Varicose Vein Oedema Inclined Bed Therapy Study Alternative to Surgery

Reply from BC
IS it in the mainstream medical literature? If not then you can hardly blame them for not knowing about it.
Is there a proper double blind study?
If not then they might get accused of "quackery", which, together with the threat of being sued might put a lot of them off mentioning it.

Getting sued for tilting a bed? Come on.... The medical profession tilt beds all the time! Maybe not correctly but they tilt them and don't get sued! So should they then be accused of quackery?

I have stated a fact and have been stating it since 1995. I have met with vascular surgeons, professors at Exeter University and Derriford Hospital for the purpose of setting up a controlled study to save the NHS countless £millions. Yet I have failed miserably to locate someone who is prepared to tilt beds for 4 weeks and measure the results to either disprove or prove what I have found to be true!

Just because it is not in the literature does not automatically warrant the label of quackery! It does however warrant further investigation and when this is proved WHICH IT UNDOUBTEDLY WILL BE! There will need to be some serious revision of the current physiology literature! And that my friend is a FACT!

These are photographs of my wife's leg taken 27/05/2008 and uploaded so that you can all see the marks where her vein once prominently bulged out yet now lays flat and is hardly visible. Jude was examined by a friend who is a doctor. She said that this was never a varicose vein. Believe me it used to bulge like a small egg and became very painful and unsightly, particularly when she walked up hills.

She added I had forgotten all about that until you just mentioned it. I can't even see it myself anymore.

Her vein went flat after only 4 weeks of IBT and has never troubled her since! That was over 14 years ago!

I Need your Help to set up a study. I can't do this alone. Believe me I have tried but without cooperation from either a hospital, a nursing home, medical school, a sleep study centre, a charity, a surgeon or even a doctor and his or her patients, it will mean that many people will continue to have surgery and will continue to put their lives at risk of infection and circulatory failure and more to the point repeated and totally unnecessary operations.

Inclined Bed Therapy costs nothing!

From an earlier attmpt to move this forward.

Andrew K Fletcher

Posts: 1150
United Kingdom

MessageID: 18045
25/06/2005 08:53:08 »

I would like to conduct a very simple study with varicose veins, oedema and leg ulcer, and would appreciate some help and guidance in achieving this.

Peter Lewis, a vascular surgeon from Torbay Hospital, has already tested the intervention and reported successful results. Professor Edzard Urnst, Exeter Hospital, and My own G.P. have expressed an interest in this exciting intervention.

So, I guess the question is, are there any doctors, surgeons, nurses who would be interested in lending a hand to test a simple intervention, which has been shown to be highly efficient in reducing / resolving all of these conditions in a pilot study?

Given that Nursing staffs suffer with varicosity, it could prove very rewarding for all concerned.

I look forward to your replies with interest

Respectfully yours

Andrew K Fletcher

Tel 01803 524117

chris
Hero Member

The Naked Scientist

MessageID: 18046
28/06/2005 09:27:19 »

Andrew

in this day and age of complete intellectual destitution and the perception that all doctors are evil and incapable of treating their patients with an ounce of respect, before you go near anyone with a feasibility study you'll need to have filled in a 56-page long COREC ethics form.

And then wait ages whilst a bunch of loony-lefty control freaks decide that they want 500 pages more information, and evnetually you might get permission to do something.

This bull**** is paralysing research in this country now. The days of being able to test a good idea on a few anonymous samples, to see whether it justifies a grant application, are gone.

I'm currently wading through all this rubbish. I spent about a week on the grant application, tops, and then then last week filling in a forum twice the length, to get ethical approval to study DNA extracted from a whole bunch of anonymous breast cancers.

The very people that this lunacy is designed to protect - the public - are going to become victims because the discoveries that would have been made are going to take far longer to uncover, so the human health benefits will be lost for many.

Chris

Andrew K Fletcher
MessageID: 18536
18/07/2005 07:50:08 »

Almost missed your post Chris.

Have already approached the Torbay Ethical Committee regarding ethical approval.

Their reply was, they did not believe ethical approval was required for this particular “Proposed Study” as the inclined bed is used in hospitals to help with Reflux on incubators and adult beds, and is already therefore approved.

Because no drugs are involved and the principle is obvious and has been tested over many years to be safe in its short term use, I can see no obstacle in our way, other than trying to obtain funding, albeit comparatively miniscule funding.
The problem is that drug companies hold the purse strings on 99% of trial/study funding, and have little interest in funding non-drug related research.

Sorry I missed your post Chris

Andrew

chris
Hero Member
So what do you need funding for ?

