Monday, July 25, 2005
New or Old?
My dad has a few different medical problems. He takes a few pills to manage most of them but for his arthritis, nothing seems to work well for him. Back in the late-nineties he started taking some herbal stuff that our relatives in the Philippines sent him. They get it from Chinatown in Manila. This stuff worked better than any of the regular drugs that have been prescribed to him over the years. The only problem I have with this is that none of us know what the stuff is or what it's supposed to be used for or even its real name. The box it comes in is all written in chinese (I guess I could get it translated - I know enough chinese people) without a word of english. The only reason I don't question it more is because I've seen the incredible difference it made with my dad's arthritis. However, the past couple days I've had to look at it a little more objectively. This "stuff" that he gets imported is made without any type of regulatory groups, it has no evidence-based research to quantify its effectiveness, there are no documented adverse effects, and no mention of drug interactions. But, I guess if it works... :
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2 comments:
And that's why homeopathy, osteopathy, acupuncture, and chinese medicines are good complementary practices. Note I did not say alternative. Western medicine looks only at the physical body using western methods of investigating science but there's a lot we don't know simply cuz it can't be explained by western (or what's thought to be "default") science.
Chinese medicine has been around far longer than western medicine. Their success has past the test of time. There are many things besides medicein that can't be explained by science. But there is a what's called clinical science. That's simply extracting proof from clinical trials. So, like you said, if it works, it works... hopefully there's no side effects.
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