Chinese Medicine

One reason why I wouldn’t touch Chinese quack medicine: China is driving the extinction of elephants and rhinos in its quest for ivory and horn.

Another reason why I wouldn’t touch Chinese quack medicine: many of the world’s more unpleasant and dangerous or polluting chemicals are manufactured in China because thet’s the only country that tolerates the factories. The Beijing Olympics caused worldwide shortages of some chemical feedstocks because the processes are so polluting that even the Beijing authorities had to close the factories down for the duration. This tells me the quack remedies are likely to be unsafe.

One of the acupuncturists I tried (for migraine) used to stick the needles in and then leave me lying down listening to Chinese music for an hour! Trapped I was!
Afterwards she did a brilliant head and neck massage though, which I think was the most effective bit.

Accupuncture is odd – i get it in my upper back and neck for tension.
When she sticks a needle into the upper neck, it makes my throat sore and I feel sick.

I’m told this is normal.

I wonder how far the needles are going in…!

DrP

Anyway…. you clearly are convinced by your experience of it, so that’s great.

Convinced in what way ? I said in my very first post :

I’ve tried it a few times and ime it is foul and disgusting and I invariably came to the conclusion that I’d rather be ill than drink the vile concoctions.

To clarify, as you appear to be challenging me, my martial arts teacher, who became a personal friend, was a traditional Chinese doctor. On two or three occasions he gave me traditional Chinese herbs with which I had to make an infusion to help me recover from the Common Cold, something which I would never see my GP about.

It did not contain ‘knobs off endangered animals’ and ‘powdered badgers gall bladder’. I have no idea whether it worked but I did find it foul, for that reason he stopped offering it to me and concentrated on acupuncture. Over a number of years usually after training he gave me acupuncture for all sorts of problems with mixed results, some of them quite simply stunning and others not so.

IMO it is perfectly feasible that Chinese herbal infusions might have a positive effect, not just a dangerous one. After all a glass of milk before bedtime can help you sleep, or a camomile tea can help you to relax, without the need to see your GP for sleeping pills or tranquilizers.

My Chinese traditional doctor friend worked initially, after coming over from Hong Kong, in a typical high street Chinese herbal shop, he was absolutely adamant that if you have a serious condition you should see your GP. He did, through the use of acupuncture, treat conditions which my GP/western medicine had failed to resolve to my satisfaction.

That’s my experience.

DrP – Member
My wife does western medical acupuncture – it’s a different ‘theory’ to chinese acupuncture, but uses most of the same points.

There is evidence for acupuncture for plenty of conditions – I suppose you could call that ‘traditional medicine’ in that sense.

It’s this that really made me start the topic in the first place. I remember seeing a BBC documentary on the effects of acupuncture, and it concluding that it was verifiably effective in treating things like migraines.

Let’s dig out the trepanning tools 😈

It may have been the ‘trust me i’m a doctor’ series?

There is evidence it offers help above placebo in certain conditions…
I’ll grab them from her website..
“Many health and well-being ‘bodies’ recognise the positive effects acupuncture can have on our lives. The National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE) say that acupuncture is an effective treatment for many complaints, including:

chronic back pain
dental pain
pain and discomfort during gastrointestinal endoscopy
headache and migraine
nausea and vomiting after an operation
pain and discomfort during oocyte retrieval (a procedure used during IVF)
osteoarthritis of the knee”

I was in agony when I had my oocytes retrieved…they had to call it off in the end…. 😉

DrP

Acupuncture? Herbs? Yingwong Chi infusing tea Chakra massage? Chiroquacktic adjustment? Load of cobblers for a bunch of lightweights.

If you wanna go old school, go all the way or give up. Next time you get the sniffles or some spots or a twinge in your back, get yourself some trepanning done.

After all, they did it for thousands of years so that proves it works. Cured my mate’s bald spot. Arguably. Sort of…

Chairman Mao Invented Traditional Chinese Medicine

The reason so many people take Chinese medicine seriously, at least in part, is that it was reinvented by one of the most powerful propaganda machines of all time and then consciously marketed to a West disillusioned by its own spiritual traditions

It’s a communist plot !!!!

thestabiliser – Member

Elephant (sans tusks and penis) in the room, people!
Chewkw is a DIPLOMAT?!?!?!?!?!
Edit no he isnt he’s a beauraucrat. Ends in at. Quite a relief, really.

