undefined | Better HN

0 pointscrimsonalucard6y ago0 comments

I'm asian myself and I am intimately familiar with eastern medicine.

You are largely right on western medicine, it is holistic as far as the scientific evidence is relevant. That means if there is no unbiased experiment on the 20 year effects of some effect of some drug then there is no science behind it and therefore no knowledge and no treatment. Causative treatments are established to a degree as close to absolute as possible using the scientific method. However, because scientific experiments are biased towards things that are easily observable and measurable, treatments are also biased in this direction.

In other words it is very hard to run an experiment on the 10 year side effects of some drug therefore there aren't much treatments of this nature among western medicine.

Eastern medicine is the opposite. It has no basis in science in the sense that none of it's tenants were established in scientific measurement and observation. More it's adhoc trial, error, a lot of bias and a lot of fraud. This kind of treatment can definitely be more "holistic" but this holisticness is based off vague and anecdotal evidence and is very inexact. Some eastern medicine may work and some may not and you may be being lied to.

In fact, the logical theory behind eastern medicine is utter crap. The logic talks about chi flows going through your body of both hot and cold and the logic is to eat medicine to help control balance in the chi flows. These chi flows are a fantasmic concept not observable by scientific experiment.

This does not mean eastern medicine doesn't work. THe reasoning might be off but the effectiveness of the medicine may still be valid because cultural selection would have virtually eliminated this field if it did not actually aid with survival in some form or manner. Just know that every time you ingest some medicine based of of eastern philosophy know that you are making a gamble on evidence that is anecdotal and possibly placebo induced or even fraudulent.

0 comments

truth_be_told6y ago

When it comes to the Human Organism and Medicine, in spite of all our advances, things are quite complex, interrelated and not fully understood. While there is a lot of "woo woo" in Traditional Eastern Medicine against which we must guard ourselves, there is still a lot of empirical evidence for it though we may not subscribe to the explanatory models behind them. This is why people/hospitals are trying to introduce the reasonably well understood parts of Yoga, TCM, Ayurveda, Meditation into a more holistic approach towards well being.

The point is not to fixate on some well known negatives but take a deeper look at what has worked over the ages and employ them for good effect regardless of the theoretical models claimed for them.

crimsonalucardOP6y ago

>When it comes to the Human Organism and Medicine, in spite of all our advances, things are quite complex, interrelated and not fully understood.

And I have said, if you read carefully that some of it still works despite this. This is not the point, the point is the black box test still needs to work despite a garbage theory. ANd my point is, not only is the theory wrong, but there is very little overall scientific evidence for the efficacy of the treatment as well.

>there is still a lot of empirical evidence for it though we may not subscribe to the explanatory models behind them.

There is actually very little scientific and experimental evidence behind it. There is some but compared to the body of experimental work that is western medicine the research on eastern medicine is miniscule.

> This is why people/hospitals are trying to introduce the reasonably well understood parts of Yoga, TCM, Ayurveda, Meditation

The above mentioned things like meditation actually have scientific evidence behind them. You can google it.

>The point is not to fixate on some well known negatives but take a deeper look at what has worked over the ages and employ them for good effect regardless of the theoretical models claimed for them.

That is the problem. There is very little scientific evidence for what has "worked" for eastern medicine. The problem with anecdotal evidence is the placebo effect; people are delusional. Some people believe in scientology and who is it for you to say that a belief in eastern medicine isn't similar? The dividing line is scientific experiment. IF an experiment verifies a hypothesis then it is likely to be real. For efficacy of a treatment to be measured you cannot just ASK people, you have to conduct a massive scientific experiment in a double blind study. This simply has not been done yet for eastern medicine. You do not know the "good" just like you don't know the "negatives" because there is no scientific data.

truth_be_told6y ago

There IS Scientific Research being done on aspects of Traditional Medicine.

As an example, see the book "Herbal Medicine: Biomolecular and Clinical Aspects".

crimsonalucardOP6y ago

I never said there wasn't but the definition of western medicine is scientific research meaning that it is the primary method on how such treatments are developed. Scientific research on eastern medicine is not only minuscule in number but backwards in creation.

By backwards I mean that treatments are made up adhoc based off of the faulty chi logic then tried adhoc on people without rigorous double blind experiments. Only in modern times are we actually running true scientific experiments on the treatments to verify them. This is basically like the FDA allowing some random person to distribute drugs touting some miracle cure only to run experimental tests after the drug is released. More than likely most eastern medicine treatments will fail tests as this majority failure rate is already what happens in western medicine during clinical trials.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 comments

truth_be_told6y ago

The point is not to fixate on some well known negatives but take a deeper look at what has worked over the ages and employ them for good effect regardless of the theoretical models claimed for them.

crimsonalucardOP6y ago

>When it comes to the Human Organism and Medicine, in spite of all our advances, things are quite complex, interrelated and not fully understood.

>there is still a lot of empirical evidence for it though we may not subscribe to the explanatory models behind them.

> This is why people/hospitals are trying to introduce the reasonably well understood parts of Yoga, TCM, Ayurveda, Meditation

The above mentioned things like meditation actually have scientific evidence behind them. You can google it.

>The point is not to fixate on some well known negatives but take a deeper look at what has worked over the ages and employ them for good effect regardless of the theoretical models claimed for them.

truth_be_told6y ago

There IS Scientific Research being done on aspects of Traditional Medicine.

As an example, see the book "Herbal Medicine: Biomolecular and Clinical Aspects".

crimsonalucardOP6y ago

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse