Alternative medicine...

[Versuvius]

Alternative medicine has nothing to it, plain and simple. You need no degrees, no insurance, no training. There is no law against setting yourself as a distributer of homeopathy because homeopathy solutions have no active ingredient win, by homeopathic logic seawater is the greatest cure all since Jesus. Accupuncture is theraputic, this is true, pressure points are great at relaxing muscles and calming you you down but a) So does some over the counter drugs and b) It costs far more. Crystals...oh come on, crystals? Cosmic vibrations from a rock making you better? It's bollocks, bunkum and quackery, it's the placebo effect of faith healing (also bollocks) and nothing more. Desperate people will pay for crap because of that, they are desperate for a result and alternative medicine is nothing but a cash grab of the desperate and occasionally, the fucking stupid. This subject is something i am bitter about as my grandmother who had PTSD from her husband hanging herself had most of her life savings and life insurance payout taken by an accupuncturist, mother or her other daughter did nothing about it. It should be illegal ¬_¬

As for the OP...dude your body recovers from infections after 3 days anyway. It's how long it takes for the immune system to develop an antibody. Christ, some people will believe anything eh?

 

[PhiMed]

"Alternative Medicine" is, pretty much by definition, medicine without evidence. If there was sufficient evidence that a therapy was efficacious, it would be mainstream. Many tenets of TCM have been incorporated already, but there are many many more that have been proven to have no value whatsoever.

Those that are bullshit are, have always been, and will continue to be bullshit, but contrarians will continue to practice them anyway, because "Western" suddenly becomes a curse word when you place it in front of the word "medicine" for many people. This is despite the fact that the west invented antibiotics, general anesthesia, intubation, cpr, etc...

Japan makes a ton of new discoveries, but these are somehow "Western". It's not one culture vs. another. It's reason vs. superstition.

 

[BRex21]

Y'know a lot of the "alternative medicine" is pretty much medicine as it occurs in nature, we just haven't ground it up and put it in pill form.
Aspirin is white oak bark, morphine comes from poppies, Curare is a naturally occurring tranquilizer from a few south African plants. Often people call these things quackery because they came from plants as opposed to a lab.

And the kicker that you fail to acknowledge is that those drugs in their natural forms have pretty bad side effects, white oak bark has the lovely side effect of stomach ulcers and bleeding.
Curare was used back in the day, but now we have better and safer anesthetics.

I didn't acknowledge it because its a non issue, ASPIRIN has the side effect of stomach ulcers. And Curare is still used to treat muscle spasms and is still necessary in the more delicate surgeries as it cant be beaten in terms of immobilizing a patient.

Except an aspirin derivative comes from the bark of a willow not an oak, and its not aspirin,

There was a time when i knew that

its salicylic acid. We refined that into aspirin as we know it today. The compound is different.

salicylic acid is the medicinal ingredient in both aspirin and white willow. We add Acetyl, another naturally occurring compound to it to allow it to digest quicker and easier. The "medicine" you are getting either way remains the same.

 

[Silas13013]

This misunderstanding of the placebo effect in this thread is hilarious.

 

[Belaam]

Do you know what they call alternative medicine that works?

Medicine.

-Tim Minchin

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhGuXCuDb1U


Damn it. Ninja'd Good grief. Ninja'd by about six people. I'm just going to go play games and let you all post for me.

 

[PhiMed]

Terrible advice.

I have successfully used TCM to cure my chronic bronchitis and have seen multiple people fight Cancer for years when "modern" medicine considered them "dead within a month".

At this point of time in modern science we dont really understand the human body or how everything interacts with it. Chinese Medicine somehow does this through experience - and while some of it might (and probably does) not make any sense a lot of it has proven successful over millenia for Billions of people.

And this is coming from a native german that lived in china for a long time.

Dont always trust "modern" medicine.

I have two words in response to that; prove it.

Come on, prove it! You'd be the first person in the world to do it.

Until you actually do prove your claims, nobody should believe a single word of what you just said. And I'm not just saying that to be confrontational, I'm saying it because you just made a number of claims that require scientific evidence.

