Chinese herbs, do they really work?

A lot of Taoism was based on observations of animals, a kind of astronomy, and elemental activity : earth, wood, metal, fire, water; and other stuff (which I cant expand upon) i.e. a kind of primitive 'evidence' - thats all they had back then. That this then got tied into some rational/systemic structure (or hocus-pocus belief system if you want), doesnt as such completly classify Taoism as a religious faith in the same sense that we now view religions like Christianity and Islam (which have a single God concept - and some fallen angel/devil twaddle as well.) Taoism is as much tied up with Philosophy as with the many 'Gods'/'Dieties' and folk religions/traditions of Asia - at least that is what I have superficially read.

When Taoism was in it earliest stages, along with Hinduism (another religion with many Gods - not sure about the Philosophy though), Christianity, Islam and others; there was no science accepted as orthodoxy - Gallileo had a few problems with the Catholic Church a few hundred years ago.

TCM seems to be partly influenced by Taoism, and Bhudism, neither of which are tied in with contemporary scientific empirical evidence, which is why it is weak when viewed alongside contemporary medicine and pharmacology.

With regard to religions/faiths vs science, as the basis for rationalisation/systemic structures, purely from a personal point of view, I look on Mathematics as the nearest thing to a set of undeniable axiomatic truths. Science sometimes makes good use of mathematics for empirical evidence by way of statistics.

However, there are exceptions. I do know of one successfull Phd student at a very reputable UK University who wrote a thesis on applications of Electromagnetism and Nuclear Magnetic Resonance applied to rusting metals (uefull on things like studying aging oilrig structures); who completly bodged the statistics and expeimental data - completly successfully - in order to achieve pleasing looking graphs. Sometimes Science becomes a kind of 'religion' or 'faith.'

Richard Dawkins is a very persuasive and compelling speaker for Science. He does sometimes get a tad over-zealous and evangelical himself i.e. there is empirical evidence backed science (for which he is correct) and nothing else (which is implausible - it is not the only means of describing behaviour/phenomena - but it is the best we have yet.) In the Taoist's epoch, they worked with the best they had.

 

No worries..

Both the examples given are of old western medicine (blood letting and head drilling). It is a fact that the east was quite superior to the west in terms of science for quite a few centuries. Mathematics, astronomy and medicine included. Therefore, I dont think it is a fair comparison. But of course this is all purely subjective. We dont really know what went on.

A lot of people using something for 4,000 + years is quite significant. Even if they were complete barbarians, they still would have gleamed something useful from this. This alone is worthy of investigation IMO.

Could you elaborate a bit on the Mao thing.

Good points. But we must also recall the fact that much of western medicine is still equally if not more barbaric, for testing/experimenting on, and using live animals as test/experiment subjects. Including great apes which are endangered species.

Once again, I dont think stuff like leeching and bleeding are comparable to a 4,000 + year old tradition of study and experimentation, specifically referring to herbology. But either way, one should not accept anything without questioning, and that applies equally to all sides of this argument.

 

No they didn't- they bloody well made it up. They believed what they wanted to believe.

 

What empirical evidence is there for this assertion?

Is there empirical evidence that the Taoists did there best with what they had?

No, but there is cicrcumstantial evidence, by virtue of the widespread use of TCM, Accupuncture, stupid stuff (IMHO) like Feng Shui, to some extent CMA i.e. Taoism has had a profound influence of Chinese generations - it wasn't rejected by society. I suspect that the influences of Taoism are diminishing in contemporary China now.

 

Could you elaborate a bit on the Mao thing.

As I understand it Mao promoted TCM because he knew he couldn't provide proper medical care for the masses. So TCM became a kind of diversionary tactic that made them feel they were at least getting some treatment (albeit one with intermitant, marginal or only placebo effects).
No idea where I got that information...read so much stuff these days I lose track...maybe Trick or Treatment by Simon Singh?

