Acupuncture & Herbal Medicine

[Halleberry]

Thats one of the things I am saying, yes.

[Pirian]

So basically what you're saying is the placebo effect is real?

placebo effect is quite real, but placebo effect is what enables us to do great things.

Not just basically, that IS one of the things they said!

[Zoot]

Modern day medicines work by extracting microscopic particles from organic material. If it were all placebo effect, nothing would work. Conspiracy. You can go to a dermotologist that tells you to go to a nutritionist that tells you to go to a sleep therapist that tells you to take one set of pills for this, and one set of pills for that and carry on.

Or you can look at your life as a whole and make it more peaceful by recognizing aspects of your life that make it more unhealthy, which can be anything from your diet to your stress levels.

I like Holistic medicine because it encompasses your well-being, which isn't something that you can get by going to a doctors office and is much less expensive and long term than going to a spa. And it doesn't give you a magic plant that is supposed to cure your ailments.

But then again, Holistic Health isn't exactly alternative medicine, it's integrative, which is basically a smart way of looking at natural health (without the fluffy jibber-jabber).

[Correction]

As with any profession, there are those who are know how to do it and those that just have a piece of paper that says they know how to do it. To make assumptions about a whole profession because some of the practitioners are faulty is idiotic and ignorant. I don't know about the rest of my family, but neither my mother, father, nor sister(granted she has not been in practice as long) have ever had any law suits brought up against them. Also, you say it as if law suits brought up against medical doctors is a rare thing.

They're not rare. Medical Doctors fail all the time. Disease is a very complex beast and the miracle of the human body is that a lot of the time we can fight it off without any professional intervention whatsoever. Sometimes however it does not and it is in those cases where I'd put my life in the hands of a trained medical professional than someone who's going to rub oil on me and give me a colonic, and that's because the medical professional has science on his side. Alternative Medicine practitioners have 'ancient wisdom,' luck, and the placebo effect on their side.

All medical treatment is a gamble. You do the right things by your training and hope the patient comes through it. If I strictly wanted to look up the percentages, I'd trust a surgeon over a chriopractor 10 times out of 10.

[Pirian]

They're not rare. Medical Doctors fail all the time. Disease is a very complex beast and the miracle of the human body is that a lot of the time we can fight it off without any professional intervention whatsoever. Sometimes however it does not and it is in those cases where I'd put my life in the hands of a trained medical professional than someone who's going to rub oil on me and give me a colonic, and that's because the medical professional has science on his side. Alternative Medicine practitioners have 'ancient wisdom,' luck, and the placebo effect on their side.

All medical treatment is a gamble. You do the right things by your training and hope the patient comes through it. If I strictly wanted to look up the percentages, I'd trust a surgeon over a chriopractor 10 times out of 10.

I was actually refering to Misterbob's comments of:

Chiropractors are also a very dangerous practitioner to see. Even if you feel better upon initially leaving, this is often damaging to your back. (There is a reason that lawyers make a damn fortune off of Chiropractors, lol).

tl;dr: Don't buy herbal supplements without extensive research, do not attend dangerous practitioners like Chiropractors without full-well being aware of the risks you're taking, and don't expect to be magically healed, you won't be.

Because you know, Chiropractors are so much more dangerous than surgeons. I wonder how many more people die on a Chiropractors table compared to the surgeons table? You can say the exact same thing about medical doctors that you can about Chiropractors. You realize they go through pretty much the same same schooling, which is very rigorous and intense(not to mention expensive). You do realize that many alternative treatments(actual treatments, not "rubbing some oil on them spots") for things such as cancer have just as high, and actually in a lot of cases higher, cure rate as chemotheorpy. You're taking just as big of a risk with chemo as you are with alternative methods, only with alternative methods you usually don't lose your hair and immune system during the process. The main reason people do look down upon Chiropractors as "not doctors"(which they do have a doctorate, too) is the good ol' medical lobby. And you know they always have your best interest at heart, so don't you worry about your health, let them worry about it!

You, Correction, obviously have never cared enough about this to look up the other side so it's hard to have this conversation with you because you have no idea what you're talking about.
As with medical doctors, the treatment you receive is only as good as the practitioner who is administering. If you have a shitty doctor, you get a shitty treatment.

