The bottom line on pharmaceuticals is this.
They are ALL poisons, designed to give a desired effect(mask symptoms). “Side-effects” are just the residual TOXIC effects they couldn’t get rid of.
With the exception of antibiotics, NONE of them CURE anything. Your body is the only healing mechanism available to you, period. If anything, drugs impede your natural healing process by introducing additional toxins into an already taxed system.
[quote]storey420 wrote:
These were excellent points to back up your assertion however they show no support for the belief that vaccines are effective. Which by the way is not a “crazy conspiracy”, it is an unproven yet universally accepted fallacy.
[/quote]
How can you say something like that? I can’t believe people in the 21st century still believe this! No proof that vaccines work??? I’ll give you just one, open your history books for the rest… Effective vaccination campains ERRADICATED smallpox from the face of the planet in the 70s!! Hundreds of millions of people died in the 20th century alone from this viral infection! The last case of smallpox was seen in 1977. Nothing since! And it is certainly not because of “magic water”, prayers or a “body of light from a quantum physics level”. If there is something that definitely work in today’s medecine, it is vaccines.
The sad thing is, you will probably be the first to run to the hospital if you ever get really sick (and I don’t mean catch a cold or anything that could disapear with homeopathic medecine, i.e. with rest and a lot of water) and you’ll tell the MD to do “whatever he can” to save you. And he will probably do just that, using all the pharmacopeia available to him. And when you leave, you’ll probably find something to complain about, like “well, yes, the Doctor saved my life, but look at me now, my balls are smooth as eggs and I have a bruise on my left biceps”, not realizing that if X,Y,Z hadn’t been injected into you, you’d be dead and nothing else would have saved you, especially not sugar granules, cauliflower leaves or chihuahua sperm, despite all their body of light and the good energy that Gaia put into them.
Man, have some respect for the millions of lives saved by this “unproven yet universally accepted fallacy” and the medical world. When homeopathy and naturopathy will have done substantial good (and by this, I don’t mean anecdotic good) to the humanity, I will bow myself before it.
Remz
[quote]Remz wrote:
storey420 wrote:
These were excellent points to back up your assertion however they show no support for the belief that vaccines are effective. Which by the way is not a “crazy conspiracy”, it is an unproven yet universally accepted fallacy.
How can you say something like that? I can’t believe people in the 21st century still believe this! No proof that vaccines work??? I’ll give you just one, open your history books for the rest… Effective vaccination campains ERRADICATED smallpox from the face of the planet in the 70s!! Hundreds of millions of people died in the 20th century alone from this viral infection! The last case of smallpox was seen in 1977. Nothing since! And it is certainly not because of “magic water”, prayers or a “body of light from a quantum physics level”. If there is something that definitely work in today’s medecine, it is vaccines.
[/quote]
First off the mean survival for these things would improve anyways as the immune response of people adapts to the pathogen and gains a true immunity. To reference your example there are also thousands of people that contracted the virus, rode it out, and lived on–truly immune.
Secondly please don’t lump quantum physics with “magic water” or even prayers just because your mind can’t comprehend these concepts at the moment.
[quote]Remz wrote:
The sad thing is, you will probably be the first to run to the hospital if you ever get really sick (and I don’t mean catch a cold or anything that could disapear with homeopathic medecine, i.e. with rest and a lot of water) and you’ll tell the MD to do “whatever he can” to save you. And he will probably do just that, using all the pharmacopeia available to him. And when you leave, you’ll probably find something to complain about, like “well, yes, the Doctor saved my life, but look at me now, my balls are smooth as eggs and I have a bruise on my left biceps”, not realizing that if X,Y,Z hadn’t been injected into you, you’d be dead and nothing else would have saved you, especially not sugar granules, cauliflower leaves or chihuahua sperm, despite all their body of light and the good energy that Gaia put into them.
Remz
[/quote]
The sad thing is that you know nothing about me so those dispersions couldn’t be farther from the truth. I work in a natural health clinic. I haven’t been minorly sick(colds/flu) in over eight years–how bout you?
IF I did come down with something worse, the only possibility that comes to mind is an STD or malaria while traveling, then I still wouldn’t go to an MD and say “Do whatever you want doc”, cut me open, shoot me up, give me drugs, whatever it takes. Sadly this is the logic that the majority of folks like yourself have.
I work every day helping to truly and permanently heal people from the worst case scenarios that have tried the western medical paradigm only to be frustrated and worse off after many years of no resolution.
And no we don’t use chihuahua sperm, little boy, but thats ok I don’t blame you for your ignorance, I talk to people every day that USED to think like you until they were left assed out by the treatments that you idolize.
[quote]Remz wrote:
Man, have some respect for the millions of lives saved by this “unproven yet universally accepted fallacy” and the medical world. When homeopathy and naturopathy will have done substantial good (and by this, I don’t mean anecdotic good) to the humanity, I will bow myself before it.
Remz
[/quote]
I have respect for the professionals that worked very hard to save people from disease. Homeopathy and naturopathy are two different beasts. I’m not much of a fan of homeopathy. Naturopathy has been around since the dawn of time and is the true basis of medicine. In the past five years the clinic I’ve worked with has reversed 498 (and counting) cancer cases, worked to inform the people about public health hazards, helped to lobby to get rid of super harmful toxic substances in our food, water, and air supply. Now this is just a small percentage of the excellent work I see/read about in the natural health field but it seems like a pretty substantial help for humanity.