This is hilarious.
Why would i need to prove this to anyone? I dont get a bronchitis anymore everytime i get sick, thats enough proof to me and my whole family; i really dont care if you believe me or not since this is just some forum on some site - why do you people need a paper or "press proof" of what has happened and what "different" medicine is capable of when you often criticize other "press" (and i use quotation marks for a reason!) like "the sun" or "Fox news" for being liars/bad mouthers etc ?

Are you really so shallow to only believe what public education tells you? How about you go to china to a traditional chinese doctor and (bring a translator with you cause this might be tricky otherwise) ask the people in the PACKED waiting room if his treatment helps them or has helped anyone they know.

It has helped me and i am living proof - what more do you want?

PS: label me a troll if you like, gaming "discussion" boards are ridiculous nowadays anyway.

What you are describing is known as "anecdotal evidence". It is proof of... nothing. It's the type of evidence that cave people and bedouins trust, but that anyone who has the power of literacy should look upon with derision. Judging from your grammar and syntax, I think I know why you place such stock in it.

His point was that anyone who is genuinely intellectually curious would attempt to prove, or view empirical proof of, the efficacy of these therapies through the actual scientific method. Many have tried. Those things in the alternative medicine world that have been tested and passed muster are now known as "medicine". Those things which have been test and did not are now known as "that gross shit your weird grandma makes you eat whenever you get sick."

It's not devotion to mainstream media sources. It's devotion to scientific journals. I don't watch Fox News, and I don't read the Sun. But I do read Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine, and I'm inclined to place more stock in their medical advice than advice from some asshole who doesn't realize that bronchitis is a self-limited condition (that means it will go away on its own... all we can do is make it go away faster).

Voodoo is voodoo. Just because an ethnic group is large, that doesn't mean it's voodoo is any more valid than any other culture's voodoo.

 

[aashell13]

Here we go:

as almost everyone else has said, most of "alternative" medicine is crap.

Even granted that lots of drugs have active ingredients sourced from plants, the pills still have a very high purity and carefully controlled dosage; things you can't achieve by swallowing herb paste.

It's true that every few years a mainstream drug is found unsafe and pulled from the market; it's also true that the side effects for a lot of prescription drugs read something like "this might cure your pimples, or it might kill you". However, these are not excuses for fleeing back to medieval standards of care.

As a side note, proof by anecdote is no proof at all. Just because something appeared to work for you once or twice means nothing in a scientific sense.

I strongly suspect that a good deal of the enthusiasm for "traditional eastern medicine" is simply people enamored with the exotic at the expense of sense.

 

[guyroxorz]

It just depends on how your body works. There really isn't going to be one universal medicine people can take to get rid of any infection or disease. People's bodies work way too differently from each other in order to have that.

Personally, I just drink some tea, eat small amounts of food, and take some over-the-counter medicine and it works just fine. I tried getting rid of my colds via roughing them out and doing just natural cleansing, but I just had to run to the store and get pills anyways because of how severe my colds get.

I think you'll find that when you're looking at specific chemical pathways, especially in reference to medication (alternative or not) that aside from tolerance the positive effects are very much the same. Adverse may reactions may vary but the positive is usually pretty consistent.

Back on topic:

I think there is a lot of validity to TCM, though you should be very careful when referring to it as an alternative medicine just so you know. However, as with real medicine, there are going to be areas of weakness. Unfortunately the media is far more likely to have a pop at alternative medicine that our every day hospitals because lets be honest having a crack at the health care system that keeps us all going isn't wise. As a results of all of this alternative medicine gets a pretty poor wrap where there is actually a lot of validity to be found within it's practices. Just on a personal note i'd stick with western medicine, although there are more synthetics, sometimes synthetics are good things.

 

[PhiMed]

This is hilarious.
Why would i need to prove this to anyone? I dont get a bronchitis anymore everytime i get sick, thats enough proof to me and my whole family

Why would it need to be proven? Well, to show it's not utter bullshit is one thought that occurs.

Also did you know you grow out of chronic bronchitis naturally? It doesn't need curing. Ouch, entire claim sunk...

Yeah no.

I had it since i was a child - to be honest i dont know the whole medical implications of it etc. but every time i woul get sick (and that means from the beginning of my kognitive awakening) i would get a bronchitis. It would not.go.away. Doctors in the west could treat the symptoms and make me "get healthy faster" but it would still mean me lying in my fucking bed for at least 3-5 days having trouble BREATHING (which is something absolutely retarded if you ever had to endure that).

