Holistic Doctors, and medicine

Hey, I am responding only to help air some of this stuff out, not because I have a stance on this.Capsaicin, as I just learned is a natural thing, found within chilly peppers. It is supposed to be an irritant for animals, but not to mammals.Wikipedia says this about capsaicin:

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Capsaicin is being explored as a cure for diabetes by researchers in Toronto, Canada. Early work curing diabetic mice looks promising. Capsaicin was injected into pancreatic sensory nerves of mice with Type 1 diabetes because of a suspected link between the nerves and diabetes.

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The American Association for Cancer Research reports studies suggesting capsaicin is able to kill prostate cancer cells by causing them to undergo apoptosis. [5] The studies were performed on tumors formed by human prostate cancer cell cultures grown in mouse models, and showed tumors treated with capsaicin were about one-fifth the size of the untreated tumors. It has long been noted that in Thailand, where lots of spicy food is consumed, there is very low incidence of gastrointestinal cancers, including colorectal, stomach, cancers, compared to the rest of Asia, including Japan and China.[6] Mexico also has low rates of the same cancers compared to the USA.

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Sounds like a cure for a chronic disease.
It is also used as a topical treatment for shingles.How it works in the sinuses, is still unclear to me. Maybe it just numbs them, so you don't feel pain anymore. Are you saying that proper diet, exercise, is not important?
All doctors will tell you that it is, and recommend it.The thing is, no-one does it.

Sinol is a homeopathic drug. Which basically means that it is diute beyond any physiological activity. At high dilutions even its presence is questionable. What a joke!

I live in the country, and get to breath fresh air plenty. It may even be the "fresh air" that is causing the problem, as it could be allergies.I may be allergic to several things, or the problems I have might compounded by several factors. My sinuses are pretty raw right now.I walked into a basement being painted with latex paint yesterday, and within minutes I had a migraine headache. That has never happened before to me. Well, not really. I fully agree that a healthy diet, and proper exercise helps, I am not so sure that purely wholistic (is it wholistic, or holistic?) is the answer. The sinol sounds good. There is another product called sinus genie, and a good friend of mine with chronic sinus problems swears by it, and rinses once a day, and most of his chronic sinus troubles have gone away.The herbs and homepathic stuff, may or may not work. What I am most skeptical about is the "health care" professional I am seeing about this. The methods used for seeing what is wrong with you, that she uses are highly subjective, and I find them laughable. I am going to call her today and cancel my next appointment with her. Then I am going to have to explain to her why, because she goes to my church.Which leaves me not knowing really which herbs to take, and how much. There are things that she gave me, that are supposed to help, but she wasn't completely going after my sinus problem, but addressing a whole slew of problems, that she thought was wrong with me. So basically, I am still very confused about all of this.I am the kind of person, that usually falls in the middle about things (regardless of other peoples conceptions of me). I know that proper diet, and exercise helps, and there are probably some natural things to take that will help, or possibly even help my body cure itself.Who here doesn't make up a nice batch of chicken soup when they are sick, or drink some chamomile tea when they have an upset stomach. These things work/help.I'll know more after seeing the allergist.

Or a shiatsu?Here's a not so funny story. My son, who we later found out to be highly allergic to dogs, was playing with a shiatsu, and when he touch the dogs toy, and was playing catch with him, he then rubbed his eyes, and immediately got bumps all around his eyes, and had a life threatening asthma attack, and had to be rushed to the hospital.My son had bad asthma most of his childhood (I spent many nights with him in the hospital on the brink of death) until we got rid of the dog. Now he only gets it once and a while, and it is not so bad. The second he walks into a house with a dog, he starts weasing.My point is, that hypoallergenic dogs, are not.

Logically, that statement has no merit. Science does not say personal experience is meaningless. This is an appeal to science as an authority."meaningless" isn't altogether true. If only you exist, in a scientific arrogant-bubble, then yes, our experiences are meaningless. But logic tells us that our experiences can be entirely true, regardless of any experiment. This is because science doesn't own truth, but shows us a small part of it.From a logical perspective, personal experience is not meaningless. Since science only has merit because of logic, then there is no reason to automatically rule out personal testimony. When I say that I shaved this morning, you don't have to conclude I didn't because your ideology makes you think that science says that my anecdotal evidence is unreliable.So, if I say my prayer was answered, am I all of a sudden mentally ill? I think not, and that is considering scientific rules such as memory-bias etc...for those things themselves only pertain to what one can conclude, and are entirely meaningless as to the truth of our experience.Since science only works because of logic, then one must observe the epistemological and logical rules which allow that personal experience it meaningful.One example of taking the scientific viewpoint as the ultimately correct position, is the compositional problems that arrive, BECAUSE of theory being generally inductive logic.Deductive logic trumps science. Unfortunately, theories and postulations are inductive, so can in no way be superior to what logic can prove deductively.Induction will lead you to two main problems usually. Exclusivity and slothful induction. Two important fallacies. Many psychologists make mistakes because they think that a general result will "trump" a specific circumstance. Infact, the power of a falsification is ironically ignored. Falsification is very important to science - BECAUSE induction is such a poor mechanism.What logic states is that a specific instance and a general instance can both exist. You therefore have to make illogical assumption that only stem from your own propositions.For example, inductively, you will collect examples of prayers, in prayer studies, and the science will tell you that there are no positive results. This does not deductively mean that an individual's experiences outside of experimentation, are therefore meaningless or not true.This is why a logical standpoint is superior to a scientific standpoint.So - my spiritual experiences are irrelevant - but only directly pertaining to scientific results. But ultimately, logic allows that this does not mean that my experiences are false or meaningless.So when science-fans such as yourself, make arrogant statements, it is quite allright - as long as you know that logic, the master of science, tells me that your particular ideological group's opinions, are without merit. Edited by mike the wiz, : No reason given.

