A miracle? Or just ancient medicinal practices?

Discussion in 'Religion Archives' started by GB-GIL Trans-global, Oct 10, 2002.

  1. GB-GIL Trans-global Senator Evilcheese, D-Iraq Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,718
    I have witnessed an awesome happening.

    I'm serious.

    It doesn't have to do with Abrahamic mythology, though.

    Last week, I went to an appointment with Dr. Daniel Wong, a Chinese herbalist at his small business, the Apricot House of Herbs.

    His English is not the best, and we communicate mostly with nouns and perhaps a sprinkling of verbs.

    When he asked me what my problem was, I feared it was too complex, and I called a friend who explained to him in Cantonese sort of what my problem was. When he understood this, I explained my disease better. Then he went to ask me a few questions. My answers that seemed significant to me are as follows:

    • I have pain in my abdominal area, caused by my colon. I have it very often, almost all the time, but especially before, during, and after bowel movements. It has prevented me twice from going to college classes because it was so bad (in the last month, before then I've missed more)
    • I often have long periods of remission where I have no symptoms.
    • My most recent bout of the illness started early summer this year. The previous one ended near the beginning of this year and started in about October 2001.
    • My bowel movements are never solid. They are always completely liquid.
    • My bowel movements have loads of blood in them. Loads and loads, always visible in the shit-and-blood pudding that emerges from my ass.
    • Sometimes I cannot make it to the bathroom in time, this has gotten worse recently.
    • I sweat in bed about every other night.
    • I feel hotter than everybody else from 1pm to when I go to sleep.
    • I've recently been having problems with ear pressure. My Eustachian tubes, that is.

    Each time I said something that didn't sound normal, he wrote down an herb/some herbs to add to my perscription. When he was done asking questions, he told me I could go through the door and give his wife the perscription. (his wife speaks much less English than does he) I gave his wife the perscription, and she started weighing out herbs from jars and putting them in a paper bag. When she finished, she stapled the bag, handed it to me, and gave me a small container of "haw flakes". I looked on the back of the haw flakes to see what the ingredients were. This was no help, the ingredients listed were "Haw, Sugar" in that order.

    When I got home, I ate a haw flake. Well, they're addictive. Apparently haws are fruits that taste like rasins. So they make these haws into little things that look like pepperoni in both size, shape, and colour. However, if you try to bend them, they will snap. They're actually very much like candy.

    So, the next week, after I was done with a medication I had been on ("the next week" = yesterday), I brewed up the herbs. I put a Pyrex pot on the stove (you can only use glass/ceramic cookware, not metal the instructions said), with 6 cups of water and all the herbs except the "small pack of herb" that was in a plastic baggie at the top of the bag. When the water was boiling, I turned it down a bit but only enough so that it would still boil. I set a timer for 50 minutes, and 50 minutes later I checked on the herbs. At the same time I opened the "small pack of herb" and emptied it under the other herbs as instructed. I set the timer for 5 more minutes. The whole time this was cooking there was a bad odor in the air.

    After 5 minutes, I strained the tea over and over until I felt confident that all the floating bits of herbs were gone. I poured the tea into a cup, and took a large sip. It was probably one of the most disgusting things I'll ever taste in my life. (there was about 4/5cup of it) I was soon sorry I'd eaten all my haw flakes earlier. I drank loads of normal water, then put about a teaspoon of sugar on my tongue, swished it around for a while, and then swallowed. I then took another sip and repeated the process over and over (interrupted only once by me going to the bathroom) until I couldn't take it anymore. I'd drunk about 90% of what was in the cup. I poured the rest down the sink, I wasn't able to bear anymore. If it wouldn't work without the last sip, fuck Chinese herbs.

    I felt nauseous almost right away, and I felt this way for over 30 minutes. After the nausea went away, so did much of the pain in my abdomen. At 6pm it came back, but went away again at 8. I went to the bathroom 1~2 more times after that.

    The next day, I woke up. I went to the bathroom twice, the second time I made a horrible mess of things. However I did notice that there was significantly less blood, almost no pain, and a very small amount of almost-formed stool.

    That afternoon, I went to Dr. Wong's again. I told him about what happened, he asked the same questions he had before, except without most of the ones that didn't have significant answers. This time, he wrote up even more herbs. I gave the list to his wife, and told him that I'd like them to prepare it for me (at an extra cost of US$3). I got it about an hour later with two packs of haw flakes. Well, it was about half as much as before. And it tasted almost twice as nasty. I almost threw up. But I made it about 90% of the way through. Then I felt nauseous again, for about the same amount of time as the day before. Then the pain went away almost completely.

