How can Traditional Chinese Medicine become mainstream?

[YellowOx83]

Edit: This is a repost, because I posted this in the wrong section earlier, which I apologize for.

I want to find a way to introduce Traditional Chinese Medicine into the mainstream American home. I don't expect that it will ever replace conventional medicine (nor do I think it necessarily should), but I want it to be used either as a first, natural option for several aliments that are typically treated with higher-risk conventional medicine. For example, getting acupuncture to treat depression before considering using zoloft or another anti-depression medications that have many side-effects.

What are the problems that are preventing chinese medicine from becoming mainstream? What are some solutions we can take as a community of holistic healers and advocates to improve the situation?

-YOx

[Lumaza]

What are the problems that are preventing chinese medicine from becoming mainstream? What are some solutions we can take as a community of holistic healers and advocates to improve the situation?

That's an easy to question to answer. The "FDA". If they can't make money off it, it doesn't work.

I am a huge proponent for holistic healing, including Acupuncture. I use it myself.

Good Luck with your endeavors!  It's definitely a upward battle.

[Nameless]

Lumaza is right - the FDA. You can also look at insurance companies, they don't generally pay for holistic treatments and herbs.

And welcome to the forum. How do you feel about Astral Projection?

[Stillwater]

Acupuncture is an odd thing, in that it works, but only slightly.

The placebo component seems to account for 80% of the effectiveness in clinical trials.

For instance, a person with no knowledge of acupuncture, who uses needles at random, is 80% as effective as a person well trained, the trials indicate.

But if it is providing people with results, and not doing harm, then great.

------------------------

I agree with you in general though. There are many forms of treatments that are better on the whole than western pharmaceuticals. It comes down to powerful lobbying by the drug companies that shut out other valid treatments. We are just now getting over the blacklisting of marijuana as a powerful treatment for a number of illnesses, in some cases over and above the most effective pharmaceuticals.

[Volgerle]

Acupuncture is an odd thing, in that it works, but only slightly.
The placebo component seems to account for 80% of the effectiveness in clinical trials.

Most clinical trials that 'evaluate' alternative healing methods seem not even worth the paper they are written on.

Moreover, the prelmininary assumptions are faulty because every holistic procedure is indidivual, this cannot be mirrored adequately in mass trials in clinics, for the most part at least.

It is pretended that alternative medicine should work like the mass so-called 'science-based' (what a laugh) mainstream pharma medicine, but it does not. Give a cure for the same 'disease' but it already fails since dis-eases are differently categorized in alternative medicine from the start. So there is not even a common basis to go from mostly.

And most (not all, but most) double or triple placebo trials are biased since on most 'evaluation' panels there's as a majority of pharma operatives as staff on. And they are not impartial. Never were.

And then there's the elephant in the room ... the hated placebo effect that should not even exist in the first place in the worldview of mainstream medicine. It is a mind healing effect more or less, dependent on or in part independent of the method administered, that is true. But in general it can be said that for the mainstreeam it should better not exist either ... I could go on here, but better let go now.

Peace.  

[baro-san]

Acupuncture is an odd thing, in that it works, but only slightly.

The placebo component seems to account for 80% of the effectiveness in clinical trials.

For instance, a person with no knowledge of acupuncture, who uses needles at random, is 80% as effective as a person well trained, the trials indicate.

But if it is providing people with results, and not doing harm, then great.

------------------------

I agree with you in general though. There are many forms of treatments that are better on the whole than western pharmaceuticals. It comes down to powerful lobbying by the drug companies that shut out other valid treatments. We are just now getting over the blacklisting of marijuana as a powerful treatment for a number of illnesses, in some cases over and above the most effective pharmaceuticals.

This reminds of the stories that a monkey, a parrot, etc. throwing a dart beat a plethora of weathered investors at picking stocks. Still, I've never heard of anybody betting their money on monkeys' darts ...

[baro-san]

Most clinical trials that 'evaluate' alternative healing methods seem not even worth the paper they are written on.

Moreover, the prelmininary assumptions are faulty because every holistic procedure is indidivual, this cannot be mirrored adequately in mass trials in clinics, for the most part at least.

It is pretended that alternative medicine should work like the mass so-called 'science-based' (what a laugh) mainstream pharma medicine, but it does not. Give a cure for the same 'disease' but it already fails since dis-eases are differently categorized in alternative medicine from the start. So there is not even a common basis to go from mostly.

And most (not all, but most) double or triple placebo trials are biased since on most 'evaluation' panels there's as a majority of pharma operatives as staff on. And they are not impartial. Never were.

And then there's the elephant in the room ... the hated placebo effect that should not even exist in the first place in the worldview of mainstream medicine. It is a mind healing effect more or less, dependent on or in part independent of the method administered, that is true. But in general it can be said that for the mainstreeam it should better not exist either ... I could go on here, but better let go now.

Peace.  

Good point! Placebo points to the healing / maligning power of our thoughts and beliefs.

