Traditional Chinese Medicine

[wee quinnie]

BTW Narnia, my sister had similar sounding symptoms to what your son has. Finally, after much debate....diagnosed as asthma.

[Sue]

Some people just have a knee-jerk closed-minded reaction to anything related to healing methods which they do not perceive as "Western medicine".

There are things used in Western methods which (as I understand it) nobody knows quite how they work. If those were Chinese rather than Western, these people would be sounding off about those too.

FWIW, when I had acupuncture, I was able to tell when a needle was in exactly the right place, by the sensation and by the effects. I don't use acupuncture any more because I found it effective for my particular symptoms in the short term, but not in the longer term (they came back after a while).

And re herbalism, my understanding is that "Western" medicine is investigating herbs used in non-Western medicine, because they appear to be effective for various ailments.

Digitalis, salicylic acid - to name two - both derived from herbs.

[SeanMacGabhann]

Sue ? I don?t see many people arguing with many of those points. Several people have pointed out the overlap between Chinese and Western medicines use of herbs and several people have pointed out that much western medicine doen?t work either

But then I don?t think even western practitioners claim they have all the answers ? but they are constantly testing and refining products to improve efficacy. Whereas some herbs in a jar will remain that forever pretty much

[????]

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...not round Keef's or Jah's

[annaj]

TCM and acupuncture are set apart from other forms of alternative or complementary therapy (or woo) by several things, most of which have been touched upon.

First, there is the history. Of course something is not valid just because it's old, but a consistent history of sucessfully treating certain conditions with certain remedies is a type of evidence base. It's not as compelling as a series of well-designed randomised controlled trials, but it has some validity.

Second, there is the training. In China, TCM and acupuncture are taught and practiced in major teaching hosptials alongside western medicine. Trainees in TCM study with undergraduates in western medicine at least for the firts few years of their training. So, properly trained and accredited practitioners have far more physiological and anatomical knowledge than, say, a reiki master or homeopath and many are dual qualified.

Third, there is a widespread willingness to engage in clinical trials and try to understand the relationship between genuine treatment effect and placebo and TCM and acupuncture practitions tend acknowledge that the way the treatment is conducted is important. There have not, yet, been any definitively positive trials, but there have been some with promising and interesting results. Acupuncture is difficult to test through blinded RCTs, because of it's nature, but the same applies to any number of conventional interventions, testing nebulised drugs against inhaled, for example.

Fourth, unlike homeopathy, there are, without doubt, active ingredients in Chinese herbal remedies and many of them are common to Western medicines.

TCM has a whole different philosiphy to Western medicine. Instead of focusing on the illness and treating it, TCM looks at the whole system and looks for weaknesses in the system that allow the illness to thrive. The principle is that the doctors job is to keep the body healthy in order to prevent illness, rather than treat illness when it occurs. It's an interesting approach and not without merits. The more we learn about diseases, the more we realise that there occurance and severity is often governed by more than one factor, including the general health of the subject and their lifestyle.

I am a firm believer in the value of evidence based medicine, I practice and teach it daily, but I am also aware of it's limits. Passionate advocates of EBM, who state they only believe in research based methods, should be aware of how much western medicine is not evidence based (or is based on so called low-ranking evidence like expert consensus or established practice, which on the hierachy of evidence ranks well below RCTs) because EBM is new and many of our treatments are not.

One thing that does have a very good evidence base, Sean, is paracetamol for fever ;-)

[*Bob*]

Do you need any sort of formal licence to set-up shop as a Chinese herbal quack? Or do you just order your supplies of bark and fluff etc and off you go?

Point taken that some are better than others and of course stuff can do stuff - but surely any sort of 'medical enterprise' which comes with advice such along the lines of "avoid all the people who know nothing and are out to rip you off" is not off to a good start.

Dentistry is great, just don't go to the High Street guys, yeah?

[RosieH]

annaj Wrote:

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> One thing that does have a very good evidence

> base, Sean, is paracetamol for fever ;-)

SLAPDOWN!

[Narnia]

I checked this out yesterday and there is an Association of TCM. Some of the members listed in south London are listed as doctors and others not.

[david_carnell]

I'm a Doctor too.

I bought myself a phd in hamburger making online for a fiver when I was 19. Hopefully it's still valid or I've been committing fraud all these years.

[karter]

What annaj has said is nicely balanced IMO.

Carnell you wide boy, you should be ashamed of yourself for downloading your degree from the net. You probably have never tried TCM or CT before but you are quick enough to completely dismiss it but this is a forum and everybody is entitled to their opinion quite rightly. TCM has been around and used for 5000 years. Your drugs full of side-effects have not. Wide boy.

[Mick Mac]

karter Wrote:

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> What annaj has said is nicely balanced IMO.

>

I'm glad to hear it Karter - I didn't have time to read it, so I defer to your judgement.

[antijen]

http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ecam/2011/239237.html

A link to scientific evidence done with mullein, I have not read it all as I have used it for years and know the propereties it has. Narnia you are welcome to some, of course free.

[antijen]

http://aim.bmj.com/content/27/1/21.abstract

Gateway clinic, the back of Lambeth hospital takes referrals from gp's, I was referred there in the 80's, they do acupuncture (free)

and at the time I went Chinese herbs. I don't know how it works now but they used to give a prescription for the herbs which

you had to hand in to a chinese herbalist in neal's yard, where you were given a big discount. Going from the link above

there may be a waiting list, but its handy to know if considering accupuncture. Kings College also done accupuncture

(western technique) through the pain clinic, again not sure if they still do this.

