Miracle Diabetes Cure write, “Our program works on a completely natural basis without any side effects and without damaging the body.”

• The product is advertised as a quick-acting panacea. Remember that alien-inducing headache of mine? Young Living Essential Oils recommends its peppermint concoction for such a condition. However, this same product is also touted as a treatment for indigestion, nausea, arthritis, bruises, congestion, bug bites, poison oak, and fever. A legitimate medical product is only going claim to treat a specific condition, and this assertion will be backed by empirical data.

Young Living claims its lemon oil can zap varicose veins and detoxify (which is by itself another alternative medicine red flag. The only detoxification treatment verified by science are the liver and kidneys). Young Living also attributes to its lemon product the ability to cure acne and relieve anxiety. I guess you’d have less to worry about if your zits were gone. Lemon oil improves not just your health, but your house, as ads tout its ability to clean countertops and freshen the air.

• They trumpet unverified, miraculous results. On the Center for Reiki Wellness website, anonymous persons credit the practice with permanently curing pain, anxiety, depression, insomnia, PTSD, multiple sclerosis, scoliosis, infertility, and panic attacks.

The promoters may also insist their product is a scientific breakthrough or contains secret ingredients. The Diabetes Miracle Cure claims to permanently keep the disease in check. Extravagant claims like this are a giveaway, as is the fact that it appears in an advertisement rather than a peer-reviewed journal. Someone who cured diabetes would be accepting a Nobel Prize, not hawking the product on a rudimentary website.

• The message is couched in language that is seemingly esoteric, or which uses medical and scientific jargon out of context. From reiki.org, we have this gem: “Life force flows within the physical body though pathways called chakras, meridians and nadis. It also flows around us in a field of energy called the aura. Life force nourishes the organs and cells of the body, supporting them in their vital functions. Reiki raises the vibratory level of the energy field in and around the physical body.”

This text references bodies, cells, organs, vibrations, and other scientific terms, but misuses them. It also uses undefined new age terms. Whatever words are used, it says nothing quantifiable or testable.

• It appeals to ancient authorities, most often Egyptians, Chinese, and Indians.

• The promoter claims the government and/or health care industries are suppressing the product. The Diabetes Miracle Cure website informs us, “The reason this method isn’t well know is that pharmaceutical companies do everything they can to keep it as secret as possible.” Also frequently seen, usually in all caps and red letters, are pronouncements such as, “Dermatologists HATE this!!” or “What allergists don’t want you to know!!”

• The product is available from only one source. The Miracle Diabetes Cure includes the ominous message: “The success of the program has led to a growing number of fake Diabetes Miracle Cure websites. In order to not get ripped off, order only from our official website.” Similarly, a miracle herpes cure cautions, “There are many other rival products on the market, but none of them produce these incredible results!!” Since we’re here, multiple exclamation points are another giveaway.

• The product is labeled natural. Natural means only that it occurs in nature, a distinction that is neither good nor bad. I could have treated my killer headache with pureed clovers, but this natural drink would not have been a remedy.

A few alternative medicine treatments, such as leeches and gulping urine can be harmful. But most are harmless by themselves. The danger is when they are used in lieu of medicine, such as using a lemongrass diet to fight hemophilia.

Persons can be drawn to alternative medicine out of fear, frugality, or the New Age appeal factor.

Some alternative medicine enthusiasts will point out past medical failures, such as using menthol cigarettes to treat asthma. But medicine is a self-correcting practice that will fix itself over time. By contrast, much of alternative medicine is untestable, so it can never be disproven, and thus never improved. This is the main reason its treatments seldom change.

Despite claims to the contrary, nothing is being repressed. If a treatment proves worthwhile, it will be acknowledged. Chiropractic is mostly a racket, with its claims that the spine relates to all health issues. However, the field has value in lower back pain relief, and mainstream science and skeptics accept this. Most herbal remedies are bogus, but St. John’s Wort, garlic, and ginseng all have proven benefits. If plants contain healing properties, those properties will be extracted and made into cures.