No need to bow down. Maybe just have a little insight before you spout off like a pissed off five year old.
[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
AZMojo wrote:
–Antibiotics don’t work against the flu, or any viral infection for that matter. Ask your doctor. Hell, even the guy who wrote this article would confirm that.
I realize that. However, it’s my understanding that there is a theory that a lot of deaths from the flu that occurred in earlier pandemics resulted from secondary infections - many times bacterial infections - suffered while the person already had a depressed immune system.[/quote]
Bro, your arguments are illogical and circular. You can’t sit there and say that this is serious and many people in the past died and will affect many healthy people in the future. And then turn around and say that it was due to secondary bacterial/microbial infections due to poor immune systems. This just proves AZMojo’s point, not yours.
[quote]storey420 wrote:
Remz wrote:
Man, have some respect for the millions of lives saved by this “unproven yet universally accepted fallacy” and the medical world. When homeopathy and naturopathy will have done substantial good (and by this, I don’t mean anecdotic good) to the humanity, I will bow myself before it.
Remz
I have respect for the professionals that worked very hard to save people from disease. Homeopathy and naturopathy are two different beasts. I’m not much of a fan of homeopathy. Naturopathy has been around since the dawn of time and is the true basis of medicine. In the past five years the clinic I’ve worked with has reversed 498 (and counting) cancer cases, worked to inform the people about public health hazards, helped to lobby to get rid of super harmful toxic substances in our food, water, and air supply. Now this is just a small percentage of the excellent work I see/read about in the natural health field but it seems like a pretty substantial help for humanity.
No need to bow down. Maybe just have a little insight before you spout off like a pissed off five year old.
[/quote]
True, naturopathy has been around for a long time, but not longer than Chinese Medicine. Chinese Medicine is the oldest DOCUMENTED system known to date. So let’s not get carried away while you are tooting your own horn.
However, I will say that many and most “alternative” healing systems do much better with chronic conditions than the “Western” or Allopathic system. From and holistic perspective, the allopathic system is very crude and totally ignores the intrinsic properties of the organism they are trying to heal. Sort of like putting a new engine in a car because it runs out of gas.
In any case, naturopathy is a viable system of healing, but there are other comparable systems that are as effective. But that is because, for the most part, the body heals itself given the right conditions and support. Any system that recognizes and supports that process will then be successful.
[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
Are you kidding me?
AZMojo wrote:
–Dude, it’s the Flu. Dozens of things kill tens of thousands annually in this country. Adverse reactions to drugs being one of the worst offenders, higher than many illnesses combined. Big Macs being another. The general poor state of health that most Americans are in is, in my opinion, the reason why these mortality rates are what they are. Rarely do the fit and healthy succumb to “pest” viruses.
Influenza killed millions of people in pandemics, particularly in the early 20th century. Go look it up on Wikipedia. And that was even prior to the advent of Big Macs…
AZMojo wrote:
–Estimating our urban population at the time to be around 20 million(conservative, to say the least), that gives us approx. 10 million infected. If 70,000 died, that’s only .7%.
Did you pull that number out of your @$$? Our population was much more rural back then – go check the census.
Not to mention the author said the mortality rate was low for that outbreak – but look up stuff on the earlier outbreaks, like the Spanish Influenza outbreak around the end of WWI.
A more virulent strain could be much deadlier.
The author wrote:
During the past several years, an especially virulent strain of avian flu, designated H5N1, has ravaged flocks of domesticated poultry in Asia and spread to migratory birds and (rarely) to humans. Now found from Russia and Japan to Indonesia, it is moving inexorably toward Europe. Since 2003, more than 60 human deaths have been attributed to H5N1. Public health experts and virologists are concerned about the potential of this strain because it already has two of the three characteristics needed to cause a pandemic: It can jump from birds to human, and can produce a severe and often fatal illness. If additional genetic evolution makes H5N1 highly transmissible among humans – the third characteristic of a pandemic strain – a devastating world-wide outbreak could become a reality.
Moreover, this is an extraordinarily deadly variant: The mortality rate for persons infected with the existing H5N1 appears to be around 50 percent, whereas the usual annual flu bug kills fewer than one percent.
AZMojo wrote:
Ooohhh, chilling.
—So he’s saying, that in all of China and the rest of Southeast Asia(population in the BILLIONS)), only 120 people have been infected with this flu in the past two years. Is that highly transmittable?
Surely, not everybody that was infected sought medical help, probably because their symptoms weren’t severe enough. So can this mortality rate be taken seriously?
No, that’s NOT waht he said at all. He said that the current strain of avian flu has 2 of the 3 characteristics that could lead it to turn into a pandemic. It can jump from animals to humans, and it is deadly in a large percentage of those who have been infected.
The author explicitly stated that IF a genetic mutation made it highly contagious among humans, THEN we’d be looking at a pandemic. So the fact that it isn’t currently highly contagious doesn’t really disprove his point. What you’d need to focus on is the likeliehood that it may become highly contagious – not my area, but definitely something I might find worrisome in a fast-mutating virus.
