And in the JoongAng Ilbo (English), a food and nutrition professor and an herbal doctor discuss the health properties of dog meat.
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And in the JoongAng Ilbo (English), a food and nutrition professor and an herbal doctor discuss the health properties of dog meat.
62 Comments
Experience-oriented science = religion = oriental medicine ?
“But I repeat, most treatments of Oriental medicine were derived from nature and people’s experience.”
translated
Boil something with a bunch of other stuff and drink maybe it works maybe it doesn’t.
There’s nothing mysterious about the placebo effect.
“Professor Ann Yong-geun of Chungcheong University waded into the controversy last month when he said that there is a nutritious property of dog meat that cannot be proven by Western medical science.”
Stopped reading there.
Sad. Belief means more than fact. We are not much more than cavemen with cell phones.
I repeat, oriental medicine works because some old dead dipshits said it works. If you quit looking for so-called “evidence” that it works, and just believe like a good sheep, everything will be juuuust fine. Faith my brothers, it’s all you need for what ails ya.
I imagine the fundies really are a match made in heaven for oriental medicine. As long as they have someone of perceived authority (with exclusive access to some ancient “gods” or “ancestors”) telling them what to do, with guarantees about what wonderful (or healthy) people they’ll be if they swallow it and obey…they’re happy as pigs in shit.
Seriously, eat the dog cock because it tastes good or because it pisses off Bevers and PETA, not because you think it’s going to give you a 6-hour boner or cure your butt cancer.
Ha. Westerners dismissing oriental medicine.
Acupuncture works. Oriental medicine works. It is based on observations.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/si.....d_RVDocSum
Some details on why it works, that is clearly lacking. Above is just an example.
Just like how Seoul Univ is always cranking out studies on kimchi being used to heal everything, China is always printing out studies on the efficacy of Oriental Medicine and acupuncture. Korea does a fair share as well, and so does Japan.
It’s not a placebo effect. Oriental medicine and acupuncture is way more sophisticated and is even way more scientific than voodoo witch doctor practices.
That said, even witch doctors and oriental medicine have a common ground. Some of the stuff they used as medicine is real medicine! Westerners simply use a purer form in much more consistent concentrations. Like Bai says, Oriental Medicine is about balance. Western medicine uses purer forms of concentrated medicine.
If it works, that benefit is to the sick person, not the doubter.
“Professor Ann Yong-geun…”
Ah, Dr. Dogmeat:
http://wolf.ok.ac.kr/~annyg/
He’s a bit wack… probably does more harm to the dogmeat cause than good.
He might also be the only person in Korea who feels the atomic bombing of Japan was racist:
That said, I think you’re making a wacko choice when you decide to skip western medicine’s chemotherapy and radiation and surgical resection altogether and opt only for oriental medicine to treat your cancer.
Or decide to go to oriental medicine after suffering a knife or gun wound, rather than seeing a trauma surgeon.
In the United States, only medical doctors and licensed acupuncturists can perform acupuncture.
Why do you think that is?
If it’s a placebo effect, why would the US govt regulate the practice, and especially why would they permit US doctors to perform it if they wanted to?
So far, I’ve only seen one doctor use it. It was a female neurologist.
I never knew they actually ate dog penis!!!! They are crazier than I previously thought!!!!
I’m fairly confident the Chinese eat dog cock, too.
For health purposes, of course. Of course.
You’d be surprised at what the Chinese eat or take for medicine.
My friend handed me some Chinese cold medicine last winter. It’s some herbal stuff that turns into a tea, but the ingredients have stuff like snake… blah… blah… extract.
What could possibly be present in a snake extract that wouldn’t be in Robitussin?
Hell would I know.
It tasted funky, so I stopped taking it and lied to him when he asked me how the medicine was doing for me.
My comment got chopped off:
What’s crazy about eating penis?
Even a blind pig finds a truffle every once in awhile. Getting lucky on a couple of occasions doesn’t automatically validate the entire field.
Because they’re sticking needles into people. Every state (that I know of) regulates tattoo parlors and hair salons, as well. That doesn’t mean that you should necessarily go to either if you have a headache. States regulate such things because they present a valid public health concern — they don’t want acupuncturists spreading AIDS any more than they want tattoo artists doing the same.
zonath, there is no way you are equating acupuncture with tatooing, right? Right?
That’s exactly what I’m doing…
Also see:
http://www.acuwatch.org/general/nihcritique.shtml
For a critique of the above quoted report, and generally the rest of the articles on that site for more information.