Medicine is continually improving, which means it has flaws. There are also outrageous mistakes, such as scalpels left inside patients, anesthesia wearing off during surgery, or the wrong limb being amputated. By contrast, no one will end up in ER from a homeopathic overdose or misapplied iridology.

These facts can drive persons away from medicine, but this is a mistake. Chemotherapy is often horrible, but declining it is usually much worse. Medicine has eliminated many pains and diseases, and mitigated others. And faced with a life-threatening emergency, people summon an ambulance, not a naturopath.

The medical field will continue to search for cures and improvements, while its alternative counterpart will remain static and rely on ad hoc justifications and post hoc reasoning. Medicine is done in the lab, alternative medicine is done in chat rooms.

The vague, holistic claims of alternative medicine can be another draw. From a detached, scientific view, a tumor is either regressing, stagnating, or growing. But an alternative medicine practitioner can attack the condition with chakra cleansings, chi empowerment, immune system boosters, mind-strengthening Qi Gong, and aura field replenishment.

These treatments might seem to work, owing to the regressive fallacy and post hoc thinking. Most things fluctuate, from Apple stock to Aaron Rodgers’ QBR to your great aunt’s heartburn. People’s selective memory and tendency to credit the good and forget the bad helps to drive alternative medicine. Meanwhile, failures are explained away through ad hoc hypotheses. When Pat Paulsen died from cancer while receiving alternative medicine, his daughter blamed the fact that the treatment hadn’t started sooner, when the real culprit was that it was started at all.

In scientific medicine there will be disagreement, error, testing, change, and improvement. Meanwhile, homeopathy, reflexology, Reiki, aromatherapy, and therapeutic touch will continue using the same methods. Their practitioners will seldom challenge each other, except when claiming exclusive cures that are backed by no testing or independent confirmation. Doctors and scientists publish in journals and are subject to peer review and challenges. Alternative medicine practitioners are often hostile to criticism, sometimes accusing the person of clandestinely acting on on Big Pharma’s behalf.

But the choice is yours. You can use proven medicine, alternative medicine, or my method of just hoping it goes away. If the latter works for you, send me $10.

Ionized jewelry is worn to make a person feel better or to protect them. While it won’t actually do this, it is not harmful unless the wearer thinks it allows them to safely leap off a bridge or impersonate Steve Irwin.

Advertisments claim these products will make the wearer more energetic, athletic, or luckier, or aid them with improved balance, memory, or clarity. Any seeming benefits are the result of post hoc reasoning, confirmation bias, and communal reinforcement. Persons wearing the jewelry ascribe any benefit to having done so. By contrast, if something bad happens while wearing an ionized bracelet, perhaps a complementary necklace is needed. If the person forgets to put it on and nothing bad happens, that will fail to register. But if something bad occurs, they’ll realize they forgot to wear it and figure that’s why it happened.

The jewelry can be made of magnets, metals, plastic, or rubber. They come in many forms: bracelets, pendants, rings, even soccer jerseys, with one publication wondering if this would give teams an unfair advantage a la steroids.

The ionized jewelry industry dresses itself in borrowed robes, using scientific sounding terms that are either made up or misapplied. These terms include alignment, cell frequency, electromagnetic balance, harmonic convergence, oscillation, biomagnetics, electro-conductivity, and vital centers. We also have “Sympathetic Resonance Technology,” which we learn, “decreases energy drains” and “corrects our bodies’ natural electrical fields.” One piece promised “harmony energy balance.” One could put those words in any order and they would mean – or not mean – the same thing.

While these terms are either invented or worthless as applied here, they are also immune from legal charges of fraud since they are untestable and impossible to disprove. The industry adopted this approach after it made false, scientifically-testable claims that led to legal action against it. During the trial, one ionized jewelry business owner conceded he did not know what ionization was, but used the term because it sounded catchy.