AZMojo wrote:
–So we should pay the drug companies to make the drugs, then we should buy the drugs back from them? Wow!
He was offering a possible solution to motivate research for and production of more effective drugs. If you’ve got some better ideas, please share them.
AZMojo wrote:
–Police states are always fun. Picture post-Katrina New Orleans throughout the country.
If they need to enforce a quarantine, they damn well better do so. It has traditionally been part of the state government’s police power to enforce quanrantines in this country, but given the current understanding of the Commerce Clause I’m sure there wouldn’t be any problem with the national government taking over that function on a national level in the case of a fast-spreading pandemic. Though with today’s mobility, it would be extremely difficult to make an effective quarantine.
AZMojo wrote:
–Yeah, more Czars. The others have been doing such a bang up job.
Large problems often require large solutions – and it’s especially good to put one man in charge and remove the normal bureaucratic obstacles (see FEMA procurement rules as examples), to the extent that Congress is willing to remove them.
AZMojo wrote:
–Act now and we’ll throw in a set of steak knives.
–This whole article is a joke, and I hope the post was intended as such. The sad thing is, these are the type of people that the President listens to. So, look for more of your tax dollars to be flushed down the toilet into another Big Business bank account. And maybe, just maybe, we can justify some more of our civil liberties to be taken away in the process.
I like to leave with a quote.
“Of course the people don’t want war. But after all, it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it’s a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.”
– Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials
What’s a joke is how little you understand, both about the historic application of governmental police power in the face of health crises, the nature of this threat, or generally.
There are reasons to wonder whether any modern influenza epidemic would be as deadly as one in the pre-anti-biotic age, but none of those relate to anything you wrote.[/quote]
Appreciate this day…for once I agree with Boston. This is not the time to fuck around…
[quote]storey420 wrote:
First off the mean survival for these things would improve anyways as the immune response of people adapts to the pathogen and gains a true immunity. To reference your example there are also thousands of people that contracted the virus, rode it out, and lived on–truly immune.
Secondly please don’t lump quantum physics with “magic water” or even prayers just because your mind can’t comprehend these concepts at the moment.
[/quote]
Do you even know what smallpox is? Smallpox is caused by two viruses, Variola Major and Variola Minor. The first one, the most lethal, as a death rate of approximately 20-30%, as the second one only has a 1% death rate. Therefore, the vast majority of people infected will survive. And yes, unless the virus has antigenic variations, those people will be immunized for a number of years, if not their whole life. It’s the same thing with chicken pox, you only catch it once in you life. As for your claim that the mean survival would increase with time, well it cannot be true, since smallpox existed for hundreds of years, and it suddenly disappeared in a matter 10 years after the implantation of massive vaccination campaigns. I doubt that people in this period had a different immune system that allowed them to be more protected against invading pathogens. Moreover, as no immune cell is transferred from mother to child, the next generation cannot profit from the last’s exposition to antigens.
I hope that the worst things that can happen to you are STDs and malaria, and I congratulate you on never being sick. Nevertheless, I am not ready to attribute this to any supplement or natural remedies. Exercise and nutrition control some of the major risk factors of many diseases, infectious or not, but you can’t believe that your immune system will ward off a flesh eating bacteria or that you won’t develop a prostatic adenocarcinoma, however prepared it might be by years of healthy living and natural (or pharmalogical) supplementation. I’m just saying this so you understand that you can’t convince me or anyone that uses an ounce of critical thinking that your life is better because you only use natural products and avoid synthetics at all cost. It’s about healthy living conditions, and frankly, pure luck.
The whole point of that post was to prove to you that vaccines work, which I shouldn’t have to do anyway. I know I got a little carried away in my rant, since I too believe that natural remedies can work (although I wouldn’t bet my life on it). After all, most of our pharmacopeia is derived from nature. I associated you with homeopathy since you were talking about nutrients take have an “energy pattern or “body of light” from a quantum physics aspect that can not be replicated in a lab”, which is exactly how homeopathy explains the memory of water.
You might wish that my mind cannot comprehend your beliefs or that I was just a “little boy”, that would be a lot simpler for you. Throughout my life and my studies, I chose to believe the facts and form an opinion based on them. While there are some natural products (St. John’s Wort and cinnamon just to name two) that have been proven useful in treating certain illnesses, most of what you see in stores have been shown to be just as effective as a placebo. Of course, not everything has been tested yet, and, unfortunately not being a believer, I will wait until efficacy is shown to start buying some. But hey, that only means more for you.
Remz
PS. So you mean I got ripped off when I bought Chihuahua sperm to boost my testosterone?
LOL @ remz!
Put down the coffee, and step away from the computer, dude… 
I know, I know, I get aggravated at homeopaths too. Those guys are the california scientologists of medicine.
As far as alternative medicine is concerned the notion of it being an 1) holistic practice where ever you go and 2) inherently cures the cause is an insult the the hundreds of individuals health systems that have evolved thru human history.
Also, these perceptions of alternative medicine are principally western conceptions and are absurdly reductionist.
People who use alternative medicine in their country of origin will use herbologists, shamans, religious figures, nutrition gurus for specific types of problems.
