DeusTrismegistus wrote:Honestly there is so much BS in western medicine it makes me cringe. There has never been any proof that eating fat causes obesity, yet that is the party line. There has never been proof that cholesterol causes atherosclerosis yet that is the party line. In trials they report a change from a 1% chance of death from a specific cause to a .5% chance of dying as a 50% reduction in your risk! Which it is, relative risk, for a single cause, and often total mortality stays the same or sometimes increases not to mention side effects that effect quality of life. Oh how about polyunsaturated fats being promoted as healthy fats and saturated fats being associated with unhealthy while polyunsaturated fats are associated with increased cancer and saturated fat is associated with, increased cholesterol, which causes heart disease, even though it never been proven. Or how about science saying the appendix is vestigial only to find out this year it does have a purpose. How about doctors prescribing painkillers that are highly addictive and damage the liver over time. Lets not forget the antidepressants that increase suicidal tendencies. Vitamin D, recommended at 2000 ius a day where a body that is exposed to 30 minutes to and hour of sun (with 95% of the skin exposed) wil produce 20,000 ius of vitamin D. Guess what the body uses to create vitamin D, CHOLESTEROL! 2000 iu/day will only give a serum D level of 20 nmol/L which still shows insufficiency of the calcium dependent pathways in the body. Yet 2k ius is the recommended daily allowance. Also even though vitamin D levels of 55 nmol/L are associated with the lowest incidence of cancer and need around 10,000 ius/day which is next to impossible to obtain from food sources but easily obtained from sunlight, sunlight is BAD for you! Oh yes lets ignore that a very large number of skin cancers occur in places that get little to no sun like the bottom of the feet.
There is a lot of good stuff in western medicine and western science. However there is a lot of BS too. A study that gets several different diagnosis and treatments from the same person and declares TCM is erroneous because it is ignoring the most important part of medicine, does the treatment help? The idea of qi is a paradigm that is verified experimentally. When the experiments that clear the stagnation result in positive results it reinforces the paradigm. Does it really matter if the paradigm does not mesh with western scientific understanding? A barrier in the very way the cultures think about problems and solutions stands in the way of verification. Honestly how do you give placebo needles? You can't put it in a double blind because the doctor would know if he was using placebo needles or not.
There is an important thing to remember when trying to condemn TCM and alternative medicine as quackery. Its been getting more and more popular in the US and the West. If it wasn't helping people that wouldn't be true. Someone is helped and there EXPERIENCE is what leads them to recommend others to try it, and it grows. The very fact that it is growing shows it is working. I don't care how as long as I get better, most people don't care how those pills work as long as it makes them better. If two paradigms produce positive results what right does one have to say that the other is wrong?
D_Glenn wrote:Western Medicine is a business whose customers are sick people. It's very difficult for business' to get a customer to come through the door for the first time, so any business knows it's more economical to ensure that you have repeat customers rather than continually seeking out new ones.
Darth Rock&Roll wrote:moxa can also be burned on top of a slice of ginger. I've seen two different docs do that now. It will still have effect and you will not receive the burn.
Michael wrote:Sounds complicated, Doc. Might even take a person two weekend seminars to learn all that!
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