Chinese Martial Arts Thread

[vesicles]

I promised last night that I would stop discussing Chinese medicine since it is clearly an unwinnable battle for me. However, I do feel that I need to make clear a couple of important issues about Chinese medicine. Of course, these are my own opinion. And obviously, I don't hope to convince anyone to change their view.

Firstly, I don't deny the usefulness of reagents used in Chinese medicine. In my opinion, most of the medicinal properties of these reagents have been gathered throughout centuries of observation. So I don't doubt they can cure diseases, to some extent. Every culture in the world uses similar observational techniques to gather useful information on their plants and animals and try to use them to relieve symptoms. A good example is the discovery of salicylate, the precursor to aspirin. It was first recorded in the 18th century by a British, Reverant Edward Stone, that he noticed sap from willow trees has anti-inflammatory properties. Egyptians and Greeks all used different tree saps containing high levels of salicylate for anti-inflammatory purposes. Using natural substances to cure diseases is not uniquely Chinese. Everyone does it. In fact, even animals do it. Scientists found that many wild animals, including deers and cows, chew some plants to relieve upset stomach or to aid digestion.

What makes Chinese medicine unique is the theories behind the plants. Yin vs. Yang and the flow of Qi, which then leads to acupuncture points, etc. Qi has never been discovered. I know that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. I have used this argument to counter others before. However, in this case, we have overwhelming evidence that goes against the concept of Qi. Let me give one example. The whole concept of Qi is flow. According to Chinese medicine theories, our body contains many intersecting routes of Qi, much like highway systems. And typically, one complete flow of Qi would circle from the head to heart to stomach and then to legs and feet. Of course, there are many routes. The flow of one's inner energy has to be complete. The complete circulation of Qi among various parts of one's body is key to one's health. When you have a traffick jam somewhere in your body, your Qi cannot flow and cannot circulate and you get sick. In fact, the entire premise of Chinese medicine is to recover the fluent flow of Qi in one's body. Yet, we have a significant population of people who have missing body parts, injured soldiers with their arms and legs amputated and other people who have to have their arms, legs, hands or feet amputated after a horrific accident. Based on Chinese medicine theories, these people will experience serious problems with their internal organs because their heart, stomach or liver is in the same route with their arms and legs. Without these parts, their Qi cannot possibly flow and circulate back. Without Qi or "dirty Qi" trapped inside their organs (keep in mind that they no longer have arms and legs, where Qi and flow to and circulate back), their organs would start malfunction quickly. Yet, we see these people living their normal lives and all clinical data show no correlation between amputation of any body parts with any diseases. This goes against the whole concept of flow of Qi. Imagine someone takes away a quarter of all the highways in any major city. Can you expect nothing with happen to the city?

Another major issue associated with Chinese medicine is statistics. To this day, no Chinese medicine hospital is willing to conduct double blinded tests to thoroughly examine any of their drugs and treatments. When asked, they always come up with excuses. No statistical data to show effectiveness of any of their treatments. The entire premise of Chinese medicine depends on word of mouth and patient testimony. "I know someone who was sick of something. He went to this awesome Chinese medicine doctor and he was cured in two weeks...". All useless. Show statistics. Out of total of X number of patients that you have treated, how many have you cured? How many have not responded? Even more importantly, how many have you killed? Nothing on the statistics. If you notice, almost all news and discussions on Chinese medicine is about how many patients they have cured. No information on the negatives. "I am so awesome that I cured 5 patients last month!" We have no clue whether this guy has killed the rest of his 9995 patients out of a total of 10,000 patients that he has treated in his career... again all useless.

Many Chinese medicine supporters have cling on the usefulness of the medicine by mentioning certain compounds isolated from plants listed I. Some Chinese medicine literature. An excellent example would be Tu Youyou who won the Nobel prize a couple years ago. What these people have missed is that Tu used entirely scientific methods and western medicine concept in her discovery. As I have discussed in one of my earlier posts, isolating compounds is totally against of the concept of Chinese medicine. Th fact that she was isolating a single chemical is actually the strongest evidence to show how useless chinese medicine is. Even when she was working at Chinese medicine institute, she had to use scientific techniques and totally anti-Chinese medicine concepts for her work.

Additionally, if you look through some Chinese medicine literatures, you will find that almost anything and everything has been listed to have medicinal use. So no matter how you do it, almost every natural compound will come out of some natural substance listed in some Chinese medicine literature. You can't miss it because they listed everything living thing in there. So if they want, they can claim every new drug comes from Chinese medicine...

Again, my 2-cent...