The article and the ensuing comments miss the point — many people like the taste of dog meat. The rest is rationalization of why they do it and perhaps why they are willing on occasion to pay a hefty tab for pooch in a pot.
zonath, Dr. Barrett obviously puts out a strong logical argument, and I obviously have my bias being Korean and having experienced acupuncture and oriental medicine to consume.
I agree with Dr. Barett on this,
Personally, I’d say only get acupuncture from a doctor who has a medical license, not a licensed acupuncturist.
In Korea, oriental medical practitioners are trained to do both provide oriental medicine and perform acupuncture.
In the US, I think it is possible for someone to only provide acupuncture. But, I’m not sure about this. It does seem different from Korea, however.
having never been to Japan or China, I can’t say for sure, but western and eastern medicine seems to be integrated and practiced together in those countries.
AS the link Zonath provided shows, the NIH was not properly composed of people qualified to review the data on acupuncture. They ignore the many studies in which acupuncture treatments either fail to show any benefit, or fail to beat the placebo effect.
Even the studies that do suggest acupuncture has some effect, the results are hardly impressive. Basically, it helps as a mild pain killer. Personally, I’d rather just buy a $2 bottle of aspirin and get the same or better results.
This is a far cry from what Oriental medicine claims acupuncture can do as a supposed cure-all. It’s based on ridiculous claims of ‘chi’ that Oriental proponents themselves claim cannot be detected or proven by empirical means (which begs the question, how did they figure out what it was in the first place?).
If the placebo works for you, then keep doing it. At least in Korea it is dirt cheap. In the States, they charge you a lot more money to be stupid.
Something I wrote online two years ago.
“Acupuncture”
As many of you know, acupuncture is the art of sticking in these little needles into a sick or ailing person to make them all better. It basically is a way to allow the body to heal itself, and its basic premise is that all life matter has “ch’i” and that somehow the flow of one’s ch’i gets blocked due to injury or stress.
Sounds like a lot of hocus-pocus, huh? Well, I am here to testify to its effect. Look at me: I, JK, am as meat-and-potatoes a guy as can exist. I believe in hard work, boosted by caffeine, and then chilling with alcohol. I used to believe that Western medicine, specifically medicine as it is practiced in the US, is the best in the world. But my time in Korea changed all that.
It was the fall of 1999. I had just begun my job at Hyundai. One balmy night, I was jogging by the Han River. I finished about three or four miles. But after I stopped and walked home, I felt a cramp in my knee. A minor cramp. I showered and then went to bed thinking it was nothing.
The next morning, I was practically screaming in pain. I could walk only with GREAT difficulty. I won’t go through everything I suffered, but let me just say that when I used to visit this one girl at her apartment, I used to curse the fact that she slept on the floor, since she had no bed.
I went through this for MONTHS. Sometimes, I’d be walking on flat ground and think my knee was getting better, but then if I ever went down some stairs, it would act up again resulting in my not being able to walk again.
I finally went to a Chinese medicine doctor. First he checked my birth date and matched it up in his “sun” book, which freaked me out. I was wondering what kind of crap this all was. Then he wanted me to do an X-ray, but I told him hell no. Then he began treatment. He stuck needles all around me, not just my knee. As the minutes passed, he put some sorta weed-smelling (yeah, THAT kind of weed) thing on the needle sticking in my knee. It smoked and eventually made my knee all warm.
I did this for a couple of sessions, and I felt ALL better. Even picked up running again. Seeing the girl who slept on her apartment floor was no longer something I dreaded.
I recently got acupuncture treatment for a pulled muscle in my neck. I didn’t really talk about it on xanga, but when someone in my family got sick, the stress hit me hard. My right neck muscle, related to TMJ, hurt like f*cking hell. I couldn’t even turn my head it was so bad. I finally went to see Dr. Rhee, a Korean practicing Chinese medicine, in McLean, VA. The guy stuck needles in MY LEFT KNEE, not where it actually hurt, which was my neck. After thirty minute periods, he would ask if I felt better. I told him no, I didn’t; this pain was TOO huge even for acupuncture, I thought. Eventually he put needles in the LEFT side of my neck (again, even though the right side of my neck was hurting). I noticed no improvement. He’d keep sticking needles into various pressure points all over my body EXCEPT on the right side of my neck. I was absolutely sure this sh*t wasn’t going to work and was starting to get annoyed. This f*cking sh*t hurt! Then after two hours or so, I turned my head gently just for the hell of it. It suddenly felt better. I left his home, not completely healed but getting there. Within two days, I had completely recovered.
He is also the doc who fixed my knee after I injured it at the 2005 Cherry Blossom Ten-Miler. I haven’t had a knee problem since.
