slothrop wrote:test recordings wrote:
I don't know if you've seen anything but the UN has actually started its own research program on indigenous culture's medical practices, even those using psychotropic plants and shamanism (it's not so silly when you think that 'first world' medicine and psychiatry is symbolically identical to that of witch-doctors and medicine-men). Hopefully this will turn in to a wider general interest in alternative medical systems, especially given the efficacy of some natural substances in treating disorders (to quote Hippocrates "Let food be thy medicine, and let thy medicine be food.").
It bears repeating that the difference between "conventional" or "western" medicine and "alternative" or "traditional" medicine isn't that conventional medicine only uses things that have been invented in labs by scientists and come in pills, it's that conventional medicine only uses stuff that has gone through a rigorous double-blinded testing process and demonstrated to perform better than a sugar pill. If a traditional remedy goes through that testing and works then pharmacologists get very excited and start trying to figure out why it works and what's the easiest way of giving people a controlled dose and so on. Lots of major drugs have been discovered this way.
The key thing is the rigorous testing, though. It's the difference between 'stuff that demonstrably works' and 'stuff that demonstrably doesn't work'.
And yeah, big pharma do everything they can to mess with the system and hide bad results and so on, but the solution to that is to keep a closer eye on how they do their testing and not buy their stuff if they aren't crossing the t's and dotting the i's, not to chuck the whole idea of actually properly testing stuff out of the window and start using anything that a wise old men tells you will cure everything from chlamydia to a sprained ankle.
Of course but scientists are a bit too blinkered sometimes, like a leading psychologist thought falsifiability was solely a Euro/USA concept but it turned out Indian philosophy had already incorporated the same concept in to it's philosophical systems several thousand years earlier (Paranjpe, 1993). Chinese medicine and Indian Ayurveda has evolved in different systems of thinking but they are not necessarily less valid (Asians generally live longer and healthier than Euro/Americans, go figure).
Increasing the repertiore of scientific investigation would be good, randomised control trials aren't necessarily the best way of testing either since they don't reflect what actual clinical situations. E.g. yes X does Y but what about when A, B, C, D, E and F are present? A controlled trial would eliminate those variables and then when it comes to actual clinical applications they cause untold amounts of fuck ups, like Vioxx (a drug now withdrawn from use) reduced the intended targeted symptoms but also caused a really dangerous increase in the likelihood of the heart attack due to the narrow-sightedness (and length) of randomised clinical testing: the mechanism of action for the drug adversely affected another system that wasn't being looked and so was passed over. It's also why you get so many poly-drug prescriptions with synthetic medicine, each one has to be prescribed not necessarily to deal with the actual original illness but to deal with the dodgy effects of the others - all of this does not help the actual workings of the body in anyway. A more holistic approach would be far more useful, people just keep getting stuffed with prescriptions instead of eating healthily, doing exercise etc and this just compounds the problem. Euro/USA medicine also only targets the symptoms of the problem, not the problem itself, and those very symptoms are the bodies natural healing reactions - like you need inflammation of joints to fix them in place when damaged to stop them moving so they can heal but you also need the necessary materials to heal the joint and a corresponding amount of anti-inflammatory compounds to return the joint to normal usage.
What pisses me off about food labelling and dietary advice is that they never tell you the whole picture and become incredibly misleading. Take for instance, sunflower oil is 'healthy' because it's a rich source of vitamin E and polyunsaturated fats... well that polyunsaturated content makes it go rancid easily and also easily damaged when heated, negating any benefits it offered in it's unheated state and actually becoming BAD for you requiring more vitamin E to deal with it.
Also, most fat isn't bad for you depending on the form it's in but generally natural fats are really beneficial to you. When I say natural though I mean as nature original made it, like dairy from cows is rich in omega-3 if they live off grass but feeding them on cereal grains and soya is akin to a junk food diet for humans (garbage in, garbage out). Also, pasteurisation of dairy FUCKS IT really badly, it turns the calcium indigestible and removes the enzymes that not only help its digestion but also prevents population from foreign bacteria (leading to it becoming more likely to become infected).. but, oh wait, it's now 'safe' to drink because there is definitely nothing bad in there now BUT THERE'S NOTHING GOOD IN IT EITHER - other cultures deliberately introduce their own bacteria sets to the milk to ensure they know what's in there, preventing other possibly malicious entities taking hold and in turn making the milk become even more easily digestible and adding a range of other benefits (check out kefir and lassi, for instance). Going back to the calcium becoming indigestible it gets passed over because it's still calcium, just in a different form, same with some sources of vitamin B12 that are actually analogues and so negate B12 necessary in humans.
Going back to the heat stability of oils... coconut, palm oil, peanut/groundnut and ghee (indian clarified butter) are the best to use in cooking because they don't get damaged so much by heating, coconut oil even bypasses the need for gall bladder bile-secretions because of the form it's in (even though it's a 'saturated fat' it behaves like a carbohydrate, not all fats behave the same). When it comes to salads and other dishes that don't need cooking then mono-unsaturated ones are probably better, like Olive and Almond, as they are less likely to go rancid (sesame oil has sesamol in so even though it has a high polyunsaturated content it doesn't go rancid as easily as others of similar composition) - they are also generally liquid at room temperature to make pouring easier (possible, more like).
Don't take what I'm saying for granted though, go find out everything you possibly can and come to your own conclusions. I've never felt better than by generally ignoring standard dietary guidelines and looking in to how my body actually works and what effects different foods have, I even disagree with some books specialising on the topic as I know I have information they obviously don't or they wouldn't be saying what they are saying. It's always good to be able to doubt yourself too, don't get stuck on one thing otherwise you could be barking up the wrong tree basically (people seem to get really sarcastic and condescending when you start doing things differently to how you've done before but I've found it's generally because they don't get the concept of falisifiability - a very large bias in people generally is to confirm what they already know).
Rant, rant, rant. Someone please prove me wrong so I can become more knowledgeable!
I would disagree which is why I used that analogy - frailty in the human psyche is beyond our control as is growing old.
If I can be proved wrong at anything, far from being angry that i've been challenged, I will be happy that my understanding of the truth has been furthered.
So we are agreed. The media misusing their power and mugging is wrong! Glad we cleared that up! 