 

[solarz]

I promised last night that I would stop discussing Chinese medicine since it is clearly an unwinnable battle for me. However, I do feel that I need to make clear a couple of important issues about Chinese medicine. Of course, these are my own opinion. And obviously, I don't hope to convince anyone to change their view.

Firstly, I don't deny the usefulness of reagents used in Chinese medicine. In my opinion, most of the medicinal properties of these reagents have been gathered throughout centuries of observation. So I don't doubt they can cure diseases, to some extent. Every culture in the world uses similar observational techniques to gather useful information on their plants and animals and try to use them to relieve symptoms. A good example is the discovery of salicylate, the precursor to aspirin. It was first recorded in the 18th century by a British, Reverant Edward Stone, that he noticed sap from willow trees has anti-inflammatory properties. Egyptians and Greeks all used different tree saps containing high levels of salicylate for anti-inflammatory purposes. Using natural substances to cure diseases is not uniquely Chinese. Everyone does it. In fact, even animals do it. Scientists found that many wild animals, including deers and cows, chew some plants to relieve upset stomach or to aid digestion.

What makes Chinese medicine unique is the theories behind the plants. Yin vs. Yang and the flow of Qi, which then leads to acupuncture points, etc. Qi has never been discovered. I know that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. I have used this argument to counter others before. However, in this case, we have overwhelming evidence that goes against the concept of Qi. Let me give one example. The whole concept of Qi is flow. According to Chinese medicine theories, our body contains many intersecting routes of Qi, much like highway systems. And typically, one complete flow of Qi would circle from the head to heart to stomach and then to legs and feet. Of course, there are many routes. The flow of one's inner energy has to be complete. The complete circulation of Qi among various parts of one's body is key to one's health. When you have a traffick jam somewhere in your body, your Qi cannot flow and cannot circulate and you get sick. In fact, the entire premise of Chinese medicine is to recover the fluent flow of Qi in one's body. Yet, we have a significant population of people who have missing body parts, injured soldiers with their arms and legs amputated and other people who have to have their arms, legs, hands or feet amputated after a horrific accident. Based on Chinese medicine theories, these people will experience serious problems with their internal organs because their heart, stomach or liver is in the same route with their arms and legs. Without these parts, their Qi cannot possibly flow and circulate back. Without Qi or "dirty Qi" trapped inside their organs (keep in mind that they no longer have arms and legs, where Qi and flow to and circulate back), their organs would start malfunction quickly. Yet, we see these people living their normal lives and all clinical data show no correlation between amputation of any body parts with any diseases. This goes against the whole concept of flow of Qi. Imagine someone takes away a quarter of all the highways in any major city. Can you expect nothing with happen to the city?

Another major issue associated with Chinese medicine is statistics. To this day, no Chinese medicine hospital is willing to conduct double blinded tests to thoroughly examine any of their drugs and treatments. When asked, they always come up with excuses. No statistical data to show effectiveness of any of their treatments. The entire premise of Chinese medicine depends on word of mouth and patient testimony. "I know someone who was sick of something. He went to this awesome Chinese medicine doctor and he was cured in two weeks...". All useless. Show statistics. Out of total of X number of patients that you have treated, how many have you cured? How many have not responded? Even more importantly, how many have you killed? Nothing on the statistics. If you notice, almost all news and discussions on Chinese medicine is about how many patients they have cured. No information on the negatives. "I am so awesome that I cured 5 patients last month!" We have no clue whether this guy has killed the rest of his 9995 patients out of a total of 10,000 patients that he has treated in his career... again all useless.

Many Chinese medicine supporters have cling on the usefulness of the medicine by mentioning certain compounds isolated from plants listed I. Some Chinese medicine literature. An excellent example would be Tu Youyou who won the Nobel prize a couple years ago. What these people have missed is that Tu used entirely scientific methods and western medicine concept in her discovery. As I have discussed in one of my earlier posts, isolating compounds is totally against of the concept of Chinese medicine. Th fact that she was isolating a single chemical is actually the strongest evidence to show how useless chinese medicine is. Even when she was working at Chinese medicine institute, she had to use scientific techniques and totally anti-Chinese medicine concepts for her work.

Additionally, if you look through some Chinese medicine literatures, you will find that almost anything and everything has been listed to have medicinal use. So no matter how you do it, almost every natural compound will come out of some natural substance listed in some Chinese medicine literature. You can't miss it because they listed everything living thing in there. So if they want, they can claim every new drug comes from Chinese medicine...

Again, my 2-cent...

IMO, Chinese medicine contains a valuable compendium of the medicinal properties of native Chinese flora and fauna, a collection of treatment methods of dubious efficacy (acupuncture, ba guan, back scraping, some more dubious than others), a wholly religious theoretical basis, and a lot of nonsense arising from that religion-like theory.

