Body, health & nutrition · C 2 · Open cloze

C1/C2 What Doctors Won’t Do…

Use of English activities

Image by Danilo Alvesd Unsplash

Are you one of my type, meaning that you’d ditch the doctor unless you found yourself at death’s door or are you more of the hypochondriac type that literally lives surrounded by huge piles of medical prescriptions? Are you leery of medical treatments or do you leap at the opportunity to have every single organ in your body scrutinized? Whatever position you may side with, you’re bound to find these extracts from The Guardian interesting.  For today, I’ve prepared two texts concerned with alternative medical treatments, but I hope to get round to adding a couple more in the near future.

PS. Some years back I treated a cat with homeopathy, and guess what? It worked!!! So could there be such a thing as placebo effect for my little Tambo?

Created by blogdeserena

Vocabulary

Word formation What doctors won't do

Read the text and  complete the text with a form of the word in brackets. 

Source The Guardian

Activity by Serena

I would never use 1) ...(HOMEOPATHY) medicines. They are based on an 18th-century practice of 2)... (DILUTE) particular compounds in water or alcohol to the point where the solution is so weak as to contain no trace of the original compound at all. Homeopaths believe that water has a "memory" of the 3) ... (CURE) substance that then has a 4) ... (BENEFIT) effect. For me, the key word is "believe".5) ... (ADHERE) of homeopathy believe in the efficacy of homeopathic medicines in the same way as they may believe in a particular religion. Homeopathy is a faith-based medical system that, in the minds of its 6) ... (FAITH), does not require any scientific evidence of 7) ... (EFFECT) to be beneficial.

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If homeopathy is 8) ... (EFFECT), then most of what we have learned in the fields of medicine, chemistry and physics since the 18th century must be 9) ... (CORRECT). I find that 10) ... (PLAUSIBLE), so prefer to squander my money in other ways.

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9.

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Created by blogdeserena

Vocabulary

OPEN CLOZE Dismiss alternative medicine

Read the text and  complete with ONE suitable word for each blank. 

Source The Guardian

Activity by Serena

… dismiss alternative medicine

I would never dismiss an alternative therapy 1) ... first understanding how it works. It's taken me years of medical experience  to realise that 2) ... because a therapy doesn't have evidence 3) ... it, it doesn't mean it can't help some people. As doctors, we aretrained,  rightly, to seek scientific evidence of the effectiveness and safety of a given therapy. But conventional modern medicine can't help everyone. 4) ... a lack of research funding, there is a slowly growing body of evidence of the effectiveness of a range of alternative therapies. A recent example was that yoga 5)...help reduce pain and increase mobility in people with osteoarthritis. Modern medicine remains my 6) ... area of expertise, but I now realise other forms of therapy, 7) ... as  chiropractic and  hypnotherapy, can help.

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