Chinese medicine

Ah… but these pills are natural

Take a look at a box of western medicine, .. for headaches for example and you can note 2 things straight off   It says…

1.)  Active ingredient: Paracetamol Chlorphenamine 500mg  or something like this,  &
2.) Take 2 pills every 12 hours

Now take a look at a Chinese box of medicine… apparently meant to cure the same ailment

  • Contains…. Something….  (perhaps deer antler or something)
  • Take 4 pills every 4 hours
  • The pills are some strange shade of green that you’ve never seen in your life

You will have people saying, Chinese, and foreigners alike..  “ah but it’s natural so it’s better!
All the ingredients can be found naturally in the world, so therefore its better”

Yeah…  sure.   And you don’t think western medicine was based on the same principle?
It’s about the active ingredient you morons!

For example Asprin’s active ingredient is salicylic acid found in 1763 in the bark of a willow tree.  Found… in… nature.

Now would it be logical to just eat the bark of a willow tree, or…  would it be better to take the active ingredient out… replicate it and then consume that?

Now on the rare occasion that these pills do actually work… (although something tells me that deer antler is not a good active ingredient),    it is because there is still an active ingredient that exists somewhere. 

And while it might not compare to the real medical equivalent in which the active ingredient has been solely replicated so that you don’t have any of the bad shit that might be detrimental to your health in the natural substance, It is enough to influence those hippy nut-jobs that  this alternative medicine is in fact working, and that because it doesn’t work quite as well as the ‘real medicine’ equivalent, and because it for some unknown reason has an off-green colour, it must undoubtedly be more natural…
which for some reason in their vacuous minds of theirs almost always translates to better.

[Death by quick bullet to the head, or death by vicious bear attack….concentrated mainly on the face and genital region. ….  Well the bear option… is more natural, therefore it must be better.]

So yes,   the active ingredient may still be there…. but the fact that you have to take so much of it means that it’s nowhere near efficient.

Sure I CoUld eat 3 platefuls of spinach, or… I could eat a steak and get the same amount of protein.

Check out Tim Minchins 10 minutes beat poem on this kind of subject called ‘Storm’

On youku here     (i’m sorry for the ads… its youku, and they’re dicks)

or for you lucky people on youtube here

Quote from Tim Minchin via his ‘Storm’ beat track:

“By definition, alternative medicine has either Not been proved to work… OR…. has been proved not to work….  Do you know what they call alternative medicine that has been proved to work??…
Medicine!”

Hot-cold medicine

You may get the feeling that China is backwards in thinking for a lot of things.

Not true.    Chinese people are just as intelligent as anyone else, and in modern times a lot of them don’t believe in the general shit that their culture once led them to believe.

However, because China has relatively recently joined the modern world, there exists a conflict between their traditional beliefs and their modern thought processes which ….this time luckily involves a bit of reasoning.

For instance I’ve met very intelligent people .. (well at least I presumed they were), that when offered a glass of cold water  have stated. “Oh no I can’t drink cold water at the moment”

And when asked,  “Why???”

“Oh because I have my period, and I can’t eat or drinking anything cold”

“Again…. Why??”

And then they turn to me… and they have this look as if it’s the first time that they’ve actually thought about it …..pause and then start on some illogical reasoning, that when the body is hot, if they have cold stuff, then it will make the blood solid, and make it difficult for the blood to flow… or  something.

Hmmm.

Have we got stuff we can learn from Chinese medicine?    Maybe…  yes.

But from these people?, incapable of thinking rationally by themselves for 2 minutes?…..  NO.

Cupping

Ah Chinese medicine..   Traditional… fine,
Cheap … sure,
historical …fantastic,
natural…  yep whatever.

But using it for actually trying to cure ailments…. Mmmmm?  Not the greatest idea in the world.

I imagine this post might get a few comments …..so let me just start out by saying:
This is not only a Chinese thing—Some western people are equally as stupid when it comes to understanding via rational thinking of logic how different kinds of techniques might actually help, or rather, not help   ailments.

For instance check out homeopathic medicine.  Apparently the less of the active ingredient it has in it …the better.

Fantastic!  That makes perfect sense!

So it can help you because the water has a long term memory of some onion juice (which is supposedly good for you?), but…luckily it has forgotten that there was once poo swimming around in it….that might just be bad for you.

Logic is not strong with these people…. But anyway.

Let’s get back to the Chinese stuff.

They have something here called ‘Cupping’    It basically involves putting a cup over a piece of skin, creating a vacuum inside the cup so that your skin rises up, and then when your skin goes purple…because all the blood as come to the surface, it is released.

cupping1

The justification is that this process draws the bad blood to the surface and then….makes you feel better.

Hmmmm.. this sounds similar to some 15th century something English medicine where they would drain the body….by cutting you, of ‘bad blood’, and then when you heal, it is the ‘bad blood’ that has gone away, and therefore no more disease.
Same process with putting leeches everywhere it was a way to take out the ‘bad blood’

Now most people in China , and the world, should be aware, …. That in medicine we’ve moved on from such primitive tactics.  .. because

1.) it was bullshit   &

2.) even in the cases where it is useful..  there are better techniques

For instance we’ve also moved on from deciding to cut off a leg, because it was painful.

The point on this cupping thing is that they often say… “Ah you see… if the skin bruises, it means that you’ve got something bad in your blood”  (or whatever these duck-anuses say)

No it doesn’t…    it bruises…, you turd-burger, because you’ve applied a vacuum for no fucking reason… it’s because YOU are damaging the skin!

Now I understand that some people get it done …because …’it looks cool’?? .. Wait.. is that right?

I’m not sure about that.  Sure.. you may have gained the respect from other equally stupid people, incapable of logical reasoning..   But I’m not entirely sure that’s a good thing.

Even if there was some credit to this process ….it hasn’t even gone to the extent of removing “the bad blood” .  It’s just brought it to the surface, and then I guess it sinks back down..
They’ve even failed in their own logic…  hmmmm