Frankly, and sadly, most people who are so fervent defenders of these health systems have never studied them or tried to understand them as they are perceived in their own culture.
Subsequently, saying that western medicine is not holistic is a reflection not of the system, because medicine is taught to medical students to understand that they should treat the patient and not the disease and that patients come in with their bio-psycho-social background and so on and so forth.
Evidently, this loss its significance when somebody comes in with a strep throat infection. The notion of ‘‘holistic’’ care takes its sense when taking into account chronic and debilitating disease not because ‘‘alternative holistic’’ medicine is what is meant by holistic, simply that people in times of hardship often need more than a purely biological approach.
Sadly for people, time constraints limit a practitioners ability to discuss you crazy home life or the fact your girlfriend wants to get married when you come in for a sprained ankle.
As for Chinese medicine being the oldest medical system, it is widely believed that Ayurveda is older.
Still, it must be understood that some things of ‘‘alternative’’ medicine do function, however not because you have hot or cold humors that need to be warmed or cooled with various herbs or foods or that you have misaligned energy meridians.
Sure, alternative medicine are not integral part of medical school’s curriculum, mainly because most of them don’t work. Those that do are more and more investigated.
People seem to forget that western medicine use to be exactly like other ‘‘alternative’’ medicine. We used herbs, potions, infusions and weird ass treatments such as phlebotomies for everything. We were barbarians, alternative practitioners are healers. This is simply a case of the grass being greener on the other side.
The western system of evidence-based medicine has little to care for chi’s, energies, yin-yang and what nots. What it cares for is evidence.
That is not to say that alternative medicine are inherently flawed, that is not the case but we have people with selective and excessively rosy visions of these comprehensive.
Should one of your relatives develop cancer, have a crab passed over his/her body and tell us how that works out…hey, that was a perfectly effective method of disease transfer, that’s why we call it cancer (crab).
Also when people compare natural remedies to our pharmaceuticals I find it tiring to have to repeat that our pharmaceuticals come exactly from nature most if not all the time. There is no inherent difference between arsenic made by industrial means and the one found in almonds.
Same thing with ascorbic acid and scurvy. The treatment of which is ascorbic acid, whether it comes from a pill, a effervescent tab, Vit. C enriched orange juice or various citrus fruit.
It is not to be mistaken with the anti-oxidative power of pure vitamin C which of course will be inferior compared to the same amount of Vit. C coming from fruits, not because the man-made Vit C is less effective but because to extract 100 mg of Vit C from fruits, you also have all the other phytochemicals, polyphenols and so on that have various antioxidative properties.
The way alternative or foreign health systems are viewed in the West is a saddening reminder that people are unable to even slightly control their ethnocentric bias.
The ‘‘westernization’’ of medicine around the world, even if I find such a term condescending to people of the world that implies a loss over a gain.
From our side of the fence, we must understand that today’s medicine is not implicitly set in their ways, eager to defend increasingly indefensible positions such as was the case with homeopathy but is one of the most cutting-edge field in the world, most governments throwing insane amounts of money at it to investigate to most minute details of various disease/healing pathway or process.
Of course, we realize that the pharmaceutical corporations pray on the American people mainly and various developing countries, but then again it is a social and cultural choice not to impose various price control policies . Therefore, with such an impressive industry profiting from disease, it is easy to assume that pharmaceutical companies and doctor’s associations are trying to ‘‘medicalize’’ everything.
However, it is quite clear that such of view implies a relatively ignorant mind, especially here on T-Nation, which goes with Testosterone enhancers, nutrient partitioning agents, endocrine modulation compounds or psychoactive substances. The point being that aging is being medicalized…no more morning wood, lack energy, reduced ability to be active, last time I check that was normal aging, but go for RED KAT and Alpha Male and ZMA, don’t let age keep you down. Feeling unable to concentrate, can’t keep focused, inability to perform academically or at work, last time I check we were trying to medicalized kids/adults who needed activity into ADD/ADHD disorders, but come on you can try Spike, it’ll BLOW YOUR HEAD OFF!!! and wash it down with a tall glass of Power Drive, Rocket Fuel for the Mind. Can’t really see to abs because of those last few pounds, don’t let your slowing metabolism limit your ability to turn heads on the beach, go for a Methoxy-7 and HOT-ROX combo, activate that adenylate cyclase to the max and keep that lipolysis going and let’s get that T4/T3 conversion going on full blast, the fat will melt away! Don’t like getting emotional as you get older or simply just hate having tender nipples cause you’re a man, well, here you go, there is M waiting for, don’t go crying like a little bitch, block that god-dammed estrogen!
Had Biotest been a pharmaceutical company, these compounds would have been evil poisons put on the market to treat ‘‘artificial and false’’ medical conditions, they just probably wouldn’t be here because of the long FDA approval procedures. What should be understood is that things are being medicalized because people do so on their own, whether personally or socially or simply because it really does exist and the pharmaceutical industry responds to such a demand.