For my occasional fatigue, I go to this one doc in Rockville, MD. She is Chinese. Just like Dr. Rhee, she can take a hold of someone’s wrist and see how their ch’i is flowing. Back in early 2004, I went to her because I had stuff to do at work but I was so lacking in energy. A couple of needle sessions with her, and I swear to God, I was bouncing off the walls. I felt GREAT. Apparently, due to excessive stress, my ch’i was all blocked up in my stomach and not flowing to the rest of the body. So she put needles in my stomach and arms and legs. I’d leave her office each session not feeling all that much better, but within a few hours, I felt GREAT (or more like my normal self).
Dr. Rhee in McLean, VA also treats couples who have fertility problems, so if I ever find that I’m shooting blanks, I’ll go see him.
Update from this year: I severely sprained my ankle while running. I had sprained the same ankle as a college freshman and was on crutches for WEEKS. But this time around, I went to see Dr. Rhee in McLean, VA. After about two sessions with him…and about 3 days later, I was out jogging again. No problems whatsoever.
Meanwhile, many of my fellow Americans will undergo surgery for their hurt knees and backs when all it does is cause more damage. Freakin’ tragedy.
Ridiculous? I’ll have you know that a massive, multi-billion dollar industry of hundreds of thousands of doctors, millions of patients, and thousands of years of natural observation (which renders empirical data obsolete, by the way) are built on that “ridiculous” claim of ‘chi.’ Surely you’re not suggesting that such gargantuan amounts of time, effort, and money have gone into a baseless, useless fraud of a hoax, are you?
I suppose next you’ll tell me that the bible is “ridiculous” and that god cannot be detected or proven by empirical means. Oh, you silly reason-based people. You crack me up with your inability to just let your empirical-boner go limp and just believe.
A little something we oriental doctors call “inherently knowing stuff,” which is based on a foundation of convincing dipshits that we’re smarter than them, and then charging them money to find out what we “naturally observed” that made us so smart.
Goddamn it pooper, quit asking questions and just feel the knowledge of our ancestors flow through you. And don’t forget to pay your bill after you feel it.
iheartballs,
Your loss, pal…your loss. Read my comment in #23. It works.
It depends on the state, I’m sure. In my home state, one can just provide acupuncture services and nothing else, since acupuncture is a stand-alone license. I think a few states may still just not regulate acupuncture in any way, as well.
Jeez… don’t get your chi in a knot.
Now, Sonagi, that is the best one-liner I read on Marmot’s in a long while
Congratulations on your treatments JK. You may have felt better after having your Chinese doctor wave a Barbie doll with its hair on fire in front of your knee as well, but that doesn’t mean that flaming Barbie is what caused your knee to recover.
Thought the rest of the post made it pretty clear that I was being facetious.
Like I said, iheartball, your loss.
The same Dr. Rhee in McLean, Virginia once treated the son of my mother’s friend. When he was 18, he suffered a football injury to his knee. Two different white medical doctors said he HAD to have surgery or the boy wouldn’t walk right again. Meanwhile, he wore a cast.
About two weeks before his scheduled surgery, his mother took him to see Dr. Rhee in McLean, VA. He took off the cast….and treated the boy for about three sessions (one session per day) with acupuncture. What was the result?
The guy never went in to his surgery. This happened when he was 18. He’s not well into his 30s with NO problems with his knee.
Meanwhile, countless Americans are undergoing the knife for their knee problems and then physical therapy to recover from the cuts of the surgery….only to have to go back a year or so later for MORE knee surgery….and MORE physical therapy. I know skeptical Korean-Americans who are in their twenties who USED to play college sports…but now have to endure knee surgery every couple of years. If ONLY they’d listened to me about acupuncture. *Sigh*
Ask me which option I find preferable, iheartballs…because I already know which one you would be stupid enough to choose.
JK, you’re more than welcome to continue telling miraculous stories of acupunctural success, but I honestly don’t give a shit if you’ve got 15,000 friends who tore ACLs and were back running marathons within 3 days due to Dr. Rhee’s magic needles. It’s all anecdotal evidence, and therefore not even worth half a pile of shit, much less a full pile.
I know a guy who ate kimchi every day and his cancer went into remission. Kimchi cures cancer! It’s true cause I know that guy! Call the New England Journal of Medicine and prepare the cover for next month!
Fine, iheartballs. I hope you have a kid with knee pains from a sports injury. Now the choice is….surgery….or BEFORE the surgery you go to get acupuncture treatment for your child.
What would you do?
You’d let the child go under the knife….possibly unnecessarily.