[LightBeam]

Placebo effect works not only in positive aspect, but in negative as well. I am a clinical trials manager and I work everyday on overseeing different clinical trials and related data. Of course we can't see who is taking what until the end of the trial, but years ago when I worked directly with patients there was a screening phase where all patients are given placebo for a week until we decide which patient qualifies to be enrolled. The patients did not know they were taking placebo, just us. They were told it could be either. Well in one instance one patient started complaining of GI problems. Another patient came to the clinic for their next visit and said to me "I am such a grump, I am so angry and my friends are like, this is not you, what's going on. I think it's the drug". We told both patients to discontinue the pills and during the next visits they both reported resolution of their issues, haha. So, there you have it, we have some pretty powerful minds that can do anything. But we have to be careful what do we believe in.

The FDA only regulates food and drug, they don't meddle in anything else. The pharmas of course cant paten any substance that is natural. They need to survive as they are companies like any other and try to make profit to keep the business running. There is a lot good coming from conventional medicine, but every person is responsible to do their own research and chose the best approach for their health. I never take any drugs blindly just because they were prescribed to me, nor do I trust the doctors completely. I think each institution needs to advertise and convince the consumers of the efficacy of their products. Same for all kinds of holistic medicine. It's up to the consumers to choose. I think people need to start eating healthier, be more  in touch with their minds and nature and listen to their inner self.

The FDA though does not do a good job regulating food quality, nor drug safety. Just my opinion, but this is entirely different matter.

[YellowOx83]

Lumaza is right - the FDA. You can also look at insurance companies, they don't generally pay for holistic treatments and herbs.

And welcome to the forum. How do you feel about Astral Projection?

Oh gosh, I know better than to try to fight government regulation. I meant more like making it a more common practice, much in the same vein that chiropractic manipulation (many who is sought out after a back injury.

As far as astral projection, I've never had an experience of any sorts, but it is related to my research on the TCM model of the body and how I found this forum.

I believe there is something similar to what the Taoist refer to as qi or chi, that is immaterial, yet has impact on the material body. Early Christians believed in "animal souls" and "immortal souls," which had the same properties as animal souls, but were of a different substance because they were immortal. The classical Chinese notions of shen, qi, and hun are also very similar to this, in that the immaterial and material interact, but are still separate and have a specific orientation.

My interest in healing and maximizing the body's potential, as it relates to this forum at least, is in learning more about the connection between the immaterial and material. In medicine, you can now see my interest in TCM. Western medicine, I think, does have an role to play in optimal health and transcending normality, but the way that it is practiced conventionally, it will continue to play an instrumental role, rather than the paradigm that it currently pretends to be. As I've read more, I've noticed how similar medieval medicine (Christian, Islamic, and Jewish)  humoral theory is to TCM.

Maybe the ancients were onto something if vastly different people came to believe similar things about the nature of the body?

Here's an into to qi by an acupuncture school in florida: https://www.amcollege.edu/blog/qi-in-traditional-chinese-medicine

Intro to Shen by ITM: http://www.itmonline.org/shen/chap1.htm

[Stillwater]

Most clinical trials that 'evaluate' alternative healing methods seem not even worth the paper they are written on.

That can be a fair point. There are plenty of studies with poor methodologies, and plenty of studies which show some bias toward those funding them. There is also a tendency to only publish studies that support the desired conclusions of the funder, so you can't just take the studies themselves into account, but have to evaluate the cultural background that sourced them too.

But the problem is also that they are unfortunately the only potentially reliable way to study the claims of alternative medicine practitioners.

We cannot self test and use that, because as noted the placebo effect can be quite strong compared to the claimed results of some of these systems. We can't really use word of mouth to evaluate them either, since these are just singular anecdotes, and don't bear the same weight as a responsibly generated statistic, due to random variance, or reporting bias.

I agree that there are major systemic problems in how the studies are done and collected, but then what other reliable method do we have to evaluate these systems? 

And then there's the elephant in the room ... the hated placebo effect that should not even exist in the first place in the worldview of mainstream medicine. It is a mind healing effect more or less, dependent on or in part independent of the method administered, that is true. But in general it can be said that for the mainstreeam it should better not exist either ... I could go on here, but better let go now.

The placebo effect really is a strange and mysterious thing, no doubt about it. It is hard to say exactly how it works. I don't think the scientific world really hates it though... medical trials recognize its importance at every step of their design... the whole reason we need double blinds to begin with.

[LightBeam]

Another interesting thing about trials is that in many of them the enrollment criteria exclude specific herbal supplements. For example in one ADHD study the enrolled patients could not take fish oil. Why? Because fish oil helps the brain in many ways although this substance is not used by medicine to treat anything officially. I think they know though that some herbs have positive effects, therefore they exclude them from the trials.
If somehow the government creates a program to pay companies to start studying the chemistry and effect of natural substances on human cells, I can guarantee, they can create combos with certain concentrations that will work great for treatments. If that succeeds though, the pharma companies will be in trouble. Sadly, at the end of the day money talks. Same thing with green energy. The big petrol companies will be out of business and so all investments of the rich people. But I think naturally no one can stop the progress. I see a very slow and gradual change, and eventually we'll get there.