    Well, "that afternoon" was this afternoon. Later today, I had a bowel movement. It was completely formed! There was still blood, although about half as much as before. I had no cramping during the bowel movement. I had to go again half an hour later, but still the amount of times I've gone so far today (right now it is 11:30pm) is far less than yesterday or the previous day etc.

    Tomorrow, I'll see Dr. Wong and tell him that. Hopefully, now that it's formed he'll be prescribing less herbs so it won't be a nasty-tasting. (perhaps he'll eliminate the ones for pain and diarrhoea)

    So far, I think it's working. After having months of being sick with the same symptoms and trying medications that didn't help, I find it hard to believe that something else could've caused this improvement.

    Comments?

    Oh, and don't tell Dr. Wong that I didn't drink all of it

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  3. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    On herbal medicine

    There's a good deal of merit in herbal medicine.

    Some of it is wives' tales, some of it actually works.

    But there is a woeful amount of scientific data, though that body is growing. Part of it is that nobody has quantified the cause and effect, so it's looked upon as superstitious. But stop and think that aspirin is just a better form of what happens when you treat willow bark a certain way (soak the bark in a solution, soak a cloth in that solution with the bark, wrap the wound, and the pain subsides some). Ever take a MAO inhibitor? Strong prescription psych drugs merely mimic what happens when you take St. John's Wort flower and crush them and make a tea out of it. (MAOI's are even in chocolate.)

    So it seems that when we find a working herbal solution, the next step is to mass-produce it.

    And that mass-production takes place after a good amount of scientific inquiry, because:

    • Some herbal remedies work faster than others
    • Some herbal remedies work more effectively than others
    • Such results vary from person to person
    • The spectrum runs far enough that an herbal remedy might be detrimental to a specific patient

    And those questions are among the ones that science offers before Glaxo or Pfizer or someone will build a synthetic version of a substance.

    I've never heard anything more than anecdotal for, say, rhino horn. But I've heard enough about plants, fruits and herbs, that haw fruit and some specific herbs seem more than possible.

    Unfortunately, my spell with herbalism was a fanciful period associated to witchcraft; I never undertook it as a serious study.

    So that is about all I can reasonably say at the moment.

    My verdict is to trust the herbs. (Traditional herbal healers tend to forget to remind people about diet and so forth; an herbal solution for indigestion will hardly work if it is accompanied by a generous portion of pepperoni pizza and two milkshakes. In that sense, very small factors can affect herbal remedies in a way science works against when it mass-produces a substance.)

    Science? Herbal tradition? Well, the aforementioned MAO inhibitors had a great folklore, but because we didn't have the science, certain parts of the US killed off all the St. John's Wort in the area (it's not the best for grazing cattle) before people knew there really was some benefit to exploit, As a result, when I was taking SJW, we were getting it from Australia as I recall. (I decided against a prescription MAO inhibitor; I didn't need them any stronger--I'm not a fan.)

    Likewise, in about 1998, I heard an NPR report that Warner-Lambert was getting ready to mass-produce Ginko Biloba tablets, and their spokesman cited that herbal and traditional healing provided a four-billion dollar market annually that no major pharm had tapped.

    Hence: Ginkoba, or whatever it was called.

    But yeah, there is some merit to it. But quackery is rife among herbalists, so you have to be careful. I recommend that one be predisposed to herbal treatment and educated about its nature.

    However, I won't give flak when it's working.

    Good luck w/all that.

    thanx,
    Tiassa

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  5. GB-GIL Trans-global Senator Evilcheese, D-Iraq Registered Senior Member

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    He did tell me about diet...

    no cold food,
    no raw fruit/veggies,
    no beef,
    no cooked carrots.

    chicken, pork, rice, fish, ginger are the best things I can eat. lol.
     
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  7. GB-GIL Trans-global Senator Evilcheese, D-Iraq Registered Senior Member

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    1,718
    A little update: I've just prepared today's tea, which is the same as yesterday's with two more herbs (I think).

    He already gave me the herbs for tomorrow, which are 6 less than today (I think).

    I'm about to try to drink it all... wish me luck.

    x x
    o

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    I hope it tastes good... which I'm sure it won't...