My mother-in-law likes to watch a show about health, and that show is heavily rooted in Chinese medicine. I find it both interesting and deplorable at times.

It is interesting when doctors with training in both western and Chinese medicine are able to reconcile Chinese medicine theory with modern medical understanding. For example, they would mention how such and such food is traditionally known for this effect, and that scientific analysis of this food has shown that it contains certain compounds that are responsible for the effect.

It gets deplorable when certain experts start expounding "old wisdoms" without any explanation, or worse, using pseduo-scientifc explanations. They would ask leading questions from patients, and tailor their response accordingly. Ex: do you eat ginger? You do? Well that explains why you have excess heat in your body. (Seriously, who doesn't eat ginger in Chinese households?)

So there is really a LOT of lack of understanding in China about the merits and flaws of traditional knowledge, and how to best approach such knowledge. There is actually a strong similiarity between the way Chinese people regard TCM and TMA.

 

[vesicles]

IMO, Chinese medicine contains a valuable compendium of the medicinal properties of native Chinese flora and fauna, a collection of treatment methods of dubious efficacy (acupuncture, ba guan, back scraping, some more dubious than others), a wholly religious theoretical basis, and a lot of nonsense arising from that religion-like theory.

I agree. This would be consistent with my first point in the above post. Empirical observation is data that cannot be ignored, especially gathered by professionals who dedicated their entire lives to the matter, which continued for millennia.

It is interesting when doctors with training in both western and Chinese medicine are able to reconcile Chinese medicine theory with modern medical understanding. For example, they would mention how such and such food is traditionally known for this effect, and that scientific analysis of this food has shown that it contains certain compounds that are responsible for the effect.

As I mentioned above, I respect those ancient Chinese medical professionals who dedicated their lives to gather valuable empirical observations through millennia. In fact, we should compare our experimental data to the empirical observations to validate our scientific theories. This is evident when Tu Youyou searched literature for useful clues during her investigation.

The ONLY useful info in Chinese medicine is the observation. We can use these observations as reference when searching for new chemicals. However, that's where the line should be drawn. All the crazy Qi and Yin/Yang should be abandoned.

Chinese medicine WAS ahead of its time 2000-3000 years ago. It's incredible that ancient people came up with these complex theories in attempts to explain something they observed, especially when they had no tools to do any further testing. However, that was back then. Three thousand years have passed, these theories are no longer valid when compared with our modern understanding of our physiology. It simply cannot.

It gets deplorable when certain experts start expounding "old wisdoms" without any explanation, or worse, using pseduo-scientifc explanations. They would ask leading questions from patients, and tailor their response accordingly. Ex: do you eat ginger? You do? Well that explains why you have excess heat in your body. (Seriously, who doesn't eat ginger in Chinese households?)

So there is really a LOT of lack of understanding in China about the merits and flaws of traditional knowledge, and how to best approach such knowledge. There is actually a strong similiarity between the way Chinese people regard TCM and TMA.

Exactly. All the talks of "heat" and "cold" and "fire" from my in-laws are driving me nuts... These "experts" would tell you to eat this food because it generates heat and avoid that food because it will put you on fire. So who came up with the concept of this heat vs. cold? And what is the scale? How do you test whether certain food is heat vs. cold? Is it just some expert's imagination? Is it considered heat because it is red in color (don't laugh. Some Chinese medicine experts actually claim exactly that)? Like anything that involves Chinese medicine, all these standards and concepts seem to just come out of someone's a$$...

So there is really a LOT of lack of understanding in China about the merits and flaws of traditional knowledge, and how to best approach such knowledge. There is actually a strong similiarity between the way Chinese people regard TCM and TMA.

It doesn't help when there are "experts" and "masters" who claim to have superpowers. In the late 80's and early 90's when I still lived in China, there were a few Qi masters who claimed to walk on water and turn water into something else... I am not joking. Most of them simply used magic tricks. One guy claimed to be able to push a coin through a thick glass panel. And we all know it's a simple magic trick now... Another "master" claimed that he could change the molecular structure of water molecules in New York city while sitting in his Beijing apartment. And? Nothing happened. Of course, what do you expect?

 

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I agree. This would be consistent with my first point in the above post. Empirical observation is data that cannot be ignored, especially gathered by professionals who dedicated their entire lives to the matter, which continued for millennia.



As I mentioned above, I respect those ancient Chinese medical professionals who dedicated their lives to gather valuable empirical observations through millennia. In fact, we should compare our experimental data to the empirical observations to validate our scientific theories. This is evident when Tu Youyou searched literature for useful clues during her investigation.

