chinese medicine: what's your attitude on it?

[39degN]

seems most of westerners cant appcept chinese way to treat disease, or maybe consider it as a kind of sorceries, so what's your opinion about it?

[sunyata]

as long as I don't have a suspicion that I am being ripped off, I would pick CTM over western medicine any day...

I guess the only time I would choose western medicine or a combination of western and chinese is if it was a bad accident - broken bones, bullet wounds, car accident, etc...

[TSkillet]

I'm not fond of TCM, but it's not because I don't believe in it or anything. I just think those medicial soups are amongst the most foul tasting/smelling things ever concocted. Man, when my uncle used to brew those up - our apartment in Hong Kong would smell bad for days.

[sunyata]

haha, yeah, and the ingredients are often a bit sketchy...

[ala]

Chinese medicine is an oxymoron.

[sunyata]

why is it an oxymoron?

[林彪]

Western medicine is based on standardized testing and is always logically and clinically proven. The dosages are always standardized and guaranteed to a certain level of purity. Traditional Chinese medicine, on the other hand, is not clinically tested. Oftentimes, if TCM succeeds, it will often be a placebo effect. Sorry to burst you guys' bubbles.

[sunyata]

burst bubbles? you're not bursting any bubbles...

but how do you know that TCM only works due to placebo effects? Have you tried it on yourself or did you pick up this information from a Western publication? sorry to burst your bubble...

[林彪]

Anyway, I think the Chinese abandoned Traditional Chinese Medicine as a serious method of healing people in the 19th century, even though they still continue to hold on to it as an important part of their culture. Even Lu Xun was a doctor of Western medicine some 90 years ago.

[林彪]

burst bubbles? you're not bursting any bubbles...

but how do you know that TCM only works due to placebo effects? Have you tried it on yourself or did you pick up this information from a Western publication? sorry to burst your bubble...

Well, TCM could work; it just hasn't been clinically tested to work due to some real chemical effect and not due to a placebo effect. But I suppose you could clinically test the herbs that are used in TCM to see if they really work.

[OM3RTA]

Normally, I would rather go with Chinese medicines. Like flu or any light sickness, unless car accidents or any heavy weight injuries (touch wood though). Reason being I hate needles, injection. And I found most western medicine always side effects..I might be wrong. And is it true that chinese medicine are made of natural herbs??

[skylee]

Personally, I don't use TCM. But it is gaining popularity here because the practice is now regulated in Hong Kong.

Recently there was news about people being poisoned because some TCM stores mixed up two types of herb with similar names (one is poisonous, one is not). So I think it is not yet very reliable. But my brother had an aching knee and all the doctors and hospitals could not tell him what was wrong and what treatment he needed. So he has gone to seek help from a 鐵打 master and he says he is feeling much better now.

[39degN]

yeah, TCM did really work to me. when i was a kid, i got a strange belly ache, the western treatment didnt help, then, a chinese doctor prescribed some Herbal Medicine, within only three times to eat it, the illness is disappeared at all, since then, i started to trust TCM. the doctor can just through 号脉/切脉 tell you what's your symptom, genius.

i think acupuncture is a nice treatment too.

right now, i usually still ask for help to western medicine though, for the convenience sake. but i do think TCM has its own specialism.

[wix]

Western medicine is based on standardized testing and is always logically and clinically proven. The dosages are always standardized and guaranteed to a certain level of purity. Traditional Chinese medicine, on the other hand, is not clinically tested. Oftentimes, if TCM succeeds, it will often be a placebo effect. Sorry to burst you guys' bubbles.

Western medicine uses drugs that are in their isolated forms. It is necessary to carefully control the doses as higher doses may be toxic or have bad side effects (these side effects are often also a problem at normal doses). Because Chinese medicine uses substances in their natural form the active ingredients are less potent because they are naturally buffered by the other ingredients of the medicine.

Chinese and Western medicine are totally different paradigms. It is difficult to compare their effectiveness directly. Western medicine uses powerful drugs that treat symptoms in isolation. For acute illnesses it is usually very effective. Chinese medicine uses less powerful drugs. I believe it may be more effective in treating chronic illnesses and "lifestyle diseases".

[Alleluia]

Personally I would never ever ever use traditional Chinese medicines. I've read that in these traditional medicines there can be substances that are really hard on the liver and the kidneys, possibly even dangerous. Since the mixtures aren't tested, you never know the whole truth about what is in them. The problem is that people believe that because they are made of natural herbs and such, they are somehow better and more "natural" to use than isolated chemical substances. But in the end, nature is all about chemistry as well. Loads of the inventions of modern medicine have come from the nature, but the useful substances are isolated from the whole bunch of useless or even harmful ones.

Oh yes, I'm a great believer in clinical testing too That's why I rely on modern medicine. I don't like to call it "Western medicine", because western countries have all had their own traditional medicines too, and anyway modern medicine is used and deceloped all around the world nowadays. But why is it that in the West hardly anyone uses traditional medicine any longer, and in China both modern and traditional medicine are used side by side? Is it just because modern medicine has its roots in the West that Western traditional medicine has disappeared?