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  8. *stRgrL* Kicks ass Valued Senior Member

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    2,495
    Damn GB, what is wrong with you? Is it maybe a ulcer/s? I have an ulcer and that used to happen to me alot (5 years ago) - but I used to drink and stress ALOT! But your so young! Have you went to a conventional doctor? Got any opinions from any other docs? You should really be careful, this is not good. You'll be in my thoughts - hope everything works out for you.

    Take care

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  9. Adam §Þ@ç€ MØnk€¥ Registered Senior Member

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    One of our newspapers published, about six months ago, the results of a study by some university medical centre here in Australia. They had two large test groups, with various health problems. One groups members used conventional medicines, the other herbal or naturopathic, or whatever you want to call it. Without exception, the herbal/natureal medicines achieved nothing, less than placebos.

    However... People tend to forget that humans have been playing around with trial-and-error for many millennia. 25,000 years ago, people were making fine woven wool jumpers (sweaters) in Europe, commparable to what we wear today. People tend to forget these things. There's a lot of history behind us. Regarding these natural medicines, I have no doubt that some of it works. I tend to think it functions best in a preventative manner, in keeping the body in tune and running smoothly; and that conventional techniques are far better for curative purposes.
     
  10. God Is Real Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    42
    If you mean herbal treatments as in the herbal pills you can get at the grocery...

    Oh, and many TCM doctors are quacks, especially the white ones (they often do much less study and rely mostly on books they've read, however there are some that are good)
     
  11. spookz Banned Banned

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    6,390
    i dont understand
    most of the pills we pop have their origin in plants. the active ingredient is isolated and extracted and pillified. the raw form will work except it is rather
    cumbersome to ingest. on top of that it tastes like crap

    health depts are actually investing in research of traditional medicines.
    in europe there is a wider acceptance of this stuff. insurance covers it.
     
  12. Adam §Þ@ç€ MØnk€¥ Registered Senior Member

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    Well, the good thing about those "quack" doctors who gain knowledge from books at university is that they are right, more often than not. Those medical textbooks aren't filled with rumours, they are filled with knowledge gained from a worldwide efffort to understand the human body and efforts to keep it alive and well, an effort that has been going on for centuries.
     
  13. GB-GIL Trans-global Senator Evilcheese, D-Iraq Registered Senior Member

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    Numbskull, he said TCM doctors. Most conventional doctors aren't quacks, but most TCM doctors are. It's much easier to fake being knowledgable about traditional Chinese medicine in a society of people who are for the most part uninformed about it than it is to fake being a conventional doctor in a society where people have at least general knowledge of the things a doctor should be able to do that others can't usually do.
     
  14. Adam §Þ@ç€ MØnk€¥ Registered Senior Member

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    Ah, I thought TCM meant T-something Conventional Medicine.
     
  15. GB-GIL Trans-global Senator Evilcheese, D-Iraq Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,718
    It's Ulcerative Colitis. I really do suggest you read this to know more about the disease. I don't think it's really ulcers, just inflamation (not ulcers). But it might be. And if it is ulcers, it isn't stomach ulcers, but rather ulcers of the colon, the organ that connects your intestines to your rectum (ie your asshole).

    Yes, I've been to a conventional doctor. I was first diagnosed with nothing at all. Nothing again for a few more weeks. Then the doctor, who was tired of my mother's persistance at getting me seen by a specialist (bleeding isn't normal, and diarrhoea isn't normal when it lasts that long), referred us to a Gastrointerologist (I think that's the proper spelling), or a GI doctor for short.

    This morning before the tea I just drank, I was happy to find that the blood was no longer fresh and bright red (if it's fresh, that means you're for sure still bleeding, if it's darker, that means you've probably stopped and that you're just getting blood that collected up when it was bleeding). I haven't gone to the bathroom since I drank the tea, but I'm hoping not only will the bowel movements be formed, but won't have any blood in them at all (and that I won't be in pain). Also I'm hoping that there are bigger pieces, the thickness of my turds doesn't seem normal quite yet.

    "This condition affects people of all ages, but is often diagnosed during early adulthood. The medical research community recognizes that inflammatory bowel disease is more common in whites, occurs with increased frequency in people of Jewish descent, and can run in families."

    I'm white, my mother's side of the family was Jewish, and my maternal grandfather had colon cancer (but not ulcerative colitis, however from what they've found now the way people get cancers and the way people get ulcerative colitis are similar autoimmune problems)
     

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