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It’s a part of my paleo fantasy, it’s a part of my paleo dream

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Re: It’s a part of my paleo fantasy, it’s a part of my paleo dream

#201

Post by amalag »

dalke wrote: post #176
amalag wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the FDA method of approving poisons like modern medicines may not be a relevant methodology for herbs. Before you get all upset I called your favorite prescription medicine a poison, think about what it really is. A poison if taken in high doses. Ayurveda states there are 3 ways to cure disease. Food, herbs and poisons. Modern allopathy is only the third, poisons. It has very little information on how to cure through…

"Ayurveda states there are 3 ways to cure disease. Food, herbs and poisons." That, of course, is wrong. There are additional way to cure a disease. Unless of course that you're using "poison" as a catch-all term to mean anything which isn't food or herbs, in which case it it's a rather useless redefinition to mean simply 'neither food nor herb.' For example, radiation therapy for cancer is neither a food nor herb, so…

You bring up interesting points, i am sure the lines are blurry. My point was only there is a lot of knowledge of curing through herbs and food in ayurveda. Treatment of diseases of malnutrition which you brought up are certainly achievements of modern science, but if someone was following a ayurvedic recommendations for diet, would such malnutrition have taken place? That is again the western model of finding and curing diseases, not concentrating on health.

Re: It’s a part of my paleo fantasy, it’s a part of my paleo dream

#202

Post by dalke »

analog wrote: post #198
dalke wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand your argument. You said that alt.med methods are effective. I and Nursie point out that the methods which are effective for alt.med are also part of std.med. They are not unique to alt.med and therefore cannot be used to justify the validity of other alt.med practices which are not part of std.med. Do you agree with this argument? If not, why not? If both std.med and alt.med make the same recommend…

You're also attempting to Strawman me by presenting arguments as mine that I never stated. "Your argument though is that those dozen possible treatments justify the entire alt.med industry?"

That was rhetorical. You point out that there's perhaps a dozen herbs and nutritional supplements which might .. and I do stress the might .. be a useful treatment. Does that justify the entire herbal and diet supplement industry? Since your argument does seem to be that Nursie is wrong for saying that 100% of alt.med is useless as a treatment, when the actual number is 99.9+%. Do you really want to get that fraction of a mil? Because I'll grant you that Again I ask you the question, what puts the "alt." in "alt.med"?

If a practice is common to both std.med and alt.med, when should we attribute its discovery or common use to alt.med?

Obviously you shouldn't say that open heart surgery is part of natropathy, but why not? It works, so why doesn't alt.med claim it as its own?

You can't, for example, say that food supplements are only part of alt.med because fluoride in (some) water systems, vitamin D in milk, and iodine in salt are three food supplements that medical researchers successfully insisted be part of the standard food supply, in order to improve public health.

What makes 'alt.med' alt?

But in some sense you're right. The old canard is that we have a name for alt. medicine that works - it's called "medicine." Because fundamentally, modern medicine is based on trying to find what works. The thing is, very little of alt.med "works", by almost any definition except palliative care, and even then, no more helpful than other forms of care.

Take a look at any of the research papers on the subject, where the alt.med methods were put to a test, and you'll see that any signal that is there is about as strong as the noise.

Compare that to the first people who were treated with penicillin. Compare that to the children who no longer got polio. Those are examples of clear, strong signals of effective treatments.

Re: It’s a part of my paleo fantasy, it’s a part of my paleo dream

#203

Post by dalke »

amalag wrote: post #201
dalke wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Ayurveda states there are 3 ways to cure disease. Food, herbs and poisons." That, of course, is wrong. There are additional way to cure a disease. Unless of course that you're using "poison" as a catch-all term to mean anything which isn't food or herbs, in which case it it's a rather useless redefinition to mean simply 'neither food nor herb.' For example, radiation therapy for cancer is neither a food nor herb, so…

You bring up interesting points, i am sure the lines are blurry. My point was only there is a lot of knowledge of curing through herbs and food in ayurveda. Treatment of diseases of malnutrition which you brought up are certainly achievements of modern science, but if someone was following a ayurvedic recommendations for diet, would such malnutrition have taken place? That is again the western model of finding and cu…

You made a specific statement that modern medicine is a "poison", according to the logic of ayurveda, because it is a treatment which is neither food nor herb.

