What is it with the Associated Press and alternative health? They treat stories about natural healing the way schoolyard bullies treat other kids – with contempt and disrespect driven entirely by ignorance.

Just take a look at this editor's note they've been running with their recent stories trashing alternative health...

EDITOR'S NOTE: Ten years and $2.5 billion in research have found no cures from alternative medicine. Yet these mostly unproven treatments are now mainstream and used by more than a third of all Americans. This is one in an occasional Associated Press series on their use and potential risks.

It's absurd and offensive – not to mention untrue. Here's a headline from 2004: "Record acupuncture study shows arthritis relief." It's attached to an Associated Press story describing how acupuncture beat sham acupuncture and the Arthritis Foundation's self-help course for both pain relief and improved function in arthritis patients.

I guess someone at the AP hasn't read the AP.

The idea that alternative health offers unproven treatments and no cures is comical when you think about the ineffectiveness of so many of Big Pharma's biggest meds – drugs that "manage" conditions without ever curing them.

Funny, though, how I don't remember the AP ever running these kinds of disclaimers on stories about celebrated meds. Vioxx, anyone?

Study after study has shown that antidepressants are routinely beaten – trounced – by everything from talk therapy to exercise... but again, no disclaimers to that effect when the AP runs a story on depression meds.

Natural treatments work and the answers are out there for anyone who wants to look. We'd have more and better results on alternative health if we had more studies – but we don't, and that's because Big Pharma has a hand in most of our medical research, including (especially) government- funded studies.

But forget that for a moment, because the facts speak for themselves. I tell you all the time about proven, natural nutrients that can help fight or treat many conditions better than prescription meds... but maybe that's not alternative enough for the Associated Press.

Fine.

Let's look at something that many people, even me, would consider really out there... like reiki and therapeutic touch.

These "biofield therapies" are based on New Age beliefs that you can manipulate the energy around you to overcome illness and pain.

It's pretty far-out stuff, and I'm skeptical myself... but unlike our friends at the AP, I also keep an open mind. So a study in the International Journal of Behavioral Medicine really caught my attention when it found that there may be something to these therapies after all.

Researchers analyzed 66 clinical studies on biofield therapies. And they found strong evidence that the techniques can reduce pain in people who live independently, and moderate evidence that these therapies can decrease pain in hospital patients and cancer patients.

They also found moderate evidence that biofield therapies can help ease agitation in dementia patients and reduce anxiety in hospitalized patients.

Clearly, we need a lot more research on this before we declare "healing touch" to be the next front in natural treatments. The placebo effect can be strong, especially when it comes to pain relief (and that goes for studies on Big Pharma's painkillers, too).

But to dismiss any treatment out of hand when it offers the possibility of a safe, inexpensive and effective option would be as foolish as swallowing any pill Big Pharma gives you with asking questions first.

Just remember: There's nothing wrong with healthy skepticism. But ignorance is another story altogether – one the AP is happy to give you.