Discussing medicine with an MD - some confusion

[thelerner]

The problem I see here is, in Western medicine a bad doctor who gives you an anti-biotic (or right medicine), will still cure you if thats what you need. The bad qigong healer who lacks experience, training and 'juice' is just waiving his hands and you're gonna be screwed.

 

Hopefully good doctors on both sides can help you or direct you to someone who can but the bad doctors too often claim expertise in all areas, and are more interested in $$ then your health. Thus the test studies done in China are legitimate, but are they only as good as the healers who performed and/or taught the patients.

 

So.. how do you distinguish a good Qigong doctor? Is researching their teachers and lineage the only way?

Edited December 26, 2014 by thelerner

[soaring crane]

One of the common confounding factors in this debate is the that both types of physician only see the other's basket cases, and draw their conclusions based on empircism. They're both wrong.

 

However, arrogant, sadistic surgeons tend to be wrong more often than most, and the world really doesn't need any more of them.

 

For me, it's natural medicine (which is very, very common here and the number of practitioners very large) unless it's an emergency. That's about it.

 

Last year, I was having sudden stroke-like symptoms, on a Sunday evening, and my wife called the emergency services. The EMTs were at the house in ten minutes, had me in the ambulance five minutes later where the doctor was already doing tests on the ride to the hospital. I had a video interview with a neurologist from Erlangen University at 3am, and every imaginable test performed within the next 12 hours... turned out to be nothing, possibly a migraine, but with a couple unexplainable symptoms (pulse was under 30bpm and BP was almost non-existent). I was home and feeling normal on Tuesday (no out of pocket costs here, btw, just sayin).

 

So ... I went to my Heilpraktikerin (female naturopath) with the story. She tested me kinesiologically (among other methods including iris and tongue diagnosis), concluded the same thing the hospital had said, gave me a few strengthening tinctures (hawthorn and combi-preparation of her own design) and sent me home. She gets €50 per consultation, because her work isn't covered by my standard insurance. (Her diagnosis work takes over an hour, and she also does a lot of manual therapy in the process, so, it's worth it).

 

So, that one was a draw, I'd say.

 

That next one wasn't.

 

I was having shoulder problems, and long story short, the orthopedist sent me for an MRI. The report came back as calcification/rotator cuff. He read the radiology report, looked at me and said, "ok, you're getting an operation, you canmake an appointment at the desk". I basically said bullshit, you didn't even look at the pictures. He said he doesn't need to because everything he needs to know is in the report. I asked him to humor me and he made a big production of actually having to the insert the CD into his computer and scrolling through the images. "Oh, it's not as bad as it states in the report ... but you still need an OP. Either now, or in five years", was his new conclusion ... I said thanks, see you whenever, dude.

 

Went my same naturopath. She checked me out thoroughly, said it's nothing but muscles tension, gave me two shots of procaine in the most painful spots, and my shoulder was free. Every trace of any pain was gone, and it's stayed gone to this day.

 

That point goes to natural medicine, and if I were to tally up all of my experiences with western and natural medicine, I think the score might be something like twenty wins for natural medicine, three or four for western, and a couple draws.

 

Btw, homeopathy is good medicine when applied correctly by a qualified (and sane) practitioner (which are unfortunately few and far between). The basic idea is simple -- introduce a substance that produces symptoms that are similar to the infliction that one wants to treat. The body immediately recognizes the presence of the substance (even if it's only a few molecules), and reacts accordingly. It's the symptoms that battle the infliction. But admittedly, there's a lot of nonesense and bluster in the homeopathic circles. They're even more militantly dogmatic and conservative than western physicians.

[silent thunder]

We are all inherently inaccurate in our perceptions.

I get edgy anytime anyone gets too sure about... anything any more.

Considering, with our senses and technology, we currently perceive less than 1% of the universe... being too certain of... anything seems to me, the height of arrogant, ignorance.

Reminds me of something Robert Anton Wilson shared that is based on the work of Husserl. "All perception is gamble."

 

Every kind of ignorance, bigotry and hatred in the world, results from not realizing that our perceptions are gambles...

We believe what we perceive and then we believe our interpretation of it and we don't even realize we're making an interpretation, most of the time. We think, 'this is reality.'

Naive Realism: What I perceive is reality. This is some of the scariest thinking I ever encounter.

one day this just settled on my pond and has been resonating ever since:

Don't believe everything you think...
Just because you thought it Creighton, doesn't make it real, true, or even important.

Any more... I trust my breath. Everything else, seems to me, an interpretation.