Finaly, the real question that you should all be asking yourselves is what difference is there in tweaking the 7-Keto-DHEA into to some snazzy A7E nanodispersion gel, or how the compounds of MAG-10 were all modified versions of their respective originals with some changes to make them more bioavailble, more long-acting and more active. Same thing with Spike and its special activation process step. Baically, it must be confusing for people to see products like these which are now very effective from considering that something was natural and lowly effective before it was tweaked or activated, got and acetyl here or a methyl there, to a point where they are semisynthetic compound that work rather well, which is the primary step after extraction of the original compoups, tweaking.
So , in essence, Biotest moved on from crappy natural Mevacor to better Zocor, a second genreation semi-syntetic, just bettering their supplements, get more absorption, extend the dose and what not.
Biotest does this here all the time, people don’t see any problems with it and that’s why we keep coming back for more.
You can all think is just all pure nature’s stuff, but that’s sadly not the case.
In the end, most users of ‘‘alternative medicines’’ are naive imbeciles ( not necessarily derogatory in a direct sense) and unwittingly are hypocrites for they will be the first ones to tell you not to consume evil and dangerous pharmaceuticals from a prescriptions but will consume in the most blinded fashion anything in pill form ranging from still unproven milkthisle for your liver, to birch leaf for your kidneys, to Chihuahua sperm for that minty Testosterone production. And least we forget that almighty Ajax colon cleansing to remove all those nasty toxins.
Personally, I don’t really care for such individuals if they want Chinese medicine induced kidney failure its their own thing, we live in a free world, mostly. What is a bit more worrisome to me is that these people drag their children in there with them, we have enough '‘Christine Maggiore’'s in this world.
Ah, but then again, I should never forget the First Basic Law of Human Stupidity;
Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.
But by answering here, again I’ve broken the Fourth Basic Law;
Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places and under any circumstances to deal and/or associate with stupid people always turns out to be costly mistake.
Yep, it just cost me an hour of my life…Bah, it was either that or milking my ‘‘Chihuahua’’.
AlexH.
You too, Alex. You’re cut off, mister! 
I have actually read quite a bit into the differing methods and rationales of various alternative medicines like homeopathy, oriental medicine, herbology, etc., etc., and I was fascinated with the promise behind acupuncture.
The idea of energy vessels being blocked or overactive is kinda weird, but what the hell… it works. Admittedly, being a martial artist, I am no stranger to the idea of chi flow, but this is something subjective and difficult to define – let alone measure – so western medicine is going to have a hard time with the idea of “chi” to begin with.
I see we have a couple of die-hard rationalists in this thread, so remz and Alex: what’s your take on acupuncture? Is this another “scam” like the bird flu?
My basic take on acupuncture is that it can work for various situations. However, not for all and certainly not for the reason it’s supposed to work.
I too looked into the various health system of this world, mainly through medical anthropology courses and have enjoyed them very much, while gaining a certain amount of respect for the intricacy of these cultures and all the various methods they came up with to try and explain their world/health. However I have found that some things do work, alas the explanaition behind it has as much explanatory power as the tooth fairy.
That is where evidence-based medicine comes in in my opinion. For acupuncture, there are various reviews that can be found trying to evaluate studies.
Here is the conclusion of one of them:
This is from the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research
Health Technology Assessment
Acupuncture: Evidence
from Systematic Reviews
and Meta-analyses
For the various conditions listed in Table 1, the respective reviews found that the evidence supports acupuncture as an effective treatment for dental pain, and nausea/vomiting. Though the evidence for the other conditions such as idiopathic headaches, back pain, chronic pain, and fibromyalgia was often inconclusive due to methodological weaknesses, and/or conflicting results reported by the primary studies included in the reviews, the results look promising.
These reviews, the majority with a
good quality rating, found acupuncture to be as effective in the short term as the conventional interventions or no treatment for these conditions.
Many of the authors noted that better quality studies provided negative results while poorer quality studies
tended to report positive results.
Furthermore, they agreed that there appeared to be insufficient evidence and that better quality research was needed.
_____________________________-
The mechanisms by which acupuncture might work is proposed to be through the release of Substance P, Endorphin or various spinal nerve gate control theories (kinda like when you it your arm on somthing and start rubbing it to make the pain go away, gate control or ‘‘information selection to send up the brain when there is too much that comes through the same gate’’. And it it is show to work though these mechanisms, you can’t have more symptome control than that.
The problem remains that most of our research in this domain is of rather poor quality, but should it prove useful or effective and efficient (not having to go throught weekly sessions for a year) it will initialy face resistance but it will be incorporated into modern medicine when it as become clear that it has a place side by side with physiotherapy, anti-inflammatory drugs and surgery for example.
For the moment it would be unethical (in my view) for a medical doctor to recommend any of the ‘‘alternative’’ methods for the moment because most if not all have little or no research behind it. Still, I’m pretty sure the crab passed over the body to remove cancer doesn’t work.^
It does remain an interesting field of research!
AlexH
[quote]Lorisco wrote:
storey420 wrote:
Remz wrote:
Man, have some respect for the millions of lives saved by this “unproven yet universally accepted fallacy” and the medical world. When homeopathy and naturopathy will have done substantial good (and by this, I don’t mean anecdotic good) to the humanity, I will bow myself before it.