After i drank some tea out of different stuff for around 1 year i was cured. I still get sick often, but i dont have trouble breathing and i sure as hell dont lie in my bed all day hoping for it to go away.

There is all the proof that i personally need - if thats placebo (wait what, how would that even work on my lungs??) then so be it.Like religion, i really dont care what or how you believe in things as long as you dont try to manically convince other people otherwise.

PS: I am not talking about vodoo or somesuch, personally i have no experience with any of that, but of an educated chinese medicine doctor that could and would consult you to a treatment of "drinking tea" (i am not going to explain as the whole claim would just get me torn up by this whole community of know-it-alls).

Really guys, start tolerating... heck everything more.

All of these "in my opinion (herp i dont have any proof either)XX YY is happening blergh a blergh" posts/users are making me sad and furious. Why add nothing of value to a discussion except your own opinion of stuff you know nothing about of?

As children grown, the diameter of their respiratory tree also grows. Because of the increase in cross-sectional area of the respiratory tract, there is less resistance to airflow as someone matures, and so formerly debilitating respiratory ailments eventually become minor inconveniences. This has been studied, documented, and explained, in great detail, by "Western" (henceforth known as fact-based) Medicine. It happens naturally and without intervention of any kind.

MYSTERY SOLVED.

Your miracle cure did exactly the same thing that doing absolutely nothing would do. AMAZING.

 

[PhiMed]

Terrible advice.

I have successfully used TCM to cure my chronic bronchitis and have seen multiple people fight Cancer for years when "modern" medicine considered them "dead within a month".

At this point of time in modern science we dont really understand the human body or how everything interacts with it. Chinese Medicine somehow does this through experience - and while some of it might (and probably does) not make any sense a lot of it has proven successful over millenia for Billions of people.

And this is coming from a native german that lived in china for a long time.

Dont always trust "modern" medicine.

I have two words in response to that; prove it.

Come on, prove it! You'd be the first person in the world to do it.

Until you actually do prove your claims, nobody should believe a single word of what you just said. And I'm not just saying that to be confrontational, I'm saying it because you just made a number of claims that require scientific evidence.

This is hilarious.
Why would i need to prove this to anyone? I dont get a bronchitis anymore everytime i get sick, thats enough proof to me and my whole family; i really dont care if you believe me or not since this is just some forum on some site - why do you people need a paper or "press proof" of what has happened and what "different" medicine is capable of when you often criticize other "press" (and i use quotation marks for a reason!) like "the sun" or "Fox news" for being liars/bad mouthers etc ?

Are you really so shallow to only believe what public education tells you? How about you go to china to a traditional chinese doctor and (bring a translator with you cause this might be tricky otherwise) ask the people in the PACKED waiting room if his treatment helps them or has helped anyone they know.

It has helped me and i am living proof - what more do you want?

PS: label me a troll if you like, gaming "discussion" boards are ridiculous nowadays anyway.

You seem kind of touchy. If someone doubts you, reason with them, don't blow up and go off on a bizarre rant about how the media is teh evulz. There's a difference between verified, scientifically proven medicine, and something Fox news says? I don't really understand that part.

You notice how most herbal medicine promises to cure things that go away anyway? There's a reason for that.

Except that i am not talking about "some flu" or something like that - i am talking about "my story" with chronic bronchitis and how Traditional Chinese Medicine helped me/my body to deal with it. I am touchy because people request irrational stuff like "sources" from me, when i am neither a known scientist, journalist or anything of the kind so that i can "prove it". My proof is that i am posting here about this topic, i cant give you more than that.

You did not have "chronic bronchitis". Chronic bronchitis is an adult illness, limited almost exclusively to adults who have smoked their entire lives. There are very specific diagnostic criteria that have to be met for someone who knows what the hell they are talking about to refer to it as "chronic bronchitis". TCM "cured" a disease you never had in the first place. People question your story because it is not only absurd, but self-contradictory.

If you can't produce a single scientific source that suggests your claim might be true, then what's more likely to be correct in reality: That the entire scientific community has failed to produce a single finding that supports a phenomenon that you have discovered, or that you're full of shit? You expect us to critique media sources, but you want us to believe some random guy in an internet forum without question? Come on, dude. Do you read what you write before you hit "post"?