Do you still regard modern medicine as "poison"? If so, does that word have any meaning other than "a treatment which isn't a food or an herb"? Are ultrasound treatments poison? And, are the ayurvedic categories useful for anything other than arbitrary labels? If so, how does knowledge of the categories affect treatment outcomes?

Western medicine doesn't reduce things into three different categories. Each type of molecule, and each combination of types, and each dosage, can have a different effect on different people. I am aligned with that more complicated view, and believe that those three labels you mentioned are worthless when it comes to categorizing treatments.

As to beriberi in Asia, I researched it before I posted my comment which is why I wrote, "For several thousand years, beriberi was endemic in Asia, because polished white rice was a staple food."

Here's one of the references I used: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2889456/ , in looking specifically on the history of beriberi in India. It's a complicated history, mixed in with colonialism, and racism between English, Indian, and Chinese populations. But you'll have to tell me - what was the pre-1900 ayurvedic treatment for beriberi in India, where definitely there were many people in India who suffered from the disease, but before Western medicine found that it was a vitamin deficiency? My prediction is that ayurveda had no effective treatment for beriberi.

I disagree quite strongly with your claim that the western model is "finding and curing diseases, not concentrating on health."

How are fluoridated water, vitamin D in milk, iodine in salt, and enriched flour not prime examples of 'western medicine' using diet supplements to improve public health by preventing disease through improved diet?

Let's take rickets as an example. What's the historical ayurvedic treatment for rickets, and how does it distinguish between the different types of rickets? (I have to say 'historical' since it doesn't mean much if the ayurvedic treatment derived from Western knowledge, would it?)

I easily found http://books.google.com/books?id=qbNK6dn_FKIC&pg=PA98&#3...

which offers some medical advice, but it's wrong advice. Those oil massages (well, it is a massage book) don't appear to contain vitamin D, and in any case, vitamin D must be ingested to work. Also, while it suggests exposure to sunlight, which is one valid treatment, it suggests infra-red light as an alternative, which is wrong. Vitamin D production in the skin requires UV, not infrared.

I also found http://india.mapsofindia.com/indian-medicines/ which suggests Arbindasava - "Effective in rickets and other diseases like fever, cough and constipation" Arbindasava seems to be a general tonic. Or what I'll say is snake oil, given the diseases it claims to cure.

A problem, of course, is that there are several different ways to get rickets. Vitamin D diet deficiency is one, but some people can't process vitamin D from the diet so need exposure to sunlight. (Which I mentioned earlier.) What are the ayurvedic recommendations for these different types of rickets? Are those types based on Western research knowledge or were they known pre-1900?

You say there's "a lot of knowledge of curing through herbs." (Incidentally, I see that "curing" is now important, when you wrote that we should concentrate on health.) The Ancient Greeks had a lot of knowledge about curing. That doesn't mean their knowledge was correct, and it doesn't mean that they knew something better than we know now.

Similarly, you've made a claim, but where's the evidence? How did you determine if ayurvedic knowledge makes an effective improvement to public health, compared to western medicine? Or even that the synthesis of ayurvedic and western knowledge leads to improved health?

I think you'll say that you know people who have gotten better because of ayurvedic recommendations. As I've commented before in this thread, that's not enough. You have to know how many people didn't get better, and you have to know how many got better, or didn't get better, using western medicine. Otherwise your observations, while entirely accurate, suffer from a strong bias which makes it less convincing.

If you don't know the failure rates, then you don't have evidence.