Despite America’s advanced medicine, its biggest weaknesses are related to the common cold, back injuries, and knee injuries. For the last two ailments, they recommend pain pills, physical therapy….and the knife.
And…it doesn’t seem to work.
iheartballs, you’re gonna believe what you’re gonna believe. But you’re still a sucker for going along with what American MDs tell you.
BTW, Dr. Sue Chen in Rockville, MD is a Western-educated MD in addition to being an Oriental medicine doctor whose clientele are mostly white people. Her mother, an herbal medicine doctor WITHOUT a Western MD treated both President Reagan and First Lady Nancy Reagan for their various ailments.
Voo-doo my *ss, iheartballs.
Yay! Anecdotal ‘evidence’! I once knew a Mormon who told me that his magical underwear prevented him from being killed in a car accident. Maybe we all should convert. Or better yet, talk to the Christian Scientists who will give you a shitload of anecdotes about how prayer alone cured them of just about anything you can dream of. You name it, somebody has some anecdotal evidence to back it up and then some.
I have my own experiences with acupuncture (two different occasions) and got jack-shit as a result. Do your experiences overrule mine? Do my experiences cancel out yours?
JK. you need to be able to explain why researchers can’t take a group of ‘meat and potatoes’ guys like you with those kinds of injuries and prove that sticking needles in them cures them that much better than another group which doesn’t have that treatment. 3 decades of research hasn’t found anything close to the kinds of results you claim. Nor do we hear of any high profile Asian athletes like Park Ji Sung (out with injuries as we speak) getting these kinds of miraculous recoveries. If what has happened to you is the common result of acupuncture, it would be impossible to hide it. Sports is huge business and you know that if acupuncture was causing those kinds of recoveries over other kinds of treatments, it would have been taken to long, long ago.
If you wish to dismiss the research and claim that your experiences validate acupuncture, then we can move this discussion into why anecdotal ‘evidence’ is not really evidence at all (placebo effect, the will to believe causing selective perception and selective memory, etc.).
Yeah but JK, Nancy Reagan also consulted with astrologers.
Both Reagans consulted with astrologers while in the White House… So really… is that the most credible evidence for anything?
Doh! I’m the late!
Yes, I’m a sucker for going along with hundreds of years of research and scientific data, and you’re a genius for going along with thousands of years of stories told by old men that can’t withstand a simple double-blind study.
You mean the same Ron and Nancy Reagan who arranged their entire presidential schedule based on the amazing crock of shit known as astrology? I’m not surprised in the least that people who believe that the stars are having magical effects on their lives will also believe in magic medicine. They were also quite religious, so they really did have the trifecta of gullible stupidity on the go.
Wow, three posts along the same line simultaneously.
Now Astrology is bad, too?
My fiancée is an MD here in Korea and she has told me time and time again of people who went to Oriental Medicine practitioners first, and then ended up at the hospital in worse condition because it didn’t help them.
She once went so far as to telling off a pharmacist who dispensed quack Oriental Medicine advice to me. All she had to say was, “Why did you tell him not to eat pork with that medicine?” and he blushed, asked if she was a doctor, and apologized to me.
She does, however, differentiate between the use of “medicines” in Oriental medicine, which she said in general, “I wouldn’t recommend any of them,” and treatments like acupuncture or deum, which some people claim helps with muscular pain.
One should be careful not to dismiss all stuff that’s not yet scientifically demonstrated, of course. The story of the discovery of the effect of ketosis on epilepsy (as discussed in the sixth paragraph of this essay) is a good example of how dunderheaded explanations of causality don’t always mean lack of a correlation.
(For those too lazy to follow the link, basically, reports of prayer and fasting being useful in controlling epilepsy were investigated, and it was found that the active ingredient in the treatment was the fasting, which could provoke ketosis, a method of treatment used with epileptic children even today.)
All of that said, I’ve been to an Oriental Medical research center — a well-regarded one, according to people I knew in the city — and the methodology was explicitly spelled out to me as follows: “We KNOW this medicine is very effective for treating melanoma, so we’re trying to prove it works, now!” This involved topical exposure of the cells to raw elements in the medicine. Never mind that the medicine would be ingested, not applied topically, or that isolated melanoma cells were just left sitting in petri dishes soaking in different chemical components. Methodology aside, the logic of the research was just so not-science as to scare me. What scared me was the attitude, which was that belief was all that was needed to “know” it worked, and that “proving” that was really just a way of securing unfortunately necessary credibility.