As an aside TCM, and herbal remedies in particular, is one of the few alternative treatments that Singh flags up in that book as being potentially harmful and therefore best avoided. Exactly for the reasons of contamination and lack of regulation.

Oh and testing a western medical treatment on animals, as part of an ongoing testing procedure, in order to develop an effective drug, is worlds apart from caging a bear in order to drain its gall bladder to make a treatment with no proven medical efficacy whatsoever.
They are not the same.

 

Good! It's so, so easy to believe in the answers that you want. I used to think chinese medicine was a fine thing, a bit like herbalism. Then I heard about the tiger's claws and the bear's bile. But what really did it for me was the instant a chinese herbalist's set up near me, advertising cures for every ailment under the sun. If it was so easy to treat depression, for instance, there would be no depressives left in the country! In fact, it's exactly like herbalism- most of the ingredients do nothing and the few that do are so dangerous that you should on no account use them!

 

How do you know it isn't regression to the mean?

 

And? Your claim was that tradition and popularity is evidence that the treatment probably works. These two examples disprove that claim. The fact they are 'western' and not 'eastern' is totally irrelevant.

Again, this is irrelevant, because you claim--that tradition and popularity point to efficacy--is not relative.

Also, the fact that some of the science and medicine developed in the 'east' is effective/accurate does not prove that all things developed in the east, such as TCM are effective.

No, it isn't. Would you say that the thousand year old, mutually exclusive, religions must all be correct due to the amount of subscribers and the time span they have existed? Clearly not. Clearly their age and popularity don't prove whether they are accurate. Something can be very popular, and have existed for a long time, and still be ineffective/false.

In the case of medicine it could be regression to the mean and placebos and confirmation bias, or it could simply be that it was the best thing available at the time, albeit still ineffective. Homeopathy for example was better than many other treatments at the time it was invented because other treatments were poisonous and so could kill rather than heal the patient, therefore the fact that homeopathy didn't kill as many people would have given it a good reputation, despite that fact that it itself didn't work.

Also, as far as I understand a lot of Chinese people (even today) only have access to traditional treatments, whereas western medicine tends to be used by the wealthy. This would likely be true through these 4000+ years, where it was used for so long by so many people because that was all that was available.

This is just a red herring. This discussion is about the effectiveness of TCM, therefore the state of 'western medicine' is completely irrelevant. Even if scientific medicine was barbaric and/or ineffective it would not change the status of efficacy regarding TCM.

Do western medical companies test on endangered species? Can you post evidence of them using endangered apes or any endangered species for that matter? In any case I wouldn't call animal testing barbaric, unless you have some example of mistreatment?

Yes they are.

- Bleeding and leeching were popular and used for a long time.
- TCM is popular and used for a long time.

You suggested that the fact TCM was popular and old is evidence that it works. Bleeding and leeching were given as examples of treatments which were also popular and old, but were not effective, therefore this is evidence that something being popular and old it not itself evidence of effectiveness.

Also, TCM does not equate to herbs. TCM is an entire philosophy, largely based on vitalism, which it total nonsense.

Indeed. Herbs still contain chemicals and so can still negatively effect you and/or interfere with other medication. I suspect that many people think of herbs as natural and therefore harmless, thereby increasing the risk as people will be less cautious.

 

I'm unconvinced by science fanboys, especially when they call tiger penis a herb. Accepting the argument of tiger penises, nobody really thinks they work. They're just sexy. Unlike viagra which doesn't care what you feel like and just thrusts a boner on you, whatever mood you're in. I digress.

I use dit dar jow. You get hurt, massage this stuff in and lo, I get the bruise out. Even when no bruise was forthcoming without it. Do it long enough and you'll watch people who don't use it fall by the wayside with arthritis. Sure, arnica (herb) does a similar thing. Your objection is?

My dit dar jow comes from a recipe of my grandmaster. He's a bonesetter. He sets broken bones with herbal poultices. The system works. I don't know how he does t but it might contain comfrey - or a related herb - which has been used since the Romans if not before.