Some of the products are marketed for pain relief even though ionized jewelry has failed in every double blind study it has been subjected to. But the confluence of a cheap price, glowing testimonials, and throbbing pain will cause some to give it a try. The discomfort might lessen, but this is coincidental since pain usually fluctuates and the body often heals itself of minor afflictions. There is no connection between pain relief and a positive ion surplus.

While usually content to rest on the gullibility of the uniformed, some take it further with fraudulent demonstrations. One product boasts that it will increase balance. To show this, a subject will be placed with their feet together and arms behind their back, with fingers interlocked. The seller will push down and away from the subject, easily throwing him off balance. Then the jewelry is put on and the magic bracelet dude pushes again on the hands, only this time toward the subject, who remains stationary.

The overarching idea behind ionized jewelry is that good health will be achieved through the proper balance of positive and negative ions in the body. If this were true, sidling across a carpet would make one sick since doing so builds up a static electrical charge. Or people inside a car would be healthier than those standing grounded outside the car (or maybe the other way around).

Since I’ve lost 10+ pounds multiple times, I’m something of an expert in the practice. Having gained 10+ pounds more than once (or twice or thrice), I know how to do this too.

In the generosity of the holiday season, I’ll give away my secret: For the former, decrease the number of calories consumed and increase the number of calories burned. The higher those numbers are, along with the amount of time this lasts, will determine the amount of weight loss. To do the latter, reverse the process.

The only other factor is a person’s metabolism. Everything else is fluff. There are tips that can help, such as drinking water to feel full, or exercising with a partner because one is less likely to stand up a friend than to blow off the gym out of laziness. And 100 calories from a banana will give you more lasting energy and feeling of fullness than 100 calories from a cookie. But everything must still fall under the calorie reduction umbrella.

But the diet industry brings in $20 billion a year and the adult obesity rate has fattened to 30 percent, so there will always be someone looking to create an even slicker snake oil.

One can eat like a bird in metaphorical sense, using the Hollywood 48-Hour Miracle Diet or similar starvation method. Birds consume a tremendous amount of food in relation to their body weight, so one can eat like a bird in the more literal sense by using the original Atkins diet. One can eat like a rabbit (raw food diet), eat like a prehistoric hunter-gatherer (Paleolithic diet), or eat like a Miami cardiologist who has cashed in big on selling the concept of calorie reduction (South Beach Diet).

Other fad diets focus on lemonade, the Bible, food separation, and the dieter’s blood type. These diets will work if the number of calories consumed goes down enough and the amount of calories burned goes up enough. There are no magic pills, potions, or diets deciphered from papyrus left inside a mummy’s casket.

Fad diets are fueled by advertising campaigns and anecdotes, rather than random, double blind, reproducible studies. Most will not usually be unhealthy, except in cases of extreme calorie reduction. However, high protein-low carbohydrate diets force the body into ketosis for prolonged periods and can harm the bones, heart, liver, and kidneys. Some go beyond dieting and claim foods will cure diseases, which can be potentially fatal advice.

The industry displays remarkable flexibility in coming up with new twists on a centuries-old idea. Throwing in a misused scientific term or two is one trick. For instance the alkaline diet’s stated goal is to alter the dieter’s pH level, purportedly leading to more weight loss. But food consumption will never substantially impact the pH level since normal bodily functions keep it constant. Food in the stomach will be acidic and the food that has moved on to the intestines will be alkaline. And even if this did work, the diet would still require calorie reduction to cause weight loss.

Sometimes legitimate diets are born from medical needs that are necessary for some people. The gluten-free diet is one example. However, some persons twist this and declare that gluten or whatever else is bad for everyone, and start selling products to promote that diet.

The keys to good health are ingesting fruits, vegetables, grains, legumes, nuts, water, and protein, while engaging in exercise that boosts flexibility, muscle, and cardiovascular fitness. Adequate sleep, medical checkups, and sparse use of sweets and alcohol are other big factors.

Most fad diets say to incorporate these habits into their program. But doing all this makes their diet superfluous. If you do these things and replace the reticulated frog beetle diet with listening to viola concertos, you’ll get the same result.