[Correction]

I wonder how many more people die on a Chiropractors table compared to the surgeons table?

I'm pretty sure that in almost every case where surgery has failed (and failed for reasons other than human error), Chiropractic would have failed. I don't go to a chiropractor to get rid of tumors, I go to a surgeon. I don't go to a chiropractor to cure infectious disease. I go to a physician and then the pharmacist.

There are plenty of chiropractic practitioners who do not promise their treatment will do more than relieve muscle and joint pain. I have no problem with them. But there are plenty, plenty more of them who preach the word of their founder, that somehow 'nerve flow' from the spinal cord and misalignment thereof was the cause of all physical ailment. And that's unscientific bullshit. I'm not about to tell my friend suffering from a life-threatening incurable disease that all she needs are weekly spinal adjustments and a spa treatment. That's just false hope, and endlessly irresponsible.

[Khamsin]

There've been clinical studies that show chiropractic care can put cancer into remission as effectively as chemo or other more traditional medical procedures?

And of the cases where chiropractic care worked, was it something that only a chiropractor could do, or could a massage therapist have done the same thing?

[sephir]

acupuncture works by stimulating nerves within the body causing an increase in blood flow to this area. It does work in some cases, im not sure how great the effect will be. as for natural medicine I think it really depends as well. Ginseng is a fairly effective natural medicine along with things such as Aloe, but there are alot of bullshit natural medicines out there.

[MisterBob]

AM works if you want it to work. One of the core principles of a good AM doctor is that all the things you need to live and be healthy were given to you at birth, or are in your natural environment. Considering the fact that humans, moreso americans, do not live naturally (all our synthetic foods and products that we put on or in our body accumulate over time and cause problems. Our spiritual mental and physical selves are all disconnected. All three have to be in synch for your body to run at optimum performance). Thats why they rely natural herbs and minerals as medicince, along with pressure points, and meditation to help the body heal and stay healthy. Its not some eat some plants and be cured, if it was that easy, we all would be immortal. Also if you do read about AM and hear some herb or mineral can cure so and so if taken regularly, becareful with that because herbs are medicine and just like conventional medicine, repeated and consisten use can render it useless or cause damage. The placebo effect is quite real, but placebo effect is what enables us to do great things. We all have seen the episode where the main character has a ball game and is giving special sports water to increase his performance and win for the team, when in truth it was just regular water. We we are supposed to learn from that is that the power to change you is in you, you just have to know you can. Positive thinking is really powerful, people dont give it enough credit. I am not saying you can heal from cancer just by thinking you can, but your body responds to what your mind tells it, and if you tell yourself and believe that this treatment is going to work and make you healthier, it will.

I'm lol'ing at this a lot

[Meat]

A warm shower and a cup of tea, that's my mom's fix it to everything

[Wintermute]

I've found that natural alternatives have worked more than the Pill varierty over time personally. Especially when I was younger. Nowadays the only pill I'll take is for a headache and 9/10 times I'll treat that with blaring music 'cause that helps me get rid of it.

It could be a placebo affect, but even then it means I'm tricking my body into doing something I would have relied on meds for otherwise so it's win-win.

I'll admit that a lot of it can be BS, and you need to be on your toes to not get scammed, but the benefits are there.

I've also seen both my Grandfathers turn into vegetables thanks to all the pills the Doctors gave them and the pills to counteract the other pills side-effects and so on...think at one time my Grandfathers "pills to take with dinner" meant about 8 Pills, so I'm not really trusting of meds.

I think the key is really knowing when you have the option of going "Hmm Science or AM" or knowing "Ok, it's Hospital Time".

[SephYuyX]

People are arguing if placebo effect is real or not? Its one of the oldest tests ever, and so much fun to tell idiots that they took nothing but sugar water, and they were miraculously cured.

[Wintermute]

People are arguing if placebo effect is real or not? Its one of the oldest tests ever, and so much fun to tell idiots that they took nothing but sugar water, and they were miraculously cured.