There's no point dissing herbal medicine.

Homeopathy is fascinating. It is based on herbal lore - some old, some new. Scientific debate of this has been restricted to pointing out that the solution is almost totally water. So? You might as well say it doesn't work because it is transparent.

 

Who called it a herb?

Do you/anyone have any links to scientific research on dit dar jow? Cursory Google searches just brings up and lot of Kung Fu web sites. Pubmed doesn't have anything.

So if no bruise was forthcoming to begin with, how can you claim dit dar jow gets gets the bruises out?

Why not? It's medicine, or at least it claims to be, therefore there is every reason to 'diss' it if it doesn't work.

Not almost water... it IS water!

At the solutions used, no molecule of the supposedly active ingredient remains.

Do you think it works?

Homeopathy Explained

 

About TCM & Mao:
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=131
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=494
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=505
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=540

About TCM's impact on wildlife/fauna:
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=432

Worth taking a look at.

 

Homeopathy is fascinating. It is based on herbal lore - some old, some new. Scientific debate of this has been restricted to pointing out that the solution is almost totally water. So? You might as well say it doesn't work because it is transparent.

If this is your view of Homeopathy you'll forgive me if I take yor opinions on TCM with a pinch of salt?
As I understand it Homeopathy is not based on herbal lore but is a late 18th century invention (and it is an invention). Hahnemann seemingly plucked the idea out of thin air.
As mentioned the solution is not almost totally water...it IS water.
I have some sympathy with people that think homeopathy works. A few years ago I did. That was until I actually read up on it and discovered it's a crock of (incredibly diluted?) cack.
What's fascinating about homeopathy is how people continue to believe in it despite how easy it is to understand why it doesn't (and indeed can't) work. Highlights how strongly people hold on to beliefs against compelling evidence.

 

Blood letting was practiced widely throughout Asia and was especially prevalent in China. There is quite strong evidence that acupuncture developed from bleeding practices. Trepanning was used in Europe but it was also used by a variety of prehistorical people for whom the label 'Western' seems a bit anachronistic. Furthermore, it was practiced by a variety of societies in Mesoamerica such as the Inca. So they are not just Western examples.

Asian traditional medicine was just like Western traditional medicine had many treatments that were brutal and dangerous. Modern medicine is not the property of the 'West' any more than modern physics is, as such I think it creates a bit of a false dichotomy to portray 'Western medicine' against TCM. An accurate comparison would be 'scientific evidence based medicine' vs. 'traditionally inherited medicine'. Some traditional medicine can turn out to be effective but those that do not should be abandoned... they won't be though because of the value placed on ancient tradition.

I fail to see how following this logic you are not also an advocate for blood letting/trepanning studies? There is evidence of a lot of people using such treatments with apparently great success for thousands of years. What separates them from TCM?

See the links posted above.

Animal testing is a subject of great controversy and I would agree that there is evidence of brutal treatment of animals. My personal position is that animal testing is necessary but should be highly regulated and that invasive and cruel research should not be performed on animals with higher orders of intelligence especially primates. I don't know that I can sustain such a position in the face of the advances animal testing has provided but I do agree that an alternative is the ideal.

Leeching and bleeding are 4,000 year old traditions. There are also proven medical applications for leeching. As for the Chinese tradition as I mentioned above bleeding was a common treatment in TCM throughout history so I fail to see how you can dismiss its value on the basis you have provided. It is an ancient tradition, lots of people have used it, lots of people have claimed it helped them, it is based on thousands of years of observations- what's missing?

Overall I agree that herbal remedies should not be simply dismissed as worthless but I do not believe they are. There are centres in the US and China spending millions on researching TCM and so far there is very little to show. This doesn't mean such research should be abandoned but it does mean the value of herbal treatments should be taken with a pinch of salt. If a herbal remedy is effective it should be easy to prove it via a blinded trial... and when proven it should become a part of mainstream medicine. This is generally what happens.