While at the mall, I had the option of hanging around while my wife got her hair done. But I figured if I was going to waste away in a chair surrounded by bright posters and a foreign environment, I may as well hit the relexologist.

Reflexology involves massaging the feet to treat pain or disease anywhere in the body except, ironically, the feet. Different areas of the feet are said to correspond to specific body parts. The practice is based on the unfounded notion that humans have an energy field called Qi, which relexologists manipulate in order to induce healing.

Dr. William Fitzgerald made up the idea that the body has 10 energy zones. Eunie Ingham simplified this by eliminating nine of the zones and declaring the feet to be the gateway to tissue renewal and organ mending. Neither Fitzgerald’s idea, nor Ingham’s truncated one, have any scientific basis.

I settled into my chair, which reclined and was cushier than what the salon was offering. This was paying off already. My practitioner was Asian (I correctly guessed Vietnamese). Many reflexologists have this distinction, since it appeals to those who think they are tapping into ancient Far East wisdom. This has been updated for the modern age in the assumption that Asians in general and Indians in particular are strong computer programmers.

Citing ancient, irrelevant authority is a common alternative medicine tactic, so I’m used to seeing it. But I was mortified to see the idea being promoted by the University of Minnesota through its Center for Spirituality and Healing. Also, I don’t mind a reputable university having a center for spirituality and one for healing, but am disturbed when they are the same place.

On this center’s website, it noted that reflexology was possibly used by the ancient Egyptians, Indian Buddhists, and the Dynastic Chinese. That’s some nice history there, but consciously lacking on the site was any documentation of reflexology’s efficiency.

My practitioner began gently pushing, pressing, pinching, and pulling. It was pleasant enough, better than what she was on the receiving end of: Specifics of my trip to Ho Chi Minh City. On the wall hung a chart that showed which area of the foot corresponds to which body parts. There are many such charts out there, few agreeing with each other. This would be like human anatomy being different depending on which medical school one attends.

Whatever chart is used, it is never indicated what disease or condition will be treated. The only concern is location. A man with a strained triceps muscle and another with a tumor in the same place will receive identical reflexology treatments.

Reflexologists claim they can alleviate or prevent all manner of illnesses: Migraines, stuffy sinuses, backaches, circulatory problems, hormonal imbalances, and almost anything else. However, a systematic review of randomized controlled trials concluded in 2009 that, “The best evidence available does not demonstrate that reflexology is an effective treatment for any medical condition.” A similar review in 2011 reached an identical conclusion. Other than maybe helping sore feet, reflexology has no medical value. As such, practitioner claims and patient anecdotes sustain the field, bolstered by post hoc reasoning and communal reinforcement.

Modern medicine has extended life spans, discovered anesthesia, eliminated many diseases, and assuaged others. So it is disheartening that sham treatments are embraced by so many. The substantial ignorance about how the immune system and the scientific method work is one of the reasons. Cheapness, desperation, and misplaced anti-pharmaceutical industry anxiety are other factors.

On the mortifation-inducing UM site, we are told: “Millions of people use reflexology to complement other treatments. It is growing increasingly popular across Europe and Asia as both a complement and as a preventive measure.” At no point does it claim to work. A small part of me wants to give UM credit for that, but most of me wonders why they are promoting this at all.

During my treatment, the prodding continued, with her asking me periodically if I felt any discomfort. Any tinge of pain was supposed to reveal hidden dangers lurking within. For instance, a throb in the ball of my right foot might reveal stomach ailments (though a throb in the stomach would be a better sign). She threw in the qualifier that a throb might reveal only the potential for medical misfortune.

She made it through both feet without me experiencing any tinges. This was presented as proof that reflexology was a vehicle which showed my good health. So whether a patient is sick now, tomorrow, or never, reflexology is proven to work. That sounds like a mighty sketchy conclusion, but I did get some nice peppermint tea out of the deal.