WooWoo Stuff - All Things Woowoo

[dt79]

@EmilyQ

Maybe it’s working, maybe it’s placebo - hard to say because it’s impossible to study. An issue I have with it and its ilk is that it tends to focus on symptoms rather than root. So Advil rather than antibiotics. I have a friend who is a big fan and goes regularly. Her life is a trainwreck, though, and I wish she would focus on changing it rather than seeking temporary feelings of relaxation and energy. I see that with a lot of what I think of as woo - people who are hurting in some way and select a bandaid rather than excision.

Exactly.

@dt79

Just a breakdown on how much these “alternative remedies” have cost me in the last FIVE years:

$8,000

Grandmother suddenly developed jaundice. Took her to the hospital. Doctors suspected liver cancer and warded her. Did all sorts of tests. Finally she told us she was consuming a herb called Brotowali(I think you may have heard of it), which has been shown to elevate liver enzymes in a small percentage of people. False scare. Could have just ceased taking it and supplemented with liver supplements.

$30,000

Bone infection in leg which caused fluid buildup, finally resulting in the need for an operation to scrape the bone. A simple course of antibiotics when the pain started would have solved the problem, according to doctors. But no, she went for fucking accupuncture and Chinese herbal prescriptions instead. Till today, she refuses to tell me which TCM clinic she visited because “they had good intentions”. The bastards “treated” her for months.

Why didn’t we detect the problem earlier? Because she’s an old school Chinese woman. They are like fucking Jedi when it comes to pain tolerance. She won’t tell anyone about any pain she’s suffering or let us notice any discomfort until it gets unbearable. I couldn’t even get her to the GP because of the traditional family hierachy we follow and had to bring the GP to her. She’s the kind of people those charlatans prey on.

$7,000-8,000

Relative in China takes schizophrenic son to TCM practitioner. The fucker says he has “head wind(tou feng)”. Does accupuncture and puts his fucking head under a HEAT LAMP for half an hour each session. The kid, 22yrs at the time, decides he’s feeling better after a couple of sessions and goes off his meds. Then he leaves home and starts wandering the streets.

I have to fly over and pay a bunch of guys to abduct him on a busy street and take him to the mental hospital, which is a miserable shithole an hour’s drive from the city. Then I have to pay for his hospitalization and token bribes to doctors and selected nurses for better treatment(yes, this is the norm when healthcare is socialized and doctors are being paid peanuts).

This is what happens when real medical problems are present.

*Brotowali is an Indian and South East Asian plant used as alternative medicine.

*I understand my grandmother also went to a qi gong practitioner in secret, which has a similar philosophy to Reiki. Ki(Japanese) = qi(Mandarin). What I wrote above only occurred in the past 5 years. The last time she had similar issues, she was going to a qi gong practitioner and she had promised never to seek his services ever again. I would really love to sue his ass.

Even TCM practitioners REJECT qi gong as a valid “medical” practice. It’s too Woo for them.