Remz
I have respect for the professionals that worked very hard to save people from disease. Homeopathy and naturopathy are two different beasts. I’m not much of a fan of homeopathy. Naturopathy has been around since the dawn of time and is the true basis of medicine. In the past five years the clinic I’ve worked with has reversed 498 (and counting) cancer cases, worked to inform the people about public health hazards, helped to lobby to get rid of super harmful toxic substances in our food, water, and air supply. Now this is just a small percentage of the excellent work I see/read about in the natural health field but it seems like a pretty substantial help for humanity.
No need to bow down. Maybe just have a little insight before you spout off like a pissed off five year old.
True, naturopathy has been around for a long time, but not longer than Chinese Medicine. Chinese Medicine is the oldest DOCUMENTED system known to date. So let’s not get carried away while you are tooting your own horn.
However, I will say that many and most “alternative” healing systems do much better with chronic conditions than the “Western” or Allopathic system. From and holistic perspective, the allopathic system is very crude and totally ignores the intrinsic properties of the organism they are trying to heal. Sort of like putting a new engine in a car because it runs out of gas.
In any case, naturopathy is a viable system of healing, but there are other comparable systems that are as effective. But that is because, for the most part, the body heals itself given the right conditions and support. Any system that recognizes and supports that process will then be successful.
[/quote]
I should clarify that the system we use is an integration of chinese medicine, naturopathy, and other modalities and that I agree with your statemen, Lorisco
I have to say that I agree with alot of what Alex is saying. There are alot of “alternative” practitioners that are too anti-western and do a disservice to the alternative field.
To use his example, if you sprained an ankle or broke a bone then you are in one of the best places in the world to get it fixed and should do so by a “western medicine” doctor. However if you have a chronic condition; cancer, IBS, ADD/ADHD, MS–any autoimmune really, etc. Then you may be worse off than when you started going the traditional route of drugs. I say this because I see it day in and day out.
There are brilliant parts of many modalities that I have seen from both traditional and alternative medicine and a good general practice doctor should use them all.
[quote]lothario1132 wrote:
I see we have a couple of die-hard rationalists in this thread, so remz and Alex: what’s your take on acupuncture? Is this another “scam” like the bird flu? :)[/quote]
Well, as AlexH wrote, there is some proof that acupuncture works in certain situations. Unfortunately, these useful applications are diluted in fallacious claims aimed at making money off gullible people. It is the same for every other type of alternative medicine. Some of it works, most of it does not. Like every business, the aim of alternative medicine providers is to make money. How do they do that? Well, by providing efficient therapies (thru placebo effect or proven treatments), but mostly by encouraging people to think that their kind of medicine is the best and at the same time, that Western medicine is dangerous or poisonous. How is it that people are always looking for proofs that Western medicine is evil while they never question their own beliefs.
It’s easy to find arguments or anecdotes, how ever erroneous they might be, against Western medicine when it is the common enemy and a lot of people trying to profit from that fact. I’m not saying Western medicine is perfect, far from it. Some compounds can be dangerous and have strong side effects (as some natural remedies), and it is the job of the MD to assure that a patient will not exit the hospital sicker than when he entered. And of course, let’s not forget the ever presence of pharmaceutical companies who try to influence the public to buy their products (this is quasi absent in Canada as they cannot publicise prescription drugs on television, radio or any news media). The difference is, when a medication is prescribed, it is in a context of proven efficacy against a specific illness.
Anyway, all this was to say that I do not spit on everything that is labelled “alternative medicine”, as evidence-based medicine showed that some treatments are indeed effective. And yes, there are things, like energy pattern or chi, that we do not fully understand for now. But until we clarify this, I will stick to proven therapies.
Remz
PS. I’m not of the opinion that bird flu is a scam. The sad thing is, people will always try to make money from a scare, not matter how serious it is.
[quote]Dandalex wrote:
As far as alternative medicine is concerned the notion of it being an 1) holistic practice where ever you go and 2) inherently cures the cause is an insult the the hundreds of individuals health systems that have evolved thru human history.
Also, these perceptions of alternative medicine are principally western conceptions and are absurdly reductionist.
People who use alternative medicine in their country of origin will use herbologists, shamans, religious figures, nutrition gurus for specific types of problems.
Frankly, and sadly, most people who are so fervent defenders of these health systems have never studied them or tried to understand them as they are perceived in their own culture.
Subsequently, saying that western medicine is not holistic is a reflection not of the system, because medicine is taught to medical students to understand that they should treat the patient and not the disease and that patients come in with their bio-psycho-social background and so on and so forth.
Evidently, this loss its significance when somebody comes in with a strep throat infection. The notion of ‘‘holistic’’ care takes its sense when taking into account chronic and debilitating disease not because ‘‘alternative holistic’’ medicine is what is meant by holistic, simply that people in times of hardship often need more than a purely biological approach.
Sadly for people, time constraints limit a practitioners ability to discuss you crazy home life or the fact your girlfriend wants to get married when you come in for a sprained ankle.
As for Chinese medicine being the oldest medical system, it is widely believed that Ayurveda is older.
Still, it must be understood that some things of ‘‘alternative’’ medicine do function, however not because you have hot or cold humors that need to be warmed or cooled with various herbs or foods or that you have misaligned energy meridians.
Sure, alternative medicine are not integral part of medical school’s curriculum, mainly because most of them don’t work. Those that do are more and more investigated.