Chris

Andrew K Fletcher
Hero Member

MessageID: 18573
18/07/2005 21:02:48 »

Chris, if the results from this proposed study are from a self funded study and do not involve the medical community in any way, the results will be ignored as you well know, and as I have already observed.

Funding would be required to pay for any professional people who would like to get involved. I myself would be glad to work for free in order to prove the efficacy of the inclined bed therapy as a means to provide a long term care environment for patients with oedema, varicose veins, leg ulcers and thromboembolisms.

Unless you know of professional people that would like to help in the study without charging for their services, which I think would be unfair, given the need to monitor the people taking part.

Any ideas on the best way forward would be greatly appreciated.

Andrew



quote: Originally posted by chris

So what do you need funding for ?

Chris

Too much money involved in surgery to do a study with an alternative that does not cost anything and involves no risks? Not a single comment on the photograph provided?

Anyone here got varicose veins and is willing to give this a try and hopefully provide before and after photographs for us all to see?

Enough anecdotal evidence provides a compelling argument for a full trial!

So why is nothing being done with this simple intervention when surgery is costing the NHS a fortune?

Inclined bed therapy works! Inclined bed therapy is free! Varicose veins shrink when the body is tilted correctly!

This does not fit with the literature so the literature is obsolete! and that is a fact!


The NHS could save millions of pounds by rationing unnecessary varicose vein operations, says new research.
An Edinburgh study shows that there is no reliable link between pains and aches in the legs and varicose veins.

And much surgery may have little beneficial health effect.

The Edinburgh University researchers say many people complain of pains and aches, believing this will help them get surgery when their main reason for wanting it is cosmetic.

More than 50,000 varicose vein operations are carried out in England and Wales every year at a cost of between £400m and £600m.

Varicose veins have been linked to a number of symptoms, including swelling, itchy legs, cramps and heavy limbs.

The presence of one or more of the symptoms is an important factor in whether doctors will suggest surgery.

But the researchers say little work has been done on the link between symptoms of vein disorders and disease.

Aches and pains

They studied 1,566 people aged 18 to 64. They found that women were much more likely than men to complain of aches and pains in their legs although men were more likely to have varicose veins.

Women most commonly complained of aching in their legs, while men complained of cramps.

In men, only itching was significantly linked to varicose veins while in women symptoms of stress, heavy limbs, aching and itching all indicated varicose vein problems.

The researchers found, however, that the symptoms were very common in people who did not have varicose veins and that they increased with age.

Writing in the British Medical Journal, they say: "Although tens of thousands of varicose vein operations are performed in the United Kingdom each year, the scientific basis for this activity is lacking."

They say there is little evidence to show a link between the symptoms and varicose veins and that operating on varicose veins improves the symptoms.

"It is therefore unsurprising that funding bodies in the United Kingdom are becoming increasingly reluctant to pay for the surgical treatment of venous disease," they write.

They suggest that surgery should be targeted at those most likely to benefit from it.

This can be discovered, they say, by taking a careful clinical history and examination of the patient.

Varicose veins are caused by a weakness in the walls of veins which caused the veins to swell.

The condition is usually inherited and is most prevalent in Europe and North America.
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/272533.stm

14/06/2008
Karen: Andrew I have been meaning to get back to you on this point.. When I first raised the head of my bed I noticed nothing except I seemed to breath a bit better but it was still hard..< but after several months, My varicose veins faded out and became smooth with no bulges I have about 3 or for on my right leg only. right to the left below my kneecap.. Just about 6 or 8 weeks ago, My bed came down to put on a head and foot board, It is still flat as the bed is being worked on my frame was to wide for my bed.. so I have lowered it back down.. I noticed that within these few weeks my varicose veins have come back and they are bigger then they were.. I am sleeping up right in a chair for now as laying back is difficult to breath I am sitting upright in my living room chair!

It really did help to have the bed inclined as far as the varicose veins. The swelling was another story.. I could not tell because I am on so many diuretics for the water retention.. so I don't know which one was the reliever!

Karen thank you for this post. And thank you for trusting me enough to try Inclined Bed Therapy for yourself.

What you have just stated poses no problem to my own theory on the way circulation works with gravity. However it does pose some serious problems for the current literature that need to be addressed asap. Your own observations are as we know merely anecdotal evidence, even though we know you are giving a true account of what you witnessed. Particularly with the re-emerging veins on sleeping horizontal again. Add to this the fact that you have never given anyone a reason on this forum to doubt your integrity and you are respected by everyone here, your post may not get ignored quite as much as mine do.