The other element that differentiates between Oriental Medicine and science is that Oriental Medical practitioners believe in “chi.” I taught at a university with a big oriental medicine program and knew many students majorign in the field, especially grad students. They had a strong belief in “chi” (or, as they call it here, “gi”) and when I said I didn’t believe in it, they were usually disappointed. Further, several of them insisted that medical science’s adoption of Oriental Medical practices was less important than the a kind of conversion like adoption of belief in “gi”. When I told them, “If a technique works, prove it and scientists will be interested and flock to it. Biut don’t ever expect them to believe in gi. Just demonstrate your techniques without the explanation, that’d be enough to change minds.” They were almost all very disappointed by that. Though maybe I just met particularly fervent believers, it seemed to me the gulf between OM and science is, sadly, impassable. In which case, I’ll throw in the majority of my trust with the people who spend a decade studying anatomy, physiology, pharamcology, diagnositic methodology algorithms that are stunning to watch them work through, and who work in all major fields as interns over the people whose diagnostic methodology is a just-so story from ancient books about mystical energies. Though I’m surprised that anti-rationalists on this thread aren’t also calling for NIH-funded studies on bloodletting and the four humours.
And no, astrology is not bad. It’s just ridiculous and silly for anyone to believe in it, much less the leader of a nation so rich you’d think it’d elect people bright enough to see how silly it is.
phlebotomy is still a form of standard treatment for certain diseases. Ask your fiance.
I just tried it for the first time. (in Kaesung, DPKR) Not very impressed.
On a side note wjk:
http://www.rjkoehler.com/2007/.....ent-101171
This is what I have to say about so-called “placebo” experiments involving acupuncture:
There was once a study done on aspirin (don’t ask me to find the link just yet please). Patients with headaches were given aspirin while other patients were given sugar pills that looked like aspirin. Later on, around the same percentage of patients for those who took either the aspirin or the FAKE aspirin said their headache was gone or was greatly reduced.
Obviously there was a placebo effect going on. But does this mean aspirin is a full-of-sh*t medicine???? No, it does not. Aspirin is indeed an effective way to reduce pain….and it has other benefits such as reducing the chances of heart disease. But, ah, based on the logic of some of you, one could argue that based on the findings of the “placebo” experiment, aspirin is hocus-pocus. Let’s even say a famous couple in the White House that believes in astrology takes aspirin. You then go, “Aha! See? Aspirin IS hocus-pocus if a couple like the astrology-loving Reagans take it!”
I’ll make this simple and present you with this scenario: Your knee got hurt from running or whatever. Three different Western doctors tell you that you need surgery. How would visiting an acclaimed (because many are quacks like many MDs are quacks) Oriental medicine doctor for an hour-long session of needles barely pricking the skin a week PRIOR to the surgery hurt? I mean, you’re already scheduled to go under surgery.
Let me give you another scenario: I have an American (African-American actually) whose second wife wanted to have a baby. But there were some problems related to fertility (I think more on her end). The two went through various treatments (all Western) and eventually my American friend had his sack (as in his balls) cut open while they took out semen (among other stuff). Even the Western practitioner who was doing it to him was cringing and making joking comments. My friend STILL winces when he thinks about it.
Now my question is, if it wouldn’t hurt, why wouldn’t he visit an Oriental medicine doctor with a reputation for curing fertility problems who MIGHT be able to treat the couple’s fertility problem BEFORE the guy had his sack (and his balls) cut open????
Oh one other thing: Having the guy’s balls cut open didn’t do shit. They never did have a baby. Gee, does this mean Western medicine sucks? Of course not. But there are limitations.
But to me, the idea of a few acupunctures in my arms and legs is a harmless option worth trying BEFORE getting my own balls cut open….or BEFORE my injured knee is to go under the knife for surgery….whether I believe in acupuncture or not.
But apparently not for many of you on this thread. Too bad. Your loss.
Okay, I take it from this exchange that no one’s willing to change their minds on this issue and both “sides” can use arguments as to why they are right and others wrong. I can come up with finding after finding to show that Western medicine sucks when it comes to knee injuries and back injuries and fertility problems and you all can show me success stories. You can all come up with failures of Oriental Western medicine, and I can come up with numerous success stories. But you won’t change your mind that it’s all quackery any more than I will change my mind that it works.
It’s just so sad that so many skeptical Westerners would rather take a pain pill that only numbs the pain temporarily or would rather go under the knife for unnecessary surgery on their knees or backs or would rather have their balls cut open for fertility problems BEFORE trying acupuncture. Now THAT’s sad….whether you believe in acupuncture or not.
BTW, Dr. Sue Chen, who, as I said, has a clientele primarily of white (and lots of Jewish) Americans in the Rockville, MD area, takes Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance….which does cover most of the expenses. Now what does that tell you when a major American insurance company covers expenses related to acupuncture?
