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RE: Chinese Pseudoscience #2: Cupping
It's "most of", not "all of", so not all Chinese medicine has been claimed to be anything.
It's "most of", not "all of", so not all Chinese medicine has been claimed to be anything.
Alright, if you are defending yourself by saying most not all, then "most" implies majority. How was majority determined?
Rather than just say bs, can you provide counter evidence? Please check my 'history' post showing how the very roots of TCM is bunk
I went through your post and looked through what you wrote. You have one post that connects politics to acupuncture. in this post link.
And then you provide your own research into into the effectiveness of acupuncture link
I have personally tried acupuncture for muscular pain and for more advanced ailments. In both cases, it did not work. And I'll explain why your research into this is not complete.
The vast majority of TCM did not evolve around acupuncture, I'm sure you are aware of this. It is just one aspect a very vast field of medicine. With that said, TCM is holistic, and it approaches the body in a lifestyle way. It is not meant to treat cancer, tumors herniated disc, a heart attack and so on. You claim that your research states that TCM claims this. TCM does not claim this. People trying to make a quick buck by claiming they can heal you however, do.
It is instead meant to explain why your body is not optimal to fight off certain ailments as a result of being sub optimal.
For example:
Your body begins to fever as a means to raise the temperature of the core. This raised temperature is meant to produce an environment that is not hospitable to foreign bacteria/viruses. It is also partly a result of increased cellular activity.
In western medicine, you would target it with fever reducers, of which there are many. Why perform this action if fever is a natural response? One reason would be if you have an infection of an open wound in your leg and the fever will literally kill you.
TCM is not applicable in this situation because TCM is meant to optimize your body for self healing. There are also thousands of herbs used in TCM that are sources for modern medicine.
Where TCM does apply, is if you nerve issue from sitting down all day. And the nerve block is causing you to have random spasms in your right shoulder, which is pulling on your scalenes causing inflammation of the muscle. The local inflammation is causing you to have sore throat symptoms and you start feeling like you have an onset of a fever because your neck contains lymphatic nodes that are being triggered.
There are thousands of scams in china touting TCM works for everything under the moon, and this is an outrageous claim that ignores what TCM was originally about.
My source: I have hundreds of textbooks for TCM that dating back 100 years. With writings within the book dating back over 200 years in a dry vault. I've been a "victim" of TCM and western medicine. There are times with one is appropriate and the other is not.
you got a full vote for that.
You've opened up a very large area of debate that warrants at least one post on its own, which I think would be best in this case. All I can really suggest for the sake of comments if you wish to continue is provide me with some kind of scientific evidence, rather than anecdotal or promises, that TCM is effective beyond placebo.
To be clear, I didn't say all, so of course I'm aware, for example, of TuYouYou's achievements, and I know that, purely through trial and error, superstition and so on that various herbs and such have been found to have some positive effects.
But, when it comes to the crux of the belief, the QI, the meridian pathways, the five elements, and so forth, it's just as bunk as any other scam out there.
Being right sometimes does not make a trustworthy science. It has to go through the correct, rigorous process, and that's where TCM unavoidably fails.
To be creative and demonstrate:
A doctor comes to me with a knife and says:
And then when he does it, it turns out there was a worm under my skin that was releasing headache-inducing chemicals, so the knife stab successfully cured a headache.
From that day on, people know that there is a headache worm that can be stabbed with a knife all thanks to Traditional Knife Medicine, which goes on to make a chart of where Blorg points are, which happen to be locations where the worm likes to breed. So this is evidently scientifically legitimate form of medicine, Right?
Sorry, that's now how it works... except with TCM. For some reason that gets a pass to slip past the scientific process.
Anyway perhaps my 'most is placebo' statement isn't entirely accurate - but perhaps it is, I haven't run the numbers but I think i'll make a post on that very thing. But the bigger issue here is that the very premise of TCM is bunk, and regardless of how many individual occurrences actually have a positive effect, it's not because of TCM, it's because of chance encounters and circumstantial happenings over thousands of years of trial and error through blind superstition. Mostly error. And I want no part of that, and the world could very well do without it, too.
Maybe I am being unreasonable in trying to convince you otherwise. For me to actually to be able to convince you would require such a tremendous amount of work for something to which there is no fruit other than to say "HA I told you so!?" something I don't care about.
All of the studies that are out there address the most outlandish claims of TCM, of which there are many and none of which I am denying.
How much study have you put into TCM to fully understand it? or do you dismiss it to the point where its not worth your time to learn?
I'm being as open minded as I can here by asking for evidence that simply passes the requirements that all other medical research has to go through. If that doesn't exist, then of course I'm going to dismiss it. If it does exist, it shouldn't be too hard to show it to me, I'd even add it in a follow up post. A safe medical alternative to heavy drugs is only a good thing!
Its really hard to have a debate here.
Anyway, one last comment for me with a short example. And personally I believe that the TCM is an on going medical research in clinical trials all the time~
Arsenic oxide is one of the TCM with different biomedical applications with the long history, so when it applied for FDA approval, it is one of the quickest approved one if i am not mistaken.
(Would it be a example for you, as an on going clinical trial for hundreds of years and was acknowledged by western scientific medical research?)
PS: TCM is more like result orientated, and keeping the good results and experience, instead of scientifically logically development.
I've put arsenic oxide on my list of stuff to check out thanks. 'Result oriented' is possibly the problem I'm trying to get at, but again, I'll explain what I can in follow up posts (perhaps not the next one since I want to focus on placebo specifically first) since these comments are getting really long. And, I'm sure I'll learn more as I go too!
TCM is such a wide field.
Tell me where you want to start looking first. What have you already looked at. What are you trying to achieve?
You're asking the equivalent of "show me that psychology works"
Well that's the beauty of it, show me anything. So right now all I've covered is acupuncture and cupping. Perhaps you can find something in those areas. If convinced I'd be happy to do a follow up post
I'm not defending myself, I'm defending him :)
Majority is usually more than half but not all.