The oedema relief conflicts hugely with current physiology because according to it your legs should have swollen rather than the observed reduction you witnessed. Now if you think about what you have written the answer as to whether it was IBT or diuretics lies with your observations while sleeping flat. So did your swelling begin to gradually return along with the return of the varicose veins?

1. You observed a reduction in pressure inside the varicose veins. So let us assume that the entire venous return has now a modified pressure inside the veins so that it has reduced significantly compared to the surrounding tissue pressure, which as you know makes the skin a tight as a drum when it is swollen.
2. Oedema happens because the pressure inside the veins is higher than the surrounding tissue so fluid moves from the veins into the surrounding tissue causing the familiar swelling.
3. When your varicose veins shrunk it was because the pressure that was pushing them out had reversed to a pressure pulling them in. This would inevitably reverse also the flow of tissue fluids back into the veins and into the main circulation where the salts would be excreted in the urine after filtration.
So over several months the density of your blood and more importantly the density of the tissue fluids would gradually return to normal.


Nevertheless we still need to conduct a controlled study in order to confirm what you and others have witnessed is not just a mere coincidence but something that tells us a lot about the way solutes change pressures inside the vascular and arterial network that circulates.

Now we need more people who will test this so rather than have an operation why no try this first and report your findings to us on this thread?

Andrew K Fletcher

Karen: I am noticing however that my legs are tender up the shin bone and that there is mild edema even now with the dieuretics and no incline.. so I am experiencing some edma back in my limbe again with the return of the bed and my recentposition in my chair.. I have been off and on in my chair for months but a body can only go so long in this position and then one needs to stretch out nice and flat and open up those bends at the hip from sitting upright all the time.. Thus the stretch out and occassional nights I migrate back to my bed knowing no sleep will come... justy the stretch and relaxing... so I believe the incline allowed me more time in a strtched out position and my breathing was not quite as bad,,, but I am not sure if that is from progression of the disease or the bed situation..

When I stopped the incline I really noticed no real changes in the way I felt.. it was not for several weeks that I noticed small things bothering me that I had not noticed had gone away.. Like the bottom of my feet had stopped hurting on the incline... it was easier to get out of bed and walk without them hurting.. The soreness in my calves went away and one big thing I was not having as many bouts with the restless leg syndrome on the incline and I have had many actually an increased amount of episodes of that since returning to flat and sitting up folded in half! LOL.. So there is also another plus...

I will return to that position upon repair of my bed but need to buy a stool to mount my bed! LOL... It is difficult for me to get into the inclined bed as I am already a short girl! I have to elevate one hip at a time to get on the bed and my feet dangle six or more inches from the floor when I finally get onto the bed. I feel like Lilly Tomlin on the big big Story bed!

Thank you Karen for sharing your experience when you went back to your normal postural routines. Very interesting.

This again is a very important post because it shows that oedema had not only reduced but that since you have reverted back from IBT you are seeing an increase in oedema again and this shows that is was not the diuretics in this case that were making a difference because presumably you still take them?

The restless legs syndrome or Ekbom’s Syndrome has been reported by many to have completely resolved using IBT, only to return again when IBT is abandoned. My wife’s mum had this problem and was the first to report improvements when she came to Devon on Holiday and I tilted the bed in the caravan for her.

Many people who have used the inclined bed method fail to notice niggling pains and aches that vanish. This is because people seldom complain about feeling better. So it takes a period of 2-4 weeks of reverting back in order to realise how much benefit you were getting in the first place.

The most impressive case to date is a girl aged 12 with cerebral palsy, who is a young woman now became able to walk for the first time after around 8 months of IBT. I would love to be able to convince a hospital to conduct a study into CP using IBT, but alas I cannot find a method of moving this forward.

Andrew
I am still on the diuretics...

I hope you do find away and that lots of people benefit.. Test test test! Good luck!

grumpy old mare
15/06/2008 09:52:08 »

Reply with quote
Andrew, do you have a simpler write-up of the whole IBT-thing for the "non-scientist" simpler minds like mine? wink
Reading this about oedema - a friend of mine has that in both legs and maybe she'd be willing to try if I can give her a simpler explanation and instruction?

(I really don't have varicose veins (yet?) - although I'm thinking of trying IBT for the old spine)

Re a simple explanation for IBT. google it using "inclined bed therapy" or "andrew k fletcher" this way your friend can find the right level of introduction. It is well worth investigating further as there are many reports and case histories to be found that will be of interest to you and your friend. You will also find some posts from people who are sceptics and the usual spoilers.

Naked Scientists is by far the best forum of its kind on the Internet!

this is a short video that is pitched about right by the television crew.

IBT may become uncomfortable at times, you may find you ache more in the first two weeks. Hang on in there as this means you are beginning to respond.