[SeanMacGabhann]

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I'm all for the evidence. Slapdown or not I may as well have a homeopath saying how effective their treatment has. On me... None. I'm happy for clinical trials to be observed over the next 5 or 6 infections chez machabhann tho

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[david_carnell]

Courtesy of Ben Goldacre:

Handouts from the Bachelor of Science degree in Chinese Medicine at Westminster University, for example, show students being taught ? on a science degree ? that the spleen is "the root of post-heaven essence", "Houses Thought (and is affected by pensiveness/over thinking)" and is responsible for the "transformation of qi energy", "keeping the muscles warm and firm".

"Marrow helps fill the brain". "Sin Jiao assists the Lungs 'dispersing function', spreading fluids to skin in form of fine mist or vapour (so it helps regulate fluid production?)". We also see the traditional anti-vaccine spiel, as students are taught that vaccination is a significant cause of cancer.

One lecture by Niki Lawrence on "Herbal approaches for patients with cancer", meanwhile, discusses the difficulties of the Cancer Act, which was specifically designed to protect patients from the more dangerous extremes of alternative therapists? self-belief. "Legally you cannot claim to cure cancer" it begins, on a slide headed "Cancer treatment and the law". "This is not a problem because: 'we treat patients not diseases'." Niki then romps on to explain that Poke root is "especially valuable in the treatment of breast, throat and uterus cancer", Thuja occidentalis is "indicated for cancers of possible viral origin, eg colon/rectal, uterine, breast, lung" and Centella asiatica "inhibits the recurrence of cancer".

[RosieH]

David, while the godly Goldacre is doubtless right about all things, the bit about the spleen made me think of psychosomatic ailments that could indeed produce very real physiological effects on account of "over-thinking", no?

[karter]

David, if you ever get ill (and god forbid it) would be interesting to see what treatments/therapies/support you would look for. There are alot of quacks out there though. In the West thousands of people a year die from conventional medicine.

Perhaps you need to cut down on the marrow.

[david_carnell]

Karter, your point seems to be that real medicine is flawed. Yes it is, that?s why we have scientific method to improve it. The issue with alternative medicines is not their flaws but their complete lack of any basis in reality.

[Sue]

david_carnell Wrote:

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> Karter, your point seems to be that real medicine

> is flawed. Yes it is, that?s why we have

> scientific method to improve it. The issue with

> alternative medicines is not their flaws but their

> complete lack of any basis in reality.

xxxxxxxxx

Have you actually read anything on this thread, or do you just live within your closed-mind bubble 24/7?

[david_carnell]

Sue Wrote:

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> Have you actually read anything on this thread, or

> do you just live within your closed-mind bubble

> 24/7?

Ahh, lovely Sue....I'd nearly forgotten about you and your earlier quote:

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I don't believe that David Carnell knows anything about it, so is hardly in a position to judge.

Splendid stuff. Utter bollocks of course.

And what do you know Sue? Are you a qualified medical doctor perhaps, with a minimum of seven years training? Or are you perhaps a "registered" seller of Chinese medicines who could offer genuine insight or provide counter-balance? Or are you just some delusional crank who has some vague anecdotal flim-flam and attempts to pass it off as evidence? I suspect it's the latter.

Me on the otherhand? Well whilst I'm not trained in any medical science I've made a habit of reading works by scientists, doctors and informed commentators. All of whom think TCM is wibble. In fact I've even helpfully provided a link to some of it for you to read. Which is more than you did. Seemingly your entire argument is based on your own personal experience. And you call me close-minded?

That's not closed-minded. That's reading all the available evidence and making my own mind up. And absolutely nothing over the last three pages has convinced me otherwise.

[karter]

Thanks Sue. Anybody that has used conventional and complementary meds will know what works for them. Some people are just blinkered and naive and maybe they should open their minds. Experience helps in this.

[RosieH]

You're right of course Karter. The placebo effect has been shown to be very powerful.

[Jeremy]

david_carnell... what's the point in being so condescending?

The pseudo-scientific explanations behind Chinese medicine may well be nonsense, I'm in agreement with you there. But a lot of it works, and (as several of us have said), some mainstream medicines have been derived from Chinese medicine. That's not "anecdotal flim-flam", it's fact. So the claims such as "TCM is wibble" or "it's a placebo at best" are inaccurate.

The problem is that it's not regulated (at least in this country)... so remedies are not subject to trials, and people are ripped off or given inappropriate treatments.

[david_carnell]

Jeremy - I was merely responding to being told I didn't know anything and should butt out. That is condescending.

And you tack on that final paragraph like an after thought...

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The problem is that it's not regulated (at least in this country)... so remedies are not subject to trials, and people are ripped off or given inappropriate treatments.

...as if it's scarcely worth mentioning. Not subject to trial. Ripped off. Inappropriate.

I'd add downright dangerous. Did you read the case in my link about the civil servant being given (I refuse to use the word prescribed) high doses of a banned substance that caused her to lose the use of her kidneys?

I'm aware western medicine uses some herbs and natural derivitives as the basis for some of it's drugs but it's not the same thing at all.

[SeanMacGabhann]

If I wasn't a bloke...

but Rosie

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No diggety no doubt - but is the conclusion that ignorance is bliss?