Banned
Just another example of why people should try and stay away from TCM for the most part. For a country which people claim has so much medical wisdom it certainly seems to focus on a folklore based belief system of healing that has no basis in human anatomy or any scientific foundation.
That and one could say a zero focus on taking care of the endangered animals within there own country.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6566507.stm
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There is quite a duality in TCM...on one hand, it's a relaible medical system, but in other areas, it's all folk medicine.
If you are seeking treatment, you need to go to an actual doctor of TCM and not a local folk healer...same as in the USA.
You wouldn't go to the guy wiith the beard at you local health food store for medical treatment right? Same with China, only folk healers seem to have more essteem than they do here.
The educated graduates of thier medical universities are the ones to go to for TCM, and even they use modern western methods when they work better.
As for the tiger bone wine...I think it's an aphrodisiac. There are plenty of plant based alternatives to it that work as good, or better.
Those that are the most sucessful are also the biggest failures. The difference between them and the rest of the failures is they keep getting up over and over again, until they finally succeed.
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Banned
I have my serious doubts. Chinese traditional medicine encompasses a massive array of folk medical practices with a basis in mysticism pretending to be science.it's a relaible medical system
As you know chinese medicine holds that the body's vital energy circulates through meridian channels that connect to different organs and related functions,disease is then attributed to a imbalance or interruption of chi.
First off there is ZERO proof of the existance of any chi or other body vital energy as accorded by ancient practices such as acupuncture, qiqong, and a host of other systems. I believe that the majority of traditional asian doctors rely on improper diagnostic procedure and that this is much more a pseudo science than anything else, something I would not subject my own family to.
I don't talk about it much here, but I have more than a basic knowledge of herbs and vitamins, since the mid 90's I have worked with some of the biggest private nutritional supplement companies in America in corporate sales management and purchasing. GNC, The Vitamin Shoppe, Nature's Plus, Herbal Actives Research, New Chapter, so I know about that field.As for the tiger bone wine...I think it's an aphrodisiac. There are plenty of plant based alternatives to it that work as good, or better
Using tiger bones as a aphrodisiac and bear paws to treat gallbladders is not something that makes anysense at all. Let's not even get into the cruel side of harvesting bear bile.
Last edited by Black Jack II; 04-20-2007 at 08:41 AM.
Without ME its just AWESO
i think one of the things that interests me the most with tcm is the scientific misattribution of things.
for instance there are many things in tcm that are in fact effective treatments. for instance there are studies that show accupuncture can help alleviate severe pain but there is no reliable evidence that this has anything to do with chi or any other kind of mystical force. there is some scientific evidence that suggests there is an interuption of neurotransmitters responsible for carrying the pain signal. so they attributed it to something they couldn't see and called it something they could understand (chi). however as science changed and the understanding of anatomy and physiology got better the attribution of the treatments effectiveness was never changed.
i don't know if that makes any sense.
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Basically you are saying it works, no matter what method of understanding we use.
Those that are the most sucessful are also the biggest failures. The difference between them and the rest of the failures is they keep getting up over and over again, until they finally succeed.
For the Women:
Banned
In conjunction with that I wonder how vastly unscientific to real scientists in Asia all this folk medicine sounds. It's like the diagnosis of chi energy leaks in TCM, something which has no scientific basis, its subjective if anything. Modern physics recognizes energy as a material entity, look at Einstein's equation of E=mc2, and explained by quantum theory showing that energy is not an immaterial spirit as suggested by holitisc medicine.i think one of the things that interests me the most with tcm is the scientific misattribution of things.
Back to the point, why does a society which claims to have such a grasp on the natural order of healing, something which I do not buy into, work so hard on destroying its own natural enivroment with such scams, bear bile, bear paws, ***** bones, I think I read somewhere that they are totally smashing the seahorse population.
Not that I care about the seahorse population, its just funny to me that one attributes anything scientific to this.
Without ME its just AWESO
not all of it obviously.Originally Posted by Royal Dragon
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I have my serious doubts. Chinese traditional medicine encompasses a massive array of folk medical practices with a basis in mysticism pretending to be science.
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I understand, but they do have medical universities teaching herbal medicine, accupuncture etc... as well. I would think that THOSE avenues of TCM are reliable.
From my own experiance, I have made things that work far better than doctor prescribed medicines in the past. In those instances, My home made medicnes are far more reliable than the Western's...and I really only know a little bit.
I think if you compare someone who has graduated from a Chinese medical university with a degree in TCM, you will find they are just as sound and reliable a healer as thier western counterpart with the sasme level of education in his respective system. In other words, lets compare apples to apples...leave the folk healers out of the TCM equasion...either that or ADD the Western folk healers in before you compare...either or.
Those that are the most sucessful are also the biggest failures. The difference between them and the rest of the failures is they keep getting up over and over again, until they finally succeed.
For the Women:
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I'm going to have to agree with RD on this one. My kung fu instructor is also a doctor of TCM and there's nothing mystical about what he does and any treatment I've ever received from him has been just as reliable as from my family practitioner.
Part of our KF training is to understand the basic principals of TCM and they are pretty sound. What liberties individuals take with their own treatment practices (religion, folklore, etc) will obviously create variety and unfortunately some quackery.
Without ME its just AWESO
i feel that you should look at evidence based practices. in other words look at what actually works. what is scientifically viable and is proven to be effective through repeated application. the problem with TCM is it relies too heavily on anecdotal evidence. which is a cornerstone of folk medicine. that again is not to say that some of the methodology is off base but one of the things that takes somethign from being anecdotal to evidence based is through repeated study yielding the same results. if it can stand up to the scientific method than i say great. however, i still encourage people to stop trying to attribute mysticism to the causes or outcomes of illness and treatments.