People seem to forget that western medicine use to be exactly like other ‘‘alternative’’ medicine. We used herbs, potions, infusions and weird ass treatments such as phlebotomies for everything. We were barbarians, alternative practitioners are healers. This is simply a case of the grass being greener on the other side.
The western system of evidence-based medicine has little to care for chi’s, energies, yin-yang and what nots. What it cares for is evidence.
That is not to say that alternative medicine are inherently flawed, that is not the case but we have people with selective and excessively rosy visions of these comprehensive.
Should one of your relatives develop cancer, have a crab passed over his/her body and tell us how that works out…hey, that was a perfectly effective method of disease transfer, that’s why we call it cancer (crab).
Also when people compare natural remedies to our pharmaceuticals I find it tiring to have to repeat that our pharmaceuticals come exactly from nature most if not all the time. There is no inherent difference between arsenic made by industrial means and the one found in almonds.
Same thing with ascorbic acid and scurvy. The treatment of which is ascorbic acid, whether it comes from a pill, a effervescent tab, Vit. C enriched orange juice or various citrus fruit.
It is not to be mistaken with the anti-oxidative power of pure vitamin C which of course will be inferior compared to the same amount of Vit. C coming from fruits, not because the man-made Vit C is less effective but because to extract 100 mg of Vit C from fruits, you also have all the other phytochemicals, polyphenols and so on that have various antioxidative properties.
The way alternative or foreign health systems are viewed in the West is a saddening reminder that people are unable to even slightly control their ethnocentric bias.
The ‘‘westernization’’ of medicine around the world, even if I find such a term condescending to people of the world that implies a loss over a gain.
From our side of the fence, we must understand that today’s medicine is not implicitly set in their ways, eager to defend increasingly indefensible positions such as was the case with homeopathy but is one of the most cutting-edge field in the world, most governments throwing insane amounts of money at it to investigate to most minute details of various disease/healing pathway or process.
Of course, we realize that the pharmaceutical corporations pray on the American people mainly and various developing countries, but then again it is a social and cultural choice not to impose various price control policies . Therefore, with such an impressive industry profiting from disease, it is easy to assume that pharmaceutical companies and doctor’s associations are trying to ‘‘medicalize’’ everything.
However, it is quite clear that such of view implies a relatively ignorant mind, especially here on T-Nation, which goes with Testosterone enhancers, nutrient partitioning agents, endocrine modulation compounds or psychoactive substances. The point being that aging is being medicalized…no more morning wood, lack energy, reduced ability to be active, last time I check that was normal aging, but go for RED KAT and Alpha Male and ZMA, don’t let age keep you down. Feeling unable to concentrate, can’t keep focused, inability to perform academically or at work, last time I check we were trying to medicalized kids/adults who needed activity into ADD/ADHD disorders, but come on you can try Spike, it’ll BLOW YOUR HEAD OFF!!! and wash it down with a tall glass of Power Drive, Rocket Fuel for the Mind. Can’t really see to abs because of those last few pounds, don’t let your slowing metabolism limit your ability to turn heads on the beach, go for a Methoxy-7 and HOT-ROX combo, activate that adenylate cyclase to the max and keep that lipolysis going and let’s get that T4/T3 conversion going on full blast, the fat will melt away! Don’t like getting emotional as you get older or simply just hate having tender nipples cause you’re a man, well, here you go, there is M waiting for, don’t go crying like a little bitch, block that god-dammed estrogen!
Had Biotest been a pharmaceutical company, these compounds would have been evil poisons put on the market to treat ‘‘artificial and false’’ medical conditions, they just probably wouldn’t be here because of the long FDA approval procedures. What should be understood is that things are being medicalized because people do so on their own, whether personally or socially or simply because it really does exist and the pharmaceutical industry responds to such a demand.
Finaly, the real question that you should all be asking yourselves is what difference is there in tweaking the 7-Keto-DHEA into to some snazzy A7E nanodispersion gel, or how the compounds of MAG-10 were all modified versions of their respective originals with some changes to make them more bioavailble, more long-acting and more active. Same thing with Spike and its special activation process step. Baically, it must be confusing for people to see products like these which are now very effective from considering that something was natural and lowly effective before it was tweaked or activated, got and acetyl here or a methyl there, to a point where they are semisynthetic compound that work rather well, which is the primary step after extraction of the original compoups, tweaking.
So , in essence, Biotest moved on from crappy natural Mevacor to better Zocor, a second genreation semi-syntetic, just bettering their supplements, get more absorption, extend the dose and what not.
Biotest does this here all the time, people don’t see any problems with it and that’s why we keep coming back for more.
You can all think is just all pure nature’s stuff, but that’s sadly not the case.
In the end, most users of ‘‘alternative medicines’’ are naive imbeciles ( not necessarily derogatory in a direct sense) and unwittingly are hypocrites for they will be the first ones to tell you not to consume evil and dangerous pharmaceuticals from a prescriptions but will consume in the most blinded fashion anything in pill form ranging from still unproven milkthisle for your liver, to birch leaf for your kidneys, to Chihuahua sperm for that minty Testosterone production. And least we forget that almighty Ajax colon cleansing to remove all those nasty toxins.