Re: It’s a part of my paleo fantasy, it’s a part of my paleo dream

#204

Post by dalke »

amalag wrote: post #200
dalke wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You ascribe an overly reductionist viewpoint on scientific thought. The scientific analysis would be to note that 'digestive fire' might not literally be a fire (just like 'I've got the runs' doesn't mean that I want to run). The corresponding experiment would be "if person X is treated with Y1 then does outcome Z occur with any statistical difference compared to treatment with Y2", where "Y2" can be "doing nothing."…

Yes there can be scientific determinations done on ayurvedic treatments and some are done. I should not through the baby with the bathwater as they say. Ayurveda is largely about lifestyle and diet. But varies from person to person. I am sure there will be more sophisticated tests done which can show efficacies of the results. A gross example is heartburn. if you have heartburn do you just take a pill for it or adjus…

I looked for those scientific determinations. I couldn't find anything substantial. Mostly I saw a bunch of "ayurvedic treatments suggest X for Y, X contains A, B, and C, and C is seems to affect Q, which may be related to Y, so if there's an effect then that effect might be mediated through Q. But we need more studies to be sure."

As to your heartburn example, here's what Western medicine suggests.

1) While true for Diet and lifestyle makes a much bigger difference in the decade leading up to the problem, but you chose an example of treating heartburn, not of general health.

2) If it's caused by an H. pylori infection, then proscribe an triple therapy of of amoxicillin, clarithromycin and a proton pump inhibitor. This not only treats the immediate disease but eradicates H. pylori from the body. Western medicine learned about this in the 1980s. A change of diet might help with the immediate disease, but patients must follow that diet in order to avoid a recurrence.

History shows that people don't like sticking to diets. If a patient can't follow the diet, and the heartburn comes back, is that a failure in the patient, for not following the treatment, or a failure in the treatment, for being hard for patients to follow through on? I place the blame more on the treatment than the patient. Especially when there's a two week treatment which will eradicate the bacteria.

3) If it's caused by GERD then patients might try lifestyle changes. But here's what Wikipedia says on the topic:

> Certain foods and lifestyle are considered to promote gastroesophageal reflux, however most dietary interventions have little supporting evidence.[23] Weight loss and elevating the head of the bed are generally useful.[24] Moderate exercise improves symptoms however in those with GERD vigorous exercise may worsen them.[23] Stopping smoking and not drinking alcohol do not appear to result in significant improvement in symptoms.[24] Avoidance of specific foods and eating before lying down should only be recommended to those in which they are associated with the symptoms.[19] Foods that have been implicated include: coffee, alcohol, chocolate, fatty foods, acidic foods, and spicy foods.[19]

(Note: [23] from 2009 says "it is possible to hypothesize that GERD may be a curable condition through the control of body weight and, in particular, by reducing abdominal obesity." while [24] from 2006 says "Therefore, although weight loss seems to have a promising effect on pH measures and symptoms, further randomized controlled studies are warranted to determine its exact effect on GERD outcomes". I suggest that the Wikipedia summary, that weight loss being generally useful, is not backed up by the citation.)

So, three different causes of heartburn, but lifestyle and diet changes have at best little effect.

What is the ayurvedic treatment for heartburn? Does it distinguish between these different reasons for getting heartburn, each of which has a different set of treatments in Western medicine? Or is the answer for all cases to change diet and lifestyle, even where Western medicine has show that those changes aren't effective?

Re: It’s a part of my paleo fantasy, it’s a part of my paleo dream

#205

Post by darkarmani »

robbiep wrote: post #85
darkarmani wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the Paleo argument is that it is the interaction of certain saturated fats and insulin response from high glycemic index foods that oxidize LDL cholesterol (?). I don't know any of the science here, so i could be paraphrasing wrong, but I'd love understand if this is as fringe as it sounds.

Ah I see your point. I have some time tomorrow (bt 12-18 hrs from now) so will see what I can find specifically regarding this if you'd care to check back here, In the meantime here's some science of atherosclerosis - high glycemic index foods - scrap that - glucose and fructose in general is are reactive molecules - they are often drawn as a 6-carbon circle in organic chem but are actually moving in and out of a ion…

Thanks for the answer. I'm not sure. Doesn't something like what you are saying only happen if you are diabetic?
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