chinese medicine, is it all nonsense?

[Auricman]

[color:"red"] VOELKER HOERT DIE SIGNAAAAALE....DIE INTERNATIONAAAAALE (tatatatam...) ERKAEMPFT DAS MENSCHENRECHT!

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Fly,

Woher hast Du das, von der DDR? ::

Auricman

[Guest]

>>>If I break my leg and have a choice between hobbling over to a hospital or over to your monk, I think I will take my chances on the hospital.<<<

 

 

trust me, so would i, and do when i have a problem.

i am a great sceptic, it was just that where i was was simply no hospital around. i just thought that as long as he doesn't massage my rib there is no harm done in blowing on it and chanting.

 

 

 

>>>I find it interesting that you try to validate ayurveda by saying a western style doctor sends patients to ayurvedic doctors when she can't help them. If ayurveda is so good, why doesn't she use it first?<<<

 

well, she is a western style doctor, so she has to believe and trust in what she has learned, that is what she knows and understands.

she sees the effects ayurveda has at times, but never learned it. it takes a very long time to learn ayurveda, and as you said, a lot is not that easy to follow up and prove.

 

 

 

 

>>>I think your posting is a good example of the problem western doctors have with alternative medicine-so much of the proof is anecdotal. <<<<

 

yeah, that was also just meant as an anecdote, and in 99% of cases i will still go to a western hospital. i have seen once an interesting discussion on that, one western doctor spoke about the differences there, eastern medicine mainly being empirical, but should more be used complementary. he said that there was a lot in eastern medicine.

there is a lot of mumbojumbo around, but still, the knowledge of traditional style doctors on medical plants is mindblowing at times (seen at how pharma companies and universities send researchers around to learn from them), and the effects of yoga for example are partly documented.

i think both styles of medicine should not be just seen exclucively but complimentary.

 

i am a bit out of my depth here in such a discussion - i am neither a doctor, nor a healer or anything. but living here for such a long time (and having had that weird uncle...) i just had too many of those anectdotes to be just coincidal.

i guess some western style methology and quality control would help eastern medicine, and the more wholistic approach could be useful to western medicine.

there is still a lot we don't know about yet, gotta be open to everything unless proven wrong beyond doubt.

learning never stops.

 

 

 

 

[Guest]

>>>Woher hast Du das, von der DDR? <<<

 

 

 

that song has been there long before the DDR existed.

[Guest]

Yes, good to have an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out onto the floor.

[Guest]

>>>Yes, good to have an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out onto the floor.<<<

 

 

well, then, tell us how that feels - you seems to be the one with the experience.

[tomc12]

I think your reply expresses exactly how I feel. I think there is some value in alternative medicine, but it can be hard separating out the parts that should go under the art of medicine and the parts that go under the science of medicine.

[Guest]

i reckon that the only solution to that would be some form of exchange - people from both areas learning and familiarising themselves with both schools. of course that must be smarter people than me...

[lembeh]

 

 

I have been biting my lips (figuratively) to keep out of this, but well:

 

>to that would be some form of exchange - people from both areas learning and familiarising themselves with both schools.

 

Frankly, there is very little point. The two "schools" have such different mind sets that a "meeting" is all but impossible.

 

Eastern "medicine" is anecdotal, schooled in "secrecy" (the "teacher" passes on the "lore" directly to a chosen student) and relies on "belief" (of both patient and practicer).

 

Western medicine by contrast relies upon methodology, observation, replication and the free exchange of techniques and practices (hence the 5,000 plus medical journal!!).

 

To look at it another way, given the grasping, profit driven nature of modern (western) pharamcutical companies, do you *really* think that they would (or do) pass up sources of new drugs or treatments??? NO. Of course they do not.

 

HOWEVER, here is the bug bear on all of it. Take a sample from an "eastern practitioner" (for whatever), and analyse it using western methodologies (caveat at the end!). Now go back, and take another sample for the "same thing" from the SAME practitioner and analyse it, Guess what. Ninety nine times out of a hundred, the two "samples" bear no resemblence to each other by any "western" technologies. The samples produced by the same practitioner, for the same thing are *not* replicates.

OK, lets get to the caveat. You *could* (and probably will) say, well, "western" tools (mass spec, HPLC what have you) cannot "detect" the well, what do you want to call it, Chi, life force, X-factor etc. OK, fine. BUT, western technologies *absolutely* rely upon reduplication and repetition. Without that you are back to *belief* which is not part of western science.

 

That is not to say that "folk lore" remedies have no place, and are all bunk. Many, many people have had years added to thier lives by the investigation of such "folk lore". Many patients with heart problems are alive today because of old lore that says the fox glove plant is good for "heart ailments". Today we give them digitalis, basically an extract from that plant.

 

BUT (aha!) that medicine was tried and tested by western technologies. Methodologies that get to "the truth". Placebo controlled experiments, replication in different countries etc etc. Publication and dissemination of controlled trials. How the hell can you do that when the same practitioner (for eastern medicines) cannot even come up with the same thing two days in a row?

 

There *may* one day be a time when a useful treatment comes from eastern science. But that day will come when "western" science brute forces the compund from the hash of folk lore and superstition that is "eastern science".

 

The story alluded to here that was on stickmans site (about the neck tumour) is very very sadly NOT atypical. From *personal, professional* experience (one of your favourites, not mine!), I will tell you I know of a good half dozen cases where a person was suffering from cancer, who *could* have been saved by western medicine, who eventually died because they waited too long trusting to "eastern" medicine before seeking competant (read western) medical treatment.

-j-

Bonus question: What one "discovery" added more years to a persons life expectancy (world wide) than all medical treatments together for the preceeding five hundred years?

[Guest]

>>>Bonus question: What one "discovery" added more years to a persons life expectancy (world wide) than all medical treatments together for the preceeding five hundred years?<<<

 

 

antibiotics?

 

 

i definately agree with all you said in your post. as i said - i am a bit out of my depth here apart from:

 

 

>>>Frankly, there is very little point. The two "schools" have such different mind sets that a "meeting" is all but impossible.<<<

 

there are doctors who have studied both, and do apply both. i think that if certain compromises in doctrine are made - both can work complimentary. i have no doubt whatsoever that in actual treatment of an acute problems western medicine is far superior in the vast majority of cases, but in prevention, and treatment of cases which have a not so clear reason, or psychosomatic reasons, eastern medicine can be very well applied.

 

 

[kamui]

IMHO your black and white position does not apply to the current reality anymore.

 

As far as I perceive the German medical scene (from an absolutely non professional background) the time of hardcore confrontation between and Western medicine and Eastern medicine are not over, but less confronting than a decade ago. Beside the Eastern methods we have the so called natural healing which relies on herbs e.g. and homeopathy and all this methods are more and more accepted and often demanded by patients. Many Western style doctors started to add alternative methods of healing like acupuncture, because they have learned that this can support and sometimes (concerning chronically diseases) substitute Western methods.

 

Your example of people who died of cancer because they merely relied on Eastern methods are sad, but not very realistic for Germany - what is happening in Thailand, I don't know. IMHO the poeple with cancer who do not to search for treatment by Western doctors acted really stupid, but this does not speak against Eastern medicine in general. My father died of cancer too and it was no big discussion that the Western methods like chemotherapy were supported by natural medicine to strengthen his weak body.

 

And one last remark, my problem with German doctors using Chinese methods is, that sometimes they seem to have a only a superficial knowledge. For example, there are not many doctors who studied acupuncture in China or Japan, most did only some classes and did not learn it as a complete system and the philosophy behind it.