Personally, I don’t really care for such individuals if they want Chinese medicine induced kidney failure its their own thing, we live in a free world, mostly. What is a bit more worrisome to me is that these people drag their children in there with them, we have enough '‘Christine Maggiore’'s in this world.
Ah, but then again, I should never forget the First Basic Law of Human Stupidity;
Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.
But by answering here, again I’ve broken the Fourth Basic Law;
Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places and under any circumstances to deal and/or associate with stupid people always turns out to be costly mistake.
Yep, it just cost me an hour of my life…Bah, it was either that or milking my ‘‘Chihuahua’’.
AlexH.
[/quote]
Your arguments in defense of allopathic medicine fall short in light of how the system is designed and utilized. What you call “evidence” is merely a string of educated guesses, that do not explain anything scientifically.
Now I’m not going to go on and on about this like you have, because I can prove my point very quickly.
The current Allopathic process of determining if a new drug is effective involves giving one group of patients the active ingredient, one group a placebo, and if the study is done correctly a control group that doesn?t get either. None of the groups know what group they are in and whether the “pill” they are receiving is active or placebo. In a good study, even the researchers don’t know. That would be “double-blind” for those with the double digit IQ.
The determining factor in Allopathic medicine is based on the premise that if the active substance works better than the placebo it is determined to be effective (support the efficacy) of the substance for treating whatever they are focusing on.
Now, here is the point; Allopathic medicine neither understands nor has an effective measure of the placebo effect. They don?t know how it works, what systems are involved, and it’s mechanisms. AND YET, they still use it as a measure for the effectiveness of new substances. Using a process that is not fully understood as a measure is NOT SCIENTIFIC! So, my friend, Allopathic medicine is not scientific and no more valid than the use of actually holistic approaches.
Next, your assertion that Allopathic medicine is more scientifically valid is a biased statement based on a biased view of how data should be gathered. I’m sure most on this forum don’t know what we are talking about so I will explain further. Dandalex is basically saying that Western Medicine is “scientifically proven” because it is measured and proven valid in controlled laboratory experiments and other “Alternative” healthcare systems are not. So because alternative approaches don’t typically use this same form of scientific inquiry they are not valid. So basically he is saying that the only valid measures of testing and measuring outcomes is in a controlled environment. However, the fact that Allopathic medicine has a poor track record of resolving chronic health issues is evidence that this method of inquiry is not supported by positive outcomes. At least not for chronic conditions. .
In contrast, holistic health care systems are tested and found valid using mostly empirical data, which at times is more valid than controlled clinical data as the patient does not live in the laboratory, and as such, it does not take the patient?s actual living environment into account when determining the efficacy of a treatment. So the Allopathic system is in fact short sighted and their approaches do prove that Allopathic medicine does treat the disease condition and not the individual. So the actual practice of Allopathic medicine is contrary to your assertions.
[quote]Remz wrote:
lothario1132 wrote:
I see we have a couple of die-hard rationalists in this thread, so remz and Alex: what’s your take on acupuncture? Is this another “scam” like the bird flu?
Well, as AlexH wrote, there is some proof that acupuncture works in certain situations. Unfortunately, these useful applications are diluted in fallacious claims aimed at making money off gullible people. It is the same for every other type of alternative medicine. Some of it works, most of it does not. Like every business, the aim of alternative medicine providers is to make money. How do they do that? Well, by providing efficient therapies (thru placebo effect or proven treatments), but mostly by encouraging people to think that their kind of medicine is the best and at the same time, that Western medicine is dangerous or poisonous. How is it that people are always looking for proofs that Western medicine is evil while they never question their own beliefs.
It’s easy to find arguments or anecdotes, how ever erroneous they might be, against Western medicine when it is the common enemy and a lot of people trying to profit from that fact. I’m not saying Western medicine is perfect, far from it. Some compounds can be dangerous and have strong side effects (as some natural remedies), and it is the job of the MD to assure that a patient will not exit the hospital sicker than when he entered. And of course, let’s not forget the ever presence of pharmaceutical companies who try to influence the public to buy their products (this is quasi absent in Canada as they cannot publicise prescription drugs on television, radio or any news media). The difference is, when a medication is prescribed, it is in a context of proven efficacy against a specific illness.
Anyway, all this was to say that I do not spit on everything that is labelled “alternative medicine”, as evidence-based medicine showed that some treatments are indeed effective. And yes, there are things, like energy pattern or chi, that we do not fully understand for now. But until we clarify this, I will stick to proven therapies.
[/quote]
I hope you can see here Remz how everything you just posted could easily be flip flopped to support the “other” side.
There is more and more research coming out daily to back up claims of nutritional therapy–thank goodness. If you want some done by an MD, university tested research into the whole energy or “chi” thing you should look at Dr Omura’s work on the biophotonic emissions from fingers. Very interesting and eye opening
[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
Preparing for the Pandemic
By Henry I. Miller, MD[/quote]
Not that I’m fond of conspiracy theories, especially those concerning global health, but you are aware that Henry Miller was a former US government employee (FDA, 1979-1994)and his current employer (The Hoover Institution at Stanford University)is a Republican funded think tank. (No link to Big Pharma??!?)
Tamiflu anyone?