Thank God more and more Americans are going to acupuncturists. It’s a healthy trend.
That insurance companies are businesses, and that when their clients ask for them to cover a service in sufficient numbers, then they’ll either listen or else end up losing business? In addition, people who use alternative therapies might have a tendency to avoid real medicine, which tends to be a bit more expensive than pricking needles in someone — this tends to save the company money, even if the people aren’t really getting better. It also tells me that I won’t be using that particular insurance company if I can help it, since I don’t want to be subsidizing quackery.
Another for-instance: Plenty of supermarket chains carry homeopathic ‘remedies’ (which are essentially nothing but water, corn starch, or other inert substances). This fact is best evidence that: A. Homeopathic remedies work; B. Supermarket chains don’t mind charging excessive amounts for water if there’s a market for it; or C. Western medicine doesn’t know everything.
Not necessarily. After all, the fact that the Reagans may have used aspirin wouldn’t really affect my opinion of aspirin one way or the other. I just wouldn’t use the Reagans as my strongest (or even a supporting) argument as to why aspirin MUST work. After all, the Reagans are fairly notorious for being people who believe in a whole host of out-of-this-world stuff — in other words, they’re slightly gullible people.
Again, you’re missing the point. Despite an experiment showing that aspirin’s pain relieving properties might be no better than a placebo, aspirin has actual physiological effects which are measurable and clinically repeatable. Acupuncture trials, on the other hand, tend to be all over the board as to whether or not acupuncture actually has any effect whatsoever above and beyond the placebo effect.
If I don’t believe in acupuncture, why should I go have needles stuck into my skin (which has a risk of spreading infection, haematoma, and other Bad Stuff) before going in to surgery (which I’ll know has at least some chance of working)? While we’re busy throwing money away and going through unneeded risks, why don’t we burn some incense, have a reiki practitioner come in to cup my nuts, get a couple of crystals to put in my underwear, get out the leeches, eat some tiger penis mixed with cockroach droppings, pray to Aphrodite and Elvis, rearrange the furniture in my house, candle my ears, and sacrifice a chicken to Baal just for good measure? What? You don’t believe in any of that stuff? I feel sorry for you. I really do. It’s sad that some people won’t try every hokey, unproven method that comes along before going under the knife… it really is.
blue cross/blue shield ppo insurance is probably one of the best health insurance plans you can get.
It’s premium health insurance, kind of like the best car insurance you can buy.
it means blue cross/blue shield thinks acupuncture works, probably citing the NIH.
something Dr. Barett didn’t want to happen.
chances are, you’ll get the run around from your insurance company for that surgery, if you have a HMO health insurance.
it might even be easier to get it over with by acupuncture, whether or not it works or not, or it is covered or not.
$50 versus $1000 X.
acupuncture does not look so bad to me.
if it works, what’s the big deal?
Zonath, you will hold on to your views. That much I can already see.
You are like one of my colleagues at work. He is a former basketball player and underwent a few surgeries for his knee. Now….he walks with a cane. When I told him I got acupuncture for my severely injured knees and ankle, he instinctively laughed.
But guess who walks on a cane and who doesn’t. And guess who has never been under the knife (and doesn’t plan to for his knees or ankles).
“If I don’t believe in acupuncture, why should I go have needles stuck into my skin (which has a risk of spreading infection, haematoma, and other Bad Stuff) before going in to surgery (which I’ll know has at least some chance of working)? ”
#1) You don’t have to do anything. You trust those Western MDs who are so quick to prescribe surgery for knees and cutting open a man’s testicles if infertility is suspected. #2) (and I can’t believe I have to say this)….THESE ARE DISPOSABLE NEEDLES!!!! I PERSONALLY WATCH THE HERBAL MEDICINE DOCTORS OPEN THEM….THEN AFTER HE’S FINISHED TREATING ME WITH THEM, HE THROWS THEM AWAY, AND I WATCH HIM DO THIS AS WELL. IF HE DOESN’T, HE IS COMMITTING A CRIME!!!!
#3) It works for plenty enough people. When it has been used to successfully treat infants and even animals….I doubt their recovery was due to a “placebo” effect.
Believe what you will. There are those that know better.
Thanks for the condescending attitude, JK… just like every other evangelist and cult follower out there. As soon as y’all hit a wall of disbelief, you’re back to the old stand-by of, “Oh no! You don’t believe? I feel so sorry for you… Good thing there are those of us who KNOW BETTER.”
