TCM pseudoscience

About traditional Chinese medicine, I remember the wormwood plant
There is acupuncture for pets too
Probably there are bad stories on TCM but these pop ups for me

AssassinsMace said:

My friend's wife had this infection in the nerves in her face so literally half her face was paralyzed and her eye lid was wide open where she would have to tape her eye lid shut so it didn't dry out. The doctor she went to told her that it'll eventually go away back to normal but it would take around six weeks. Someone recommended she go to San Francisco Chinatown and see a Chinese medicine doctor. She came back with a bag full of assorted ingredients including some dried centipedes and was told to boil it and make a tea to drink. Her condition was over in less than two weeks. I was never big on Chinese medicine but some of the stuff works. One of the worst parts of getting sick is the sore throat. I can't get a good sleep with a sore throat and is usually the first sign that happens before you really get sick. My mother when I was a kid would put a strip of Chinese medicine tape on the back of my neck and if it was done before I went to sleep at night, I would feel a turnaround when I woke up in the morning. If I feel a itch in my throat, I slap on a strip and it goes away. The Western remedies only numb your throat until it heals on its own. This actually heals it.

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My father had similar sickness that one of his eye cannot close and his lips were pulled to one side and he went to see doctor. Doctor said it was the 7th nerve stop working and there was no direct medicine to cure it. The only way is to do physical treatment by massage on his face to make the nerve working again. He accepted physical treatment once then my uncle got info from somebody that the blood of a kind of rice-field eel (vastly available as food in wet market) can cure his sickness. He did it 3 times and his face came back normal.

SteelBird said:

My father had similar sickness that one of his eye cannot close and his lips were pulled to one side and he went to see doctor. Doctor said it was the 7th nerve stop working and there was no direct medicine to cure it. The only way is to do physical treatment by massage on his face to make the nerve working again. He accepted physical treatment once then my uncle got info from somebody that the blood of a kind of rice-field eel (vastly available as food in wet market) can cure his sickness. He did it 3 times and his face came back normal.

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To be fair, those are anecdotal reports.

There is no doubt that some aspects of TCM works, the problem is that it does not work reliably enough compared to modern medicine.

Thus, it is useful as a complement to modern medicine, but cannot replace it.

I have not seen anything that indicated the Chinese government wants to promote TCM at the expense of modern medicine. In fact, in the Chinese newscasts I've seen, any praise for TCM is made in the context of helping patients recover from their treatments.

Anadoctol doesn't mean something really works. Remember when COVId began and there were anadoctol evidence that patients treated with Hydroxtcloriquine recovered in days. Well it turns out when they ran a trial on Hydroxtcloriquine, it turns out it has no effect at all.

My hope is that TCM gets rid of the superstitious aspects and actually use trials to determine which herb is effective and which is not.

Few people believe in TCM (Even the leaders of the CCP), if Chinese leaders promote it, it's because it's inexpensive , and it helps reduce healthcare costs.

It's like at the beginning of the falun gong, the Chinese leaders wanted to promote this practice, because they thought it was a way to reduce the costs of the healthcare system.

free_6ix9ine said:

My hope is that TCM gets rid of the superstitious aspects and actually use trials to determine which herb is effective and which is not.

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Sounds to me you're just not familiar with the state of TCM in China. There has been research done on TCM herbs for decades now. Look up the discovery of artemisinin.

Wangxi said:

Few people believe in TCM (Even the leaders of the CCP), if Chinese leaders promote it, it's because it's inexpensive , and it helps reduce healthcare costs.

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I wouldn't say that. Lots of people have confidence in TCM. Even if I don't believe in the pseudoscience aspects of it, I have confidence in the herbal medicines. There are also a lot of empirical evidence in the benefits of the therapeutic practices such as acupuncture and massages.

In my opinion, the problem between medicine and Chinese medicine is the "traditional" aspect.

It is extremely difficult for a scientist to separate the fluff from the hard science. In order to do so, it requires great knowledge of Chinese, which pretty much relegates hard research to mostly Chinese people. The story of Tu Youyou and artemisinin required full support of Mao Zedong and looking over like 1000's of Chinese texts. I think for a non-Asian/Chinese institution, it would be difficult financially to get funding for this kind of endeavor.

There are other successes as well. I believe statins for treating cholesterol were originally isolated from fermented rice in Japan, and the research was in part inspired by traditional treatments.

I posted something similar in the corona thread, where bear bile actually shows some promise as medically active substance

Another opinion of mine. I think sometimes the science has not caught up to human experience. It is still near-impossible to measure the effects of psychology on physiology. We might not be able to measure any physiological effects from Michael Phelps cupping the sh*t out of himself. However, he swears by it and won a lot of gold medals. Conversely, this therapy could do nothing for 90% of users.

AssassinsMace said:

...
One of the worst parts of getting sick is the sore throat. I can't get a good sleep with a sore throat and is usually the first sign that happens before you really get sick. My mother when I was a kid would put a strip of Chinese medicine tape on the back of my neck and if it was done before I went to sleep at night, I would feel a turnaround when I woke up in the morning. If I feel a itch in my throat, I slap on a strip and it goes away. The Western remedies only numb your throat until it heals on its own. This actually heals it.

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There are gargle solutions you can get over the counter with anti-inflammatory and antiseptic effects that will alleviate something like that.
Ever gargling with something as simple as tepid water with table salt can help.
If you get a Western medicine product for your throat make sure it has anti-inflammatory and/or antiseptic properties. If it is just a pain reliever it won't treat the root cause of the problem. Unfortunately most of the products you usually see on advertisements are just pain relievers.

I assume those TCM strips have a similar effect and the medicine is absorbed by the skin somehow.

gelgoog said:

There are gargle solutions you can get over the counter with anti-inflammatory and antiseptic effects that will alleviate something like that.
Ever gargling with something as simple as tepid water with table salt can help.
If you get a Western medicine product for your throat make sure it has anti-inflammatory and/or antiseptic properties. If it is just a pain reliever it won't treat the root cause of the problem. Unfortunately most of the products you usually see on advertisements are just pain relievers.

I assume those TCM strips have a similar effect and the medicine is absorbed by the skin somehow.

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The salt water thing doesn't work for me. The medical tape or patch that works the same that anyone can buy in stores is Salonpas. Before it became mainstream in the US, it was much stronger. Americans don't like the ointment smell.