The problems emerge when TCM and/or a prized herb is shown NOT to produce the claimed effects. Typically at this point modern medicine would regard it as an ineffective treatment but this does not happen in TCM, in fact I doubt that there are any treatments that TCM pracitioners have stopped using as the result of negative trials. This strongly suggests that evidence is not what TCM is based on.

 

Fair enough guys, thanks for the info. Lets see what the future brings.

 

That is a silly thing to say. Human beings developed working medicine thousands of years before technological science invented the things you speak of.

Time and observation are all that is needed to prove the medical effectiveness of some medicine. That method has saved countless human lives throughout history.

Are you saying you think it is not true that taking Tiger Penis will give you a hard willy? Or are you ridiculing the people who have such beliefs?

 

But that was done by western medicine that is based on torture. The torturers were learning about the human body from the victims they cut up, so to them trepanning seemed like a natural thing to try. You know. "What happens if I cut off part of the victim's head here?" kind of hit and miss medicine.

So your idea of effective medicine is medicine that a man in a suit told you was good medicine? Historical data showing a medicine has cured a condition over the course of hundreds of years and thousands of patients has no weight?

Sure the principals bear scrutiny. I find most people are unable to understand them or unwilling to invest the time and effort necessary to understand them.

What if the "eating the penis of a powerful animal will give you a powerful penis" is just a simplistic explanation given to people who would not understand the real explanation or who do not care about the real explanation?

Sort of like when the doctor gives your child cough medicine and says "here. this will make you feel better". What does "feel better" mean in medical terminology? Nothing. The real explanation would require explaining the mechanism by which the cough medicine stopped the child from coughing. But what child is going to listen to or understand a scientific explanation of how cough medicine stops coughing? None I ever met.

It is always better to first assume that you are the person lacking instead of something else being lacking. That way you look around and investigate to make certain you are right before you begin making statements about what is and isn't.

I think if you demonstrated you were truly interested in understanding why taking tiger penis would give a human being a strong penis to someone who had the knowledge, instead of telling them you think Chinese medicine is no good for all the reasons you have stated, maybe that person might take the time to give you the real adult explanation for why taking tiger penis gives a human being a strong penis.

 

Trepanning has been around since before Western civilization and appears in a variety of non-Western cultures. Claiming that Western medicine is 'based on torture' is also a pretty good indication of how seriously to take the rest of your posts.

I take it you are a fan of blood letting then? You wont find many medical treatments that have been used longer and have more historical claims of efficacy from across the globe.

I find that most people who talk as if they are enlightened masters of 'exotic' wisdom tend to actually be those with the largest egos who have bought wholesale into an extremely romanticised perspective of non-Western cultures.

It would make no difference to the fact that killing a tiger to get an aphrodisiac is a criminal act. It also wouldn't be true because there is ample evidence that much of Chinese traditional medicine is based on sympathetic medicine. If you chose to believe there are deeper mystical reasons that's your choice but that doesn't mean it's true.

I'll help... Feel better = alleviate your symptoms. People do not need to know the mechanism for something to work. However, that does not mean that therefore every exotic medicine must work.

The irony of statements like this never fails to impress.

And maybe, just maybe tiger penis doesn't effect human fertility. Maybe it's a clear example of how traditional medicine often relies on sympathetic principles which we now know to be bogus. Eating an animals penis will not improve your sexual performance and eating an animals eye will not improve your eyesight... and even if someone does come up with an explanation for why tiger penis helps humans sexual performance that won't make it true (even if the person comes from a non-Western culture!).

 

Holy thread necromancy batman.
Ckava has said much ofwhat I would say but seeing as the comments were directed at stuff I said I'll pitch in too.

Human beings developed working medicine thousands of years before technological science invented the things you speak of.