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You, or any study has no way of proving that peoples bodies cannot heal themselves.

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Of course it can.That kind of study is a very simple one to do.You get a random sampling of people with a particular problem.You divide them in thirds.Group One gets drugs designed to help manage their symptoms.Group Two group does what Dr. Buzsaw has been prescribing.Group Three gets no treatment.Record how the patients do.

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There could also be many people who just don't get those diseases, because they take care, and diet, and exercise.

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Rat, I chose that particular list of diseases becasue they all have one thing in common.They are all genetic diseases.People are born with them, and none of them have any known cure that doesn't involve major surgery, and that is only for a couple of them and even those don't always work.There are very helpful drugs that make their lives more tolerable and greatly reduce their symptoms. There's also lots of lifestyle things they can do, like having good nutrition and exercising, as you've mentioned, that will also help.But diet and exercise to cure Epilepsy or cystic fibrosis? Simply not possible.

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Did it start to clear up from the herbs, or did it start getting better on its own, or was it allergies, and now the season is over? I don't know.

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It is strange that when one is skeptical about taking herbs or vitamins, that when things start to clear up; we wonder was it the herbs and vitamins or did it just clear up on its own. We don't seem to say that when taking medicines. I wonder if the same comments were made when medicines were introduced to the skeptical.We know when things don't clear up with medicines, herbs, or vitamins; but when things start to get better we aren't always sure what is doing the trick. Depends on where our trust lies.Just an interesting thought.

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"Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz

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The herbs you take are likely doing some significant good.

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How can you possibly know this, buz???He's never even mentioned what herbs he is taking.

Anyone here have any experience with this?
ForbiddenThis was the method used by my "health care professional" and was wondering about the validity of it.

This is a prime example of not considering what happens outside of the arrogant little experiment.For even if these results show you that nothing is happening, the point is that this will not prove that wholistic health plan was not beneficial to Buzsaw and his family, for example.Logically, you've removed the truth of an experience, by saying something about other experiences.This is the ultimate error - that you jump too far, audiatur et altera pars.You can say nothing moe than yur results, but it won't prove that faith in these measures is false.

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I may be allergic to several things, or the problems I have might compounded by several factors. My sinuses are pretty raw right now.

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You could be experiencing a worse-than-normal allergic reaction this year, especially if your area has been getting a lot of rain this summer. there could be one or several new pollens or mold spores that you've never encountered before, or just a heck of a lot of one or more you are already allergic to.Remember also that we can develop more severe reactions and greater numbers of allergies as we get older. We can also cease being allergic to things.If it is pollen, you'll have to wait until the first frost to get much relief.

Well this morning I feel worse again. This whole holistic thing relies on you believing it will work, before you even get treatment. I just got off the phone with my holistic doctor, and that was her exact words.I told her, I don't know if it works or not. If it works, then fine it works, but if not, then it's not.I am more confused now than before, that's for sure.

I have hayfever and take chlorphenamine maleate. Apprently works on hayfever, skin allergies, food allergies, pet allergies, mould spores etc.Does this mean, in your opinion, it will certainly work on an individual with one of these problems?

Mike, I have to agree with nators assessment of those diseases, as she mentioned, she picked them because they are genetic.As she said, a good diet, and exercise might help relieve the symptoms, but not cure it.If there was a cure for those diseases, it would be earth shattering news.

Oh, Mike.The reason anecdotal evidence is meaningless in science is that personal experience is extremely likely to be riddled with emotion and subjective impressions.A person "telling their story" is extremely likely to embellish, selectively remember, forget, be affected by a placebo, and otherwise get things wrong. People make things up because they want to please the researcher asking them how they feel, even.A blood or urine analyses simply aren't affected in this way, and are thus more reliable for telling us what is actually going on with the body.