Your screen names, Old Dragon and Grumpy Old Mare don't appear to fit your personalities in the slightest?

alun006

24/06/2008 13:53:02 »

Reply with quote
Hi Andrew
Just dropping you a line to say that i am now starting the inclined bed therapy for my varicose veins, i look forward to posting my progress with this experiment.

23rd June 2008

The bed has arrived this morning, I have already prepared the blocks with carpet on to stop the blocks from spoiling the carpet.

24th June 2008
Day 1

The day after the 1st night of inclined bed therapy, I did not get much sleep. I feel this is because of the change of bed and not particularly the incline on it.

The only experience that I had was a slight tingling in the feet after I was lieing down for a while, this disappeared for a while during the night, and effected again in the morning.

It was not a uncomfortable feeling like before you have a cramp, it was the feeling you get when somebody rubs your feet for a while, and normally my feet would have been alleviated in this process anyway, and that would still happen.

The biggest problem I have at the moment is to be able to get used to being in a single bed, the incline is not a problem, just the change. Hope I manage to get some sleep tonight, as I am a grumpy person when I have not had my sleep.

Alun.

OldDragon
24/06/2008 19:44:30 »

All I need to get now are the blocks and someone to take the photos, then I'll be ready, but won't have much chance tomorrow as back in hospital for the day for a bone scan. Radioactive dye injected am, then the scan in the afternoon.

Got some fresh asparagus and ordered a case of tinned from the little local shop. Got the hydrometre, nettle tea, batteries - which someone with working fingers is going to have to fit into the scale for me! That after they have retrieved one from an obscure corner of the bathroon, 'cos I dropped it.

OldDragon

26/06/2008 07:01:47 »

I thought perhaps to turn the tinned asparagus into soup or add it to a chicken and rice dish I make to give some variety, but still be consuming it daily. Also stand-by supplies for when it's out of season or my freezer is full.

Aiming to head for the builder's merchants today to see if they can supply a suitable lump or length of wood to raise the sofa.

Not slept again since the few hours I got soaking in the bath yesterday morning and prior to the body scan. Between the injection of the radioisotope and the scan, I was asked to drink plenty and had some strong coffee, as I felt I'd likely nod off somewhere and fail to make it back to the radiology department on time otherwise. Also tried some mentally stimulating things - after another night without sleep, and in hindsight, I likely overdid both the coffee and brain stimulation. cheesy

I wonder if IBT will help to normalise my sleep patterns and improve the insomnia problems? I know that has to be taking its toll on my body.

Tasks for today:
1. Get the veins photographed.
2. Acquire some means of lifting the bed, as my son's visiting in the evening after work, so can do the heavy lift bit.

I really need now to get back into as normal a routine as possible work-wise, and so that I can both catch up and keep on top of everything as far as possible once the chemo cycles start. Yesterday morning I had to resort to taking 15mg of codeine phosphate to address the IBS sufficiently to attend the hospital appointment without discomfort and to try and slow my gut action a bit, as much as anything because the frequency of bowel movements have aggravated the haemorrhoids! Bleeding piles are the last thing I want, and especially as I've had to increase the amount of aspirin I'm taking at present to tackle inflammation in my back. There is obviously a fair bit of activity with bone breaking down and/or regenerating, but when I asked to see a copy of the images that had been printed onto a sheet of A4 paper, and out of curiosity, my request was refused. I was told the results would be given to me by my cancer consultant. Odd, as I'd not asked for the results, just to see the printed sheet, as I was viewing the reverse side of that at the time, so had little more than an outline and areas where the ink density was showing up well through the paper to identify some hot spots. Mmmmmmmm! It came as no surprise then that they wanted to take some ordinary x-rays of my lumbar spine; more so that they didn't have any on record in my file, but I was surprised that they weren't going to x-ray the thoracic region due to the recent flare there and because they already had one from Feb 2006.

The radiologist was more willing to allow me to view those lumbar spine x-rays. Even to discuss things evident there, and that were plain to see. She looked a little taken aback when I mentioned the degenerative evidence was hardly surprising after the SI joint had been locked up in the wrong position for 12 years... Could that be an omission from my notes, I wonder? I bet they mention poor posture as the cause to me at some point when giving me the results. wink

Whatever, it all does have bearing on varicose veins, because the whole package is interlinked with medication and these other conditions. Having not been to bed yet again, or even been able to lie down in comfort due to the signs that the x-ray positions I had to assume have triggered little flares that could kick off the muscle spasms again (please, God, no!) the oedema in my legs has also increased, and my calves especailly are very hard and tight. I have had a couple of couple cups of nettle tea, though, and hope that will help.