#2) Even with disposable needles, there’s a risk of infection anytime you pierce the skin — ask any real doctor. And things like a haematoma or a pierced organ can happen whether you’re using a disposable needle or not.
Ever think that maybe your injury isn’t quite as severe as all that? After all, the body does this amazing thing called ‘healing’ — you don’t even need to insert any needles into it in order for it to work in many cases.
No… their recovery was due to good old nature taking its course, like it does in most cases. But hey, I can see that I’m not going to be changing your beliefs anytime soon either. Good luck with those oriental ‘doctors’ and all… the real medicine will still be here when you’re ready for it.
“No… their recovery was due to good old nature taking its course, like it does in most cases.”
And you know this because you were there? You know that the acupuncture DIDN’T work to fix my ankle and knee injuries as well as my neck because you were there? You’re amazing and very presumptuous as to what happened when you weren’t even there.
“But hey, I can see that I’m not going to be changing your beliefs anytime soon either. Good luck with those oriental ‘doctors’ and all… the real medicine will still be here when you’re ready for it.”
Look, I never said I dismissed Western medicine for SOME conditions. I don’t. In fact, Oriental medicine doctors even have told me that they can’t do anything about things like broken bones or cancer or strokes. What they CAN do is help treat ailments at an early enough stage so that it doesn’t reach the state that a patient has to go under surgery for some knee injury or for arthritis of the neck or chemotherapy or whatever. Oriental medicine is not an end-all for ailments like broken bones or cancer or strokes or diabetes, etc., any more than Western medicine is a cure-all for blown knees or hurt backs or for ailments such as fatigue or tiredness that don’t show up on routine exams (resulting in Western doctors mistakenly prescribing things like depression pills when the problem is something like a tired liver, resulting in toxins entering the bloodstream, which lead to one getting easily tired). Meanwhile, Chinese herbs that treat the internal organs that have caused the fatigue are actually effective and successful in making the person not feel fatigued and tired anymore. In other words, an Oriental medicine doctor, if he’s any good, can hold your wrist and tell why you’re tired and what organ is causing the problem. A western medical doctor goes, “Well, this is okay, this is okay, and this is okay. So, according to my check-up, all is okay. I don’t know what the problem is….so here is a depression pill.” And that’s just plain stupid.
But as I said, I trust Western medicine for other ailments.
So to show you how you presumed something wrong about me….I am not anti-Western medicine and still trust it for treating conditions that Oriental medicine doctors ADMIT they cannot treat. I get regular medical check-ups. But if I run a ten-mile race in DC and I can only hobble around due to a hurt knee for several weeks, I’ll go to the acupuncturist before I go to a Western medical doctor…because I know plenty enough Americans who have hurt knees who go to the Western doctors only to undergo physical therapy or surgery or both….and who are STILL having problems with their knees after road races. Meanwhile, I don’t have any problems with my knees now.
“Even with disposable needles, there’s a risk of infection anytime you pierce the skin — ask any real doctor. And things like a haematoma or a pierced organ can happen whether you’re using a disposable needle or not.”
Uh, so if an American male has an infertility problem and has a choice between a Western medical doctor sticking a couple of disposable needles into his balls to draw out fluids…..or an Oriental medicine doctor sticking a disposable acupuncture needle that barely pricks the skin in the arms and legs….it’s the former that’s preferable because there’s less of a risk of infection???? Explain please.
No… the risk of infection is pretty much the same. But the non-quack method actually has a chance of helping, which is why it’s preferable. If you’re going to take a risk, you should probably go with the one that actually has a chance of ending up with a better outcome than when you started, no?
I know that the acupuncture didn’t actually do anything because you haven’t actually put forward a single shred of evidence that it actually did do anything. You see, in the place we like to call the ‘real world’, the one who makes the claim has the onus of backing up that claim with evidence. All you’ve said so far is “it works because I don’t have any problems with my knees.” All you’re providing here is pure anecdotal evidence — which doesn’t really prove anything about acupuncture. After all, there may be any number of reasons why your knees feel fine — hell, nerve damage from too much acupuncture might explain some of it (yes, I know… unlikely). So forgive me if I remain skeptical in the face of the overwhelming lack of evidence on the efficacy of acupuncture.
But anyhow, forget it. I can tell that you’re a True Believer in this nonsense, as evidenced by the following quote:
I can throw a dart at a board and tell you what’s going to happen to you in a year. Let me know if you’re interested — my rates are very reasonable.