Acupuncture I believe in, though. Nothing possibly harmful in that, and you know what you're gonna get - little needles, that is! Besides, acupuncture has been adopted by many European doctors as well and they recognize its value.

Ok, must admit that my view may be biased, since my mother is a doctor and her views have influenced me a lot. I don't know any doctors of traditional Chinese medicine, so no-one has yet been able to convince me why it should be trusted...

[Ian_Lee]

Recently the Chinese herb "Ma Huang" and its products have been banned by FDA because it can be used to make "Ice".

On the other hand, another Chinese herb 冬蟲夏草 has just been found by a US pharmaceutical company that it is a really good stuff:

http://news.chinatimes.com/Chinatimes/newslist/newslist-content/0,3546,110107+112004042000902+20040420235655,00.html

Personally I have received treatment from 鐵打 master (what is it in English term?) and physical therapist and chiropractice.

The former gave me the best result.

I know that every soccer team in HK hires a 鐵打 master. When Pele was cramping on the field during a visiting match, he was treated by a 鐵打 master.

[benotnobody]

I'd like to share my thoughts on 中药. Although some people think that 药 (Western medicine) is too invasive, it is decidedly more scientific than 中药 and it is probably more effective. However, Western medicine can often have dangerous or unpleasant side effects. In these cases, to use 中药 would be good.

A lot of Western people think 中药 is sorcery or charlatanism, but it is surprising how useful it can be. My Chinese teacher told me that an ancient Chinese remedy for heart disease involved frog skin. Medical professors compared the Chinese remedy to the Western alternative, and were surprised to find that they both contained the same active ingredient!

In essence, I'm saying that Chinese medicine and Western medicine can complement each other. That's what my mother did, and her cancer is cured...

[Alleluia]

My Chinese teacher told me that an ancient Chinese remedy for heart disease involved frog skin. Medical professors compared the Chinese remedy to the Western alternative, and were surprised to find that they both contained the same active ingredient!

Actually, I don't believe they were extremely surprised of their finding. Many inventions of modern medicine come from traditional medicine, or at least traditional medicine has given an inspiration to them. So knowing that a traditional medicine that is used to treat heart problems uses this certain frog, the scientists will go and search the frog for the effective chemical substance. Traditional medicine can't all be a load of bs (even if some of it is) since it's been used for thousands of years. And I'm not talking only about Chinese traditional medicine. But in your example, it might be that the frog skin medicine also includes some more or less harmful substances in addition to the active, useful one. Hundreds of years ago they had to use the whole frog, of course, but nowadays it's possible to remove those unwanted and unnecessary substances, to separate them from the effective one. That's why I believe modern medicine is better than traditional.

But then again, I know there are people who believe exactly the opposite: that traditional medicine is better BECAUSE it has all that extra stuff in it. Because it uses the whole frog and not just the one chemical. Well, take the risk if you will , but I'll stick to tested modern medicine...

[Guest nuer]

I have taken chinese medicine twice in the past few years and it has been extremely effective. I totally disagree with the statement that chinese people would hang on to it out of cultural sentimentalism. I have come across plenty of western medical journals doing studies proving that chinese medicine can be effective.

This chinese herbal tonic prescribed to me did taste absolutely foul but it fixed what two doctors in australia were not able to help me with.

[chapka]

When traditional Chineese medicine has been tested in controlled studies, it's generally been completely ineffective. In addition, when different TCM practicioners are asked to diagnose the same patient, they often come up with completely different diagnoses.

http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/acu.html

Yes, modern scientific medicine's practices and prescriptions sometimes have side effects, and TCM and other kinds of herbal medicine often don't. But when a medicine is powerful enough to have an effect on the body, it will almost always have side effects also. Those herbal medicines which have no side effects generally don't have any therapeutic benefit, either. And yes, many herbal medicines (at least Western herbals) have serious side effects, such as causing miscarriages or interfering with birth control pills. The difference is that they're not required by law to tell you about them, so you think they're safe. Prescribed forms of drugs will always have fewer side effects than "natural" forms of the same medicine, because they're limited to a single active ingredient.

There is no difference between "herbs" and "chemicals" except in name. If something is powerful enough to affect the human body, it's because of its chemical structure, and the only difference between taking it as a pill or a plant is that you know how much medicine is in the pill.

As for the long tradition of TCM, well, we had one of those in Europe, too. Do you know how homeopathy got started? Someone had a theory that if you diluted ingredients enough, it would cure disease without side effects. Sure enough, homeopathic treatment seemed to work better than the "conventional" treatment at the time, which was bloodletting, leeches, trepanation and herbal medicine. Double-blind studies have shown us that "homeopathic medicine" is just water and has no effect other than the placebo effect. It seemed to "work" because the ancient, traditional treatments did more harm than good--they were actually killing people, and had been for hundreds or thousands of years. 200 years ago, all it took was one "success" to entrench a therapy, especially for a disease that was often fatal anyway. Don't put too much stock in tradition when it comes to something that properly belongs in the realm of science.