They also developed a WHOLE load of useless "medicine" that didn't/doesn't work.
How do well tell the difference?
Double blind, randomised, placebo controlled trials that's how.
That's how we get at stuff that actually works amongst all of the things that SEEM to work.

Are you saying you think it is not true that taking Tiger Penis will give you a hard willy? Or are you ridiculing the people who have such beliefs?

Both actually. Although I'm sympathetic towards people that have no other frame of reference and don't have all the information with which to properly understand such things.

So your idea of effective medicine is medicine that a man in a suit told you was good medicine? Historical data showing a medicine has cured a condition over the course of hundreds of years and thousands of patients has no weight?

Nice straw man. It's nothing to do with men in suits. It's to do with a good scientific basis backed up by repeatable and reliable systemised trial results (although the scientific basis can sometimes come to be understood after the trial results).
If the historical data you mention is valid and has actual weight (rather than just being a whole load of anecdotal stories with all the usual human bias) then double blind trials will BACK UP that data. If it is not valid double blind trials will not.
It's that simple.
The historical data about willow bark was valid (and led to aspirin) while the historical data for tiger willy is not (which is why chinese potency medicine is sometimes laced with Viagra).


that was done by western medicine that is based on torture

Well that's nailed your particular bias on the subject well and truly to the wall.
That's a laughably skewed view of western medicine. Trepanning pre-dates what we describe as "western medicine". Western medicine is based on trials that seek to remove human bias from results. Again it's that simple. No need for "torture". All you need are palpable results that come up time and again no matter if the patient or the doctor know they are actually recieving the treatment or not.
If a medicine can't pass such trials it is not medicine no matter how much you (or a billiuon chinese) wish it to be.

 

Threads like this should just be deleted...

- Chinese Medicine does work. Better for some things and worse for others. The trick is getting the diagnosis right and treating properly.
- Western Medicine does work. Better for some things and worse for others. The trick is getting the diagnosis right and treating properly.
- Homeopathy is mostly silly. The only time Ive seen it "work" is when coupled with properly executed Chinese or Western medicine, both of which I see help people on a daily basis.
- The Boogie Man doesnt exist, but if he did he would definitely chime in on how useless threads like this are...:hat:

 

Why? What is western medicine known for? Surgery. What is surgery? Cutting the human body open with hard things. What is torture? Cutting the human body open with hard things.

Seems pretty obvious to me. I guess I could be wrong. Do you have a time machine so we can go back and check?

You are twisting things. You are trying to equate radical kinds of treatment like bloodletting and trepanning, things that require breaking the integrity of the body, to the ingestion of plant material. There is no comparison between opening a wound in the body and ingesting plant material.

It is a problem of human existence that unsavory people copy the things that good people do. Unsavory people will purposefully emulate the speech patterns and actions of someone like the Dalai Lama to take advantage of trusting people.

The only thing that can be done is to be aware that these fraudulent people exist, and develop your talent for discerning who is real and who is a fraudster.

Criminal acts come and go at the whims of the politician.

You might consider the principle western society is based on. Capitalism or money making.

Chinese medicine is a competitor to Western Medicine. How much money has western medicine lost to people who are choosing alternative medicine? It is my position that many of the studies put forth by western science are purposefully filled with fraudlent data and claims because the goal is to destroy a competitor, Alternative Medicine, for monetary reasons.

How do I respond to this? "The brake stops the car. But that doesn't mean spaceships can fly".

Both statements are true. But they don't really have any bearing on each other.

But "we" don't know any such thing. You are writing as if the claims of western science are incontrovertible fact. They are not. Western Science is full of past historical mistakes. I can provide you with news clippings of Western Science mistakes from last year, last week, or maybe even yesterday.

Why? Because you say so? Or those fallible western scientists you believe are infallible have told you so?

Isn't this the statement of a child? "I don't care if you are right and you can explain exactly how tiger penis gives a human being a strong willy! I am not going to believe it so Nyahh Nyahh Nyahh!!!".