I would organise orgies if I were a diplomat unfortunately I am just a low ranking bureaucrat by accident. The only good news is that at least I am not a career bureaucrat and I constantly remind myself of the jobworth around me … the entire place is infested!!!

Okay, bad to Chinese medicine. Well, I wish the Chinese medicine are all ineffective and you are right. But the fact is FFS!, look at their population … Even if half of them died of sickness without western medication it is still insignificant.

The question is surely many of them are suffering slow lingering death without Western medication? Yes?

😈

Viagra is blue but you definitely want it to pick you up rather than calm you down.

One of the causes of that sort of issue is anxiety, so I imagine ‘calming’ would be exactly the colour you want.

(ObDisclaimer, I’ve never had cause to use them myself, obviously)

So the zombie maggot hater is actually one of them….

mikewsmith – Member

So the zombie maggot hater is actually one of them….

Unfortunately, they are slowly turning me into one of them … 😯

gofasterstripes – Member

Those are not zombie maggots! 🙄

They’re proven to be medically effective 🙂

gofasterstripes – Member

They’re proven to be medically effective

However, that cannot be said of the zombie maggots surrounding us daily. I mean as long as you comply with their commands strictly (ya, you lot …) they will leave you alone for a while but if you stray out of their predefined path you are screwed! They are so anal retentive it’s a surprise that probing your exit passage has not yet become a national pass time. 🙄

I’m not reading all 3 pages of this thread. I can hazard a guess at some of the contents and the contributors attitudes…

I know 2 people that have used Chinese traditional medicine. Both for lung and chest issues. Both had gone down the traditional western route of steroids, antibiotics etc, none of which had worked. Both used the medicine for a year or so and in both cases the results were massively better than the routes that had been offered by the more acknowledged process. One was for a 3 year old boy with reoccurring chronic chest infection and other was for a 70 year old woman with COPD. I don’t know why or how, but I know that it worked for both of them.

yossarian – Member
I don’t know why or how, but I know that it worked for both of them.

There are many variables that need to be taken into consideration but my guess are:

1. The gene.
2. The environment.
3. The source of the herbs.
4. The knowledge of the Chinese doctors.
5. Their lifestyle.
6. Their consumption.

🙂

Oh, I know this one’s pretty much finished, but:

My job involves (“proper”) drugs every working day, I have no involvement with homeopathy/traditional medicine (unless you want to count leeches or maggots in there) and I’ve spend lots of time reviewing trial evidence and writing guidance based on it…

… but I’m staggered by the supercilious “western” smugness on display on this thread. We’re not that **** clever, and plenty more of us would be dead if it weren’t for our scientists ripping off herbal medicines when looking for new compounds (before we started just trying every plant/animal extract/soil sample we could lay our hands on for blunderbuss testing programmes)

The traditional medicine process may have been hundreds of times slower and less direct but you’re an arse if you dismiss it’s direct relevance to current medical treatments – say for things like malaria.

Granted, the tiger-cock side of things is preying on the gullible/insecure but it’s basically just marketing isn’t it, hence tiger is best. Oh, and there are TCM animal-derived “drugs”, too: Plenty of people take ursodeoxycholic acid for liver/gallbladder problems and that’s bear bile essentially (and literally until fairly recently)

Pharmacogenetics – yeh, somebody made it sound great up there but it’s barely even in it’s infancy yet, as far as general clinical practice goes.

but I’m staggered by the supercilious “western” smugness on display on this thread. We’re not that **** clever, and plenty more of us would be dead if it weren’t for our scientists ripping off herbal medicines when looking for new compounds (before we started just trying every plant/animal extract/soil sample we could lay our hands on for blunderbuss testing programmes)

True but as most people have said in a fairly rational way there is a big difference between something random in a pot sold – not prescribed by someone to something with a useful active ingredient. Call me a radical modernist but I’m happy to have the active ingredient in a controlled dosage

Good post, dude.

scaredypants – Member

Oh, I know this one’s pretty much finished, but:

No, it is not. There are still plenty of zombie maggots around …

Hear hear, scaredypants has spoken and a person in the know and I agree with him.

Nahh … I can’t be arsed to explain the entire ripping off herbal usage for the development of modern medicine because that’s too tall an order for the rigid minded. 😆

mikewsmith – Member
… radical modernist …

WTF is that! What is so radical about being modern? Where is the radical-ness? Some sort of rigid positivist? Yes? 😆

Voltaire said that medicine is about amusing the patient while Nature cures him.