 

[somonels]

Loads of medical papers claim that TCM has some benefits, but it is unclear whether it does because of the treatment or the placebo effect.
I'll say no, but then again I say that to regular medicine.

 

[PhantomEcho]

Medicine? Medicine in general makes me raise my brow. Why? Because I know some 'medicine experts'. I know some geniuses up there in their pharma-corps, and just EXACTLY how much brains they've got going on.

Let me tell ya what, if you had half a clue the kind of shit they put in those pretty little pills of yours and call them 'medicine'... well... you'd probably drop over dead. Of course, you might just drop over dead anyways, from taking the things... but hey.

That's the price you pay for 'wellness'.

Sadly, I signed an NDA. So I can't say anything. Or rather, I won't... because I'd like to continue doing business with these folks.


But hey. Don't take my word for it. I would never ask anyone to do such a thing.

But I'm just as disgusted by modern medicine as I am distrustful of the old school herbalism route. It's all quackery and half-baked science, if you ask me. Because there's never a time that potentially killing 20-goddamn percent of your user-base is acceptable.

That's a game of Russian Roulette I refuse to play.

 

[Elementary - Dear Watson]

Personally I don't trust most normal medicine! When you can go into a chemists and get a brand name drug for 7 quid, or an own brand version for 50P that apparently does exactly the same there mst be something wrong!

Personally unless i'm desperate I stay away from all medicines/drugs. Alternative medicines just sound like tripe! Hell, I, like all of you play video games, but I don't go round eating a fistfull of parsley and thyme (herbs) when I cut my finger because I beleive everything I read!

But if anybody wants to beleive that putting a pebble up their nose, or wrapping their ear in the leaf of the rare, endangered mountain shrub from Peru, can cure their sore toe, then let them too it... Just don't expect me to play along!

 

[Clive Howlitzer]

Most alternative medicine is absolutely bogus. There is usually a reason why it isn't accepted by the majority of the scientific community. You really need to make sure you do your research. One of the biggest issues I have with it is that people will use it to treat serious illnesses and then NOT seek actual medical advice because of it.
Most of the time with alternative medicine, a placebo would work just as well.

 

[OrokuSaki]

"You know what they call 'alternative medicine' that's been proved to work? Medicine" - Tim Minchin

 

[applesandoranges]

edit

 

[NightHawk21]

Except an aspirin derivative comes from the bark of a willow not an oak, and its not aspirin,

There was a time when i knew that

its salicylic acid. We refined that into aspirin as we know it today. The compound is different.

salicylic acid is the medicinal ingredient in both aspirin and white willow. We add Acetyl, another naturally occurring compound to it to allow it to digest quicker and easier. The "medicine" you are getting either way remains the same.

Aspirin is acetylsalicylic acid its close, but its not the same thing as salicylic acid. To quote wikipedia cause I can't find my lab manual "In addition to being a compound that is chemically similar to but not identical to the active component of aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid)". So your right but that little group induces a slightly different reaction, but the net result is largely the same.

 

[maxmanrules]

Chinese "Medicine" = PLACEBO. I have not seen any proof, not anecdotal evidence (which any person interested in reason based science can tell you does not count) that traditional Chinese remedies work.
It is essentially the same thing as homeopathy, but developed in the East, not the West. I am naturally suspicious of anything that has been around for "hundreds of years" as people were fucking retarded back then (they let blood as a solution to basically everything in the West, which is part of the reason homeopathy worked better back then, cause it was something that wasn't actively harmful)
The reason Chinese medicine works is because of the placebo effect. Simple.
Also, I want to take a minute to say that lots of Chinese run tests that have faked results for things like acupuncture.

 

[Versuvius]

People seem to be attributing certain plants (Which contain active ingredients) with proof of alternative medicine. Now heres a run down of the 'alternative' treatments i can think of off the top of my head. Acupunture; needles don't have active ingredients, Homeopathy; solutions diluted hundreds of times so none of the active ingredient exists, crystals also lack active ingredients unless cold and hard are now chemical properties that affect the body beyond making your sensory nerves go "hey this is cold and hard". I could get angry all day at how daft people can be with evidenceless tripe but...whatever.