If someone takes a Placebo, and it works, and you tell them it was a Placebo, is the joke really on them?

Not so much in the "Afternoon Movie" scenario but in an actual Medical scenario where a Placebo was used to treat an actual ilness.

[Pirian]

Sorry, I really didn't make this very clear at all. No, normal Chiropractic training does not treat the kinds of things I'm talking about. But then, none of the Chiropractors I know strictly practice Chiropractics and don't incorporate other things into their technique. I'll get back to this specific issue toward the end of this post though. My mother has recently started treating allergies with a new system that targets specific cause for which your body is overacting to a stimuli and rewires it. Yes, it works. I was lactose intolerant and I'm not anymore. A friend of mine use to be deathly allergic to peanuts and is not anymore.

No, I don't hate modern medicine. It does a lot of good and I do not look down upon it, but just because a doctor takes a hippocratic oath doesn't mean they live it, and it does not mean their way is the only and best way.

Ok, back to the cancer thing I brought up a lot. Pretty much the basic idea behind the alternative treatment I keep mentioning is bassed around the idea that your body has the ability to fight off cancer. It is already known that cancer cells develop in the body actually pretty often, but the body has this great thing that fights off foreign substances such as that. It's called an immune system. The system the person in my very first post on this thread used was one that boost the immune system as well as specifically targets cancer cells.

There've been clinical studies that show chiropractic care can put cancer into remission as effectively as chemo or other more traditional medical procedures?

A lot of these studies -can't- be done in the US because the people who would do them are not considered actual doctors. A lot of testing has been done outside the US, and as alternative medicines gain more support in the US and people demand more strict regulation on them, you will start to see more testing being done on them. The US really lags behind in a lot of areas of medicine because of profit driven companies(No, I'm not anti-corporation).

You can look this up if you want, one of the specific immune boosting things is Haelan 951. You can read more about it herehttp://www.haelan951.com/ and there's a lot more about it athttp://www.haelanresearchfoundation.com/

[Khamsin]

People are arguing if placebo effect is real or not? Its one of the oldest tests ever, and so much fun to tell idiots that they took nothing but sugar water, and they were miraculously cured.

If someone takes a Placebo, and it works, and you tell them it was a Placebo, is the joke really on them?

Not so much in the "Afternoon Movie" scenario but in an actual Medical scenario where a Placebo was used to treat an actual ilness.

The joke really is on them if they paid for it.

Telling them it's a placebo is basically admitting that they didn't even have to come in. They could have slept in, done something else, saved their money, and worried about their illness for a few more days until it went away on it's own. You could argue it would have given them peace of mind, but you can accomplish the same thing by telling them that it'll go away on it's own and not to worry about it.

[Chips]

Well my doctor said that alternative medicine can sometimes work for things, including acupuncture, and that it has actually been proven to work in some cases. He didn't elaborate more than that though.

[MisterBob]

Well my doctor said that alternative medicine can sometimes work for things, including acupuncture, and that it has actually been proven to work in some cases. He didn't elaborate more than that though.

Time to switch

[Kaylia]

Needle and chiro are lame, bloodletting is where it's at.

[Chips]

Well my doctor said that alternative medicine can sometimes work for things, including acupuncture, and that it has actually been proven to work in some cases. He didn't elaborate more than that though.

Time to switch

So how much time have you spent at med school?

Obviously you wouldn't go to acupuncture for extremely serious things though.

[Lordwafik]

"There's more than one way to skin a cat" is my belief when it comes to healing something.
The human body is complex, and everyone reacts to something differently. Some people will react to modern medicines and pills , some people actually take these and have no effect. Same thing for Natural therapy.

Shunning out Natural therapy completely as old and archaic is silly, as even in 2008 leeches still are used in surgeries ( http://www.sangsue-medicinale.com/biologie.php a french company that markets medicinal leeches).

Obviously it's a different case where leeches clearly have a working effect for different things vs natural therapy which is more of a hit or miss situation. Also another obvious thing, trying natural therapy in place of solutions for serious medical conditions (cancer / faulty organs) is very silly, Natural therapy should be used to enhance lifestyle, relieve stress, and the sort.