I suppose if Tim Minchin the comedian can be cited as a source on medicine then so can Voltaire the playwright.

mikewsmith – Member

there is a big difference between something random in a pot sold – not prescribed by someone to something with a useful active ingredient.

It’s your opinion that it’s “something random in a pot sold”, the traditional Chinese doctor who has prescribed the stuff would claim otherwise.

And it’s unlike that the active ingredients are never useful, among all the potentially dangerous active ingredients the law of averages suggests the occasional useful active.

I’m not an expect on traditional Chinese medicine but I suspect you aren’t either.

My job is also in clinical research and while undeniably there are active ingredients in herbal medicines, herbal medicine alone without all the safety testing, finding the right dose, and testing for interactions between drugs, I have to say that I feel far safer with conventional formulations that have been tested in clinical trials.

Edit – I now can’t see the post I wrote yesterday (maybe forgot to submit it), where I said there was a big difference between having a trusted Chinese medicine practitioner in the family as Chewkw describes, versus going into some high street Chinese medicine shop. They aren’t regulated so you don’t know who is treating you and what they’re giving you.

I have to say that I feel far safer with conventional formulations that have been tested in clinical trials.

So you are suggesting that in your opinion the potential risks outweigh any potential benefits, not that traditional Chinese medicine can’t in any way be effective. Well that’s a reasonable proposition, certainly more reasonable imo than the suggestion that traditional Chinese medicine can’t provide any ‘useful active ingredients’.

Edit for your edit :

where I said there was a big difference between having a trusted Chinese medicine practitioner in the family as Chewkw describes, versus going into some high street Chinese medicine shop.

So presumably you are putting your faith in the Chinese government rather than the UK government, as the UK government can and does stop the importation and selling by UK Chinese high street herbalists of stuff which it considers to be dangerous to health.

Stuff which the Chinese government is happy to be sold in China.

Slightly missed my point Ernie, I prefer my active ingredients measured, doses calculated and a list of what else is in there, what it may react to and other such things. What concentration is the product, what is the source, what are the batch numbers it came from. I have no problem with the principles that some things can help you, pop them into measured blister packs and the alternative crowd would walk away.

I don’t put my faith in high street Chinese medicine shops as far as taking their medicines for the reason I gave in my previous paragraph- that I prefer my medications to have been thoroughly tested for safety in controlled clinical studies. Although TCM in high street shops may be checked for contamination with known harmful substances, that’s still not the same as safety evaluation of the active ingredient as done in clinical studies.

I was referring (perhaps not very clearly) to the practitioners themselves – who knows what the qualifications and experience of every practitioners in every high street TCM shop is in the UK. Some of them may be skilled and experienced but equally some may not be. Chewkw can trust his grandmother but would he trust all of the practitioners in any random high street shop?

Was out today with friends for a ride and sadly one broke his leg in multiple places after endo’ing, I notice the very Chinese rescue team used both western medical technology (air bag compression bags/pain killers) and helicopter to get him out of trouble!


Not a whiff of rhino horn in sight.

vickypea – Member
Chewkw can trust his grandmother but would he trust all of the practitioners in any random high street shop?

No, is the simple answer to random high street shop.

I trust my grandma.

I don’t trust them and would never go into any random high street Chinese doctor (West or East). I don’t know their qualification nor their experience. Besides, it is very expensive in the UK. I mean sometimes per prescription of Chinese herbs will cost you at least £5 – £10 (I was quoted a while back for … ) and you need to take a minimum number of prescription. Very expensive.

A good Chinese doctor will prescribe the cheapest most effective herbs but there is not knowing here in the UK as I don’t have my parents/grandparents to guide me. In the UK they could say that they have dragon ivory in them I would have no way of checking them.

The way we try out Chinese doctors are via my late grandma. She would visit the doctors for minor ailments then decided if any of them were not talking porky. If they are talking porky they would again and again used the same term to explain to my grandma … my grandma would seek second opinion elsewhere too.

stewartc – Member

…, I notice the very Chinese rescue team used both western medical technology (air bag compression bags/pain killers)…!

Ya, pain killers or western medicine are for “direct” healing …

In olden days the Chinese use opium (not sure about marijuana) as pain killers. 🙂

I thought “Chinese Medicine” was the long awaited follow up album to “The Spaghetti Incident”

I think my mate would have appreciated opium at the time as it did take around 45 minutes for me to get the rescue team to him and up into the helicopter.
The opium would have helped with his fear of heights as well!

In olden days the Chinese use opium

Opium/Morphine is still in widespread use.