Effects of the prolong life with nine turn method (Yan Nian Jiu Zhuan) Qigong on patients with chronic fatigue syndrome, 2018, Xie et al

Full title: Effects of the prolong life with nine turn method (Yan Nian Jiu Zhuan) Qigong on patients with chronic fatigue syndrome: study protocol for a randomized controlled trial

Open access PDF available from http://apm.amegroups.com/article/view/48615

 

I have no doubt this is exactly as effective as CBT. Which is the whole problem but nevertheless it will absolutely be just as effective.

I, for one, welcome sham treatment experiments to compare with the existing sham treatments. This is the standard that was set. Actually looking forward to a trial called SHAMWOW, these people love clever acronyms.

 

It is maybe of interest that if CBT were to be used in trials as the 'Standard Medical Care' control (being the current 'best practice' according to some) then we might see some rather different results.

What would be even more interesting would be to have a circle of trials in each of which the 'active treatment' was the 'standard medical care' in the next. It would be necessary to avoid telling the people running these trials that they were involved in such a circle of course.

So we could have trials of:

B (active) against A (standard care)
C (active) against B (standard care)
D (active) against C (standard care)
A (active) against D (standard care)

Most likely everything would turn out better than everything else.