Banned
Makes sense to me man. I just don't see the amount of data one see's in western medicine. I don't think it would even be in the same ball park in terms of paper.i feel that you should look at evidence based practices.
My point, who cares if it comes from a University, Clayton College is a total hack school of herbology and that should not count. When a system of medicine works on clairvoyant diagnosis, faith healing, shamanism and sometimes even astrology I say skip it.the problem with TCM is it relies too heavily on anecdotal evidence. which is a cornerstone of folk medicine
Herbs do have some very good attributes but its amazing how many people self prescribe with herbs, my own herbal background base is in European/Western herbology.
No, its part of it.leave the folk healers out of the TCM equasion
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I just don't think it's fair to judge the whole of Chinese medicine as false and deluded. I agree that there are some questionable practices in some cases, but TCM is far from shamanism.
Do some research and you will see that there have been a great deal of studies done that have shown the benefits of TCM and they are thorough, professional are not at all "anecdotal." To find them you have to look into real medical journals and not just online speculation. Not all of TCM is considered to be valid by western doctors, but as more of it is being understood (minus the folklore and etc.) more of it is being recognized as valuable and functional treatment.
I will agree that there is plenty of room to question certain practices, but to scoop all of TCM into a big pile and say that it's all a bunch of faith healing is ignorant. I know of at least three western M.D.'s in my community that also study and practice some aspects of TCM. Much of it is very compatible with western medicine and the more educated you are about both, the less likely you are to blindly dismiss thousands of years of growth and development in the healing arts.
Try to remember that western medicine used to involve a lot of very harmful practices ("bleeding" the sickness out of patients comes to mind) based on the "scientific method" but it has grown and evolved past those. The same is true of TCM when you are talking about modern educated professionals.
Last edited by BraveMonkey; 04-20-2007 at 11:29 AM. Reason: added last paragraph
Banned
No your right. I am not really doing that. It's just that TCM tends to be treated by a lot of people as if it does not have elements of occultism in its matrix. Intergration and taking responsibility for your own health is a good thing. Boiling a tiger down just because your wang don't work is something else all together.I just don't think it's fair to judge the whole of Chinese medicine as false and deluded.
Bleeding is still used in some rare conditions during modern times, hemochromatosis and polycthemia come to mind.Try to remember that western medicine used to involve a lot of very harmful practices ("bleeding" the sickness out of patients comes to mind) based on the "scientific method" but it has grown and evolved past those. The same is true of TCM when you are talking about modern educated professionals.
How does this compare to a TCM method?
"I am your evil stimulus"
I have no real desire to get invovled in this topic but would like to say a couple quick things:
1. Much more scientific study on TCM has been done than most people seem to realize. Endnotes in some TCM books referencing clinical studies, double blind trials, University research, etc, etc are sometimes larger than the Chapter in which they follow. Granted, there are still numerous topics to be tackled by the Scientific community but ongoing research has been taking place for well over 50 eyars, and each day new tests and trials, etc are done.
2. Many of the "drugs" that are a part of Western Biomedicine abound from the very herbs that are being shunned in this very discussion. My favorite example is san qi, which is an herb everyone knows, and has a rather powerful effect on prothrombin time due to a number of chemical ingredients. Advocates of "TCM-sucks" groups and western medical bigots tend to think san qi is just a bunch of hocus pocus until America decides to isolate and extract one of a number of useful chemicals and concentrate it into a little pill--Then Biomedicine cheers "Hooray" and peopel start having strange side effects from the large concentrations they take everyday. Ma Huang (Ephedra) isnt a bad example of this taking place.
3. Real, modern-day TCM is not Folk Medicine. It is a system of coming to understand and diagnose the dynamics of the human organism. It is a way of mapping the human landscape into a type of categorical imperative. The ideas of qi, or any of the 5 textures, are just that. They are ideas, tools that a practicioner can utilize to diagnose a problem. And it is a good, solid system. Solid enough that plenty of Western herbalists and Harvard biomedical doctors and professors seek to utilize this system into their practice.
So please understand that when you say "TCM", this does not mean "Folk Medicine". TCM is a real system that is used for real results. It continues to evolve, embrace some new ideas, and seek to come to a better udnerstanding of what works and what doesnt, much of which, especially in present day, is based less and les on anecdotal evidence, and more and more on solid scientific research.
Kaptchuk says it best when he claims that neither system (Biomedicine or TCM) is the be-all end-all, nor should either system be "set on a pedestal". Nothings perfect, and to claim taht either system is just a waste fo time is overly critical and without justification.
Last edited by PlumDragon; 04-20-2007 at 12:01 PM.
Without ME its just AWESO
i didnt refute the validity of tcm. in fact i gave an example of an efective treatment that comes from chinese medicine. accupuncture, and there are a ton more. my point was regarding what they attribute the causes and cures of disease to. for instance the concept of chi. it is some kind of ambiguous term that lends itself to mysticism rather than science. cupping is another example of chinese medicine that has been shown to have positive benefits to health. however when you say things like it pulls the bad chi out you lose the scientific element. there are toxins it does draw out of the lymph nodes and the skin but i think it would be tough to argue that you are pulling chi out.
and for clarification i am not even refuting the claim that chi is real. i don't know if it is or isn't. but i am saying that it is not scientifically verified to exist. which means in terms of medicine it is conjectural and anecdotal.
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