The ONLY useful info in Chinese medicine is the observation. We can use these observations as reference when searching for new chemicals. However, that's where the line should be drawn. All the crazy Qi and Yin/Yang should be abandoned.

Chinese medicine WAS ahead of its time 2000-3000 years ago. It's incredible that ancient people came up with these complex theories in attempts to explain something they observed, especially when they had no tools to do any further testing. However, that was back then. Three thousand years have passed, these theories are no longer valid when compared with our modern understanding of our physiology. It simply cannot.



Exactly. All the talks of "heat" and "cold" and "fire" from my in-laws are driving me nuts... These "experts" would tell you to eat this food because it generates heat and avoid that food because it will put you on fire. So who came up with the concept of this heat vs. cold? And what is the scale? How do you test whether certain food is heat vs. cold? Is it just some expert's imagination? Is it considered heat because it is red in color (don't laugh. Some Chinese medicine experts actually claim exactly that)? Like anything that involves Chinese medicine, all these standards and concepts seem to just come out of someone's a$$...



It doesn't help when there are "experts" and "masters" who claim to have superpowers. In the late 80's and early 90's when I still lived in China, there were a few Qi masters who claimed to walk on water and turn water into something else... I am not joking. Most of them simply used magic tricks. One guy claimed to be able to push a coin through a thick glass panel. And we all know it's a simple magic trick now... Another "master" claimed that he could change the molecular structure of water molecules in New York city while sitting in his Beijing apartment. And? Nothing happened. Of course, what do you expect?

There was a guy in the Bible that claims to be able to turn water into wine and there are people even claiming he can walk on the surface of the water.

 

[solarz]

There was a guy in the Bible that claims to be able to turn water into wine and there are people even claiming he can walk on the surface of the water.

Didn't you know? JC was a Kung Fu Masta!

 

[vesicles]

Why do I think Chinese medicine is all BS? The entire practice of Chines medicine is illogical. Before you can talk about usefulness of certain thing, you must first show irrefutable proof that the THING you talk about actually exists.

So before we even begin to talk about how effective Chinese medicine is, where is Qi? Where is all the gazillion paths for the Qi to flow in our body? I don't need the entire map. Just show me ONE path. Don't tell me "just because we haven't found them yet, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Our technology is still not advanced enough..." Blah Blah Blah... If you cannot give me evidence of Qi's existence, why waste everyone's time discussing effectiveness? Imagine we can talk all we want about the 8th gen stealth fighters that China has deployed in the thousands. All useless if you can't even show proof that the 8th gen stealth fighter physically exists...

Many keep insisting that Qi is so small that our modern technology can't see it. Well, we now have electron microscopes that have resolution of 3-4 angstroms (0.3-0.4 nanometers). thats enough to tell apart adjacent atoms. We still haven't found Qi yet...

Let's assume Qi is so small that even our best super-resolution EM can't see it. And disrupting the flow of Qi in such small space (within a few millimeters at one of those acupuncture sites) would have major consequences to our health. Cutting off an entire arm or leg, either of which must contain thousands of acupuncture points, would lead to catastrophic consequences. Yes? Our body would disintegrate into a soup of blood and flesh, or blow up into million pieces... Yes? Well, we all know it doesn't work like that. those amputees live normal lives just like any one of us. So Qi doesn't matter in arms and legs??? But Chinese medicine doctors still massage/acupuncture their patients' hands, feet, arms and legs to treat heart diseases, diabetes and cancers... So Qi flow in arms and legs is important then? Which is it???

 

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Didn't you know? JC was a Kung Fu Masta!

I knew it! It's Sifu Jesus!

 

[solarz]

Exactly. All the talks of "heat" and "cold" and "fire" from my in-laws are driving me nuts... These "experts" would tell you to eat this food because it generates heat and avoid that food because it will put you on fire. So who came up with the concept of this heat vs. cold? And what is the scale? How do you test whether certain food is heat vs. cold? Is it just some expert's imagination? Is it considered heat because it is red in color (don't laugh. Some Chinese medicine experts actually claim exactly that)? Like anything that involves Chinese medicine, all these standards and concepts seem to just come out of someone's a$$...

Ugh, don't get me started on the whole 坐月子 thing...

 

[Equation]

I agreed with both of you gentlemen, yes TCM results is hard to measure a consistent results for a better scientific analysis, but yet it has been practiced for over millennials and help to sustain China's growing large population by providing affordable medicine for the poor working class.

 

[vesicles]

I agreed with both of you gentlemen, yes TCM results is hard to measure a consistent results for a better scientific analysis, but yet it has been practiced for over millennials and help to sustain China's growing large population by providing affordable medicine for the poor working class.

It has served its purposes well when there was lack of options in the past. There are now better options...