Oriental medicine is about as stupid as it gets and warrants no place in the modern world. It’s embarassing. I don’t like justification for my medicines to come in the form of ancient
chinesesecrets. If some American pharmacy company were to try the same shtick and sell medicine for, say, heart disease without the biology formally explaining the actions behind its medicine, then how do you think people would respond? Nobody would be defending the company’s status as scientific, that’s for sure, not even JK.abcdefg,
All I know is….as a longtime long-distance runner I’ve avoided the knife for my knees because of acupuncture…and haven’t had a problem for years unless I run ten-mile races (at which a session of acupuncture fixes it). So if I’m the dope and all those other runners with knee problems are the smart ones for first undergoing surgery and then weeks of physical therapy…resulting in them coming back for more surgery and physical therapy within two years….then so be it. I’m happy not undergoing the surgery and feeling just fine in the knees.
“I know that the acupuncture didn’t actually do anything because you haven’t actually put forward a single shred of evidence that it actually did do anything.”
Let’s see….as a young, healthy freshman in college, I once injured my left ankle (while wrestling with a guy in my dorm). Afterwards, I was on crutches for weeks even though nothing was torn or broken. Now, into my 30s, I sprained it running. Like the first time it was injured, my ankle got severely swollen, and I could barely walk on it. The injury was worse than when I was a college freshman. But this time around, I tried the acupuncture option. And lo and behold, after 3 days, I am out running long distances again. And no pain. I’m not sure how much more evidence you need except for me to say…..from my personal experience it worked.
“You see, in the place we like to call the ‘real world’, the one who makes the claim has the onus of backing up that claim with evidence.”
The real world is “Show me” and here I am on a blog where I don’t know you from Adam and you don’t know me and neither of us is going to show our face or meet up in person…so how can I show you mor evidence? And you want me to show you MORE evidence than what I’ve been typing, which was that I was injured…and amazingly I was out jogging on my formerly injured ankle with no problems within 3 days? Uh, what more evidence do you want from me that would satisfy you? Should I run a marathon next???
Correction notice:
“…and amazingly I was out jogging on my formerly injured ankle with no problems within 3 days…”
This should say “with no problems within FOUR days…”
Good evidence would be a sampling of peer-reviewed papers that have been published in respectable medical journals. Heck, if you were feeling really helpful, you could include some of the follow-up papers that cited the original papers you’ve put forward as evidence supporting your position. After all, that’s part of what scientists are paid for — to test out dubious or outrageous claims like those put forth by the supporters of acupuncture, homeopathy, theraputic touch, ear candling, herbal medicine, faith healing, dowsing, crystal power, perpetual motion……
http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/c.....97/15/1697
http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/c.....97/15/1697
Alright, Zonath, you can read JAMA. Right?
I’ll dumb it down for you.
It works for some people.
Accidents, adverse effects decreased significantly since the FDA got involved.
Hey, this is much more scientific than faith healing, voodoo, etc. That’s a fact.
WJK -
You really don’t have to ‘dumb down’ JAMA… It’s actually a fairly readable publication, especially the non-investigational articles like the one you link to. The article is a nice little overview.
Of course, if you also look at the JAMA archives at the articles there about acupuncture, you get a pretty mixed bag of results as to whether or not acupuncture actually works better than a placebo. Out of the articles I surveyed, it seemed like about half reported that acupuncture had no greater effect than a placebo treatment. Of the articles that posted positive results, many included no placebo control, and several others suffered from small statistical groups — which does sort of seem to place their results more fully in the ‘more investigation needed’ camp than the ‘this shit is gold‘ camp. What I found particularly convincing as evidence that acupuncture was no more than a placebo effect with a thousand years of tradition to give it weight was the study that seemed to show that inserting acupuncture needles at random points on the body had just as much effect as needles inserted in the proper acupuncture spots.
Needless to say, I remain wholly unconvinced. But hey, who doesn’t want a cheap, effective method of treating some of mankind’s common ailments — if, after more research, it comes out that acupuncture actually works better than the placebo effect, I’ll go ahead and jump on the bandwagon. Until then though, I’ll just keep taking aspirin when I get a headache — I believe in aspirin, after all.
The lukewarm results that have appeared thus far in credible sources certainly don’t do much to justify the rather outrageous claims made by many acupuncture practitioners, and I just don’t want to be the latest of a thousand-year-long progression of guinea pigs. It’s good that the FDA started regulating acupuncture (the needles, actually), but again — that just isn’t evidence that it works, it’s just evidence that the FDA is concerned that people might end up hurt.
I’m curious.
Is dog meat better for you when the dog is blowtorched to death (as even the Chosun ilbo admits is still a common way to do it) or is the good-old fashioned “hang ‘em up and beat them slowly to death” still the best way?