RE: To Be [sick] Or Not To Be [sick] — That Is The Question

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RE: To Be [sick] Or Not To Be [sick] — That Is The Question

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hockney in #naturalmedicine • 7 years ago

From your description, Sarah has been diagnosed as suffering from RA, while Mary 'claims' to have it. So I'd say the former has RA, while the latter might have RA.
The symptoms of stiffness, swelling etc. can just be down to age. I don't think I have arthritis, but I feel stiff in the joints at the age of 51. Lifestyle is a factor as well.

For myself, I've been prescribed asthma medicine as I used to suffer from shrtness of breath and do suffer allergies - cats and grass, mainly. The inhalers have made a difference, but so did banning the cat from the bedroom. I don't consider myself to have asthma, just suffer from asthmatic symptoms occasionally.

People experience symptoms, but they can often be psychological. Doesn't diminish the effect, but there have been countless studies over the years where a placebo has an effect.
I can see acupuncture having an effect on the symptoms described - after all arthritis impacts the nerves to create pain, while acupuncture is also triggering nerve reactions, so there may well be some intermingling of reaction.
Chinese traditional medicine is certainly closer to the scientific method than homeopathy (let's water down medicine until it's undetectable and let the placebo effect kick in) and the doctrine of signatures (a rhino tusk looks vaguely penis-shaped, so it MUST be an aphrodisiac), so I think it's a viable route to take.
BUT, double-blind testing, etc. is a known way of assessing the efficacy of treatment. Check the studies and check the rigour of the studies...

7 years ago in #naturalmedicine by hockney

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metametheus 7 years ago

Both have been diagnosed with RA by WM standards.

Mary:

”Pathology tests however show no change in the levels of the markers in her blood.”

She doesn’t claim to have it. She has it, confirmed by usual pathology testing. But doesn’t suffer from the symptoms.

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hockney 7 years ago

Ah, okay - I read that wrong, then.
Basic points stand though, I think.

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metametheus 7 years ago

Well according to the studies, that drug should work.

And it did for a while. And then it stopped working.

Which raises a different curiosity for me about the efficacy of studies and reviews. Which is not a discussion I intended to have here, but it has emerged organically so I’m going to go with it...

Preface this by saying that in my professional days used to be knew-deep in reading studies and systematic reviews and may as well lived in the Cochrane Library 🥴.

In studies for drug efficacy, there are always a number who don’t respond to a drug. That doesn’t make the drug useless, nor can it be said that a drug is the answer or magic bullet.

Similarly, a study could show a drug to be efficacious on only a small cohort... in which case it’s deemed as not effective (and most likely not profitable... and that’s a whole different conversation there).

But what about that 2% (or whatever) that did find it effective?

I guess in the CM paradigm, the language is clear and specific: this Medicine is effective for these people, that Medicine is effective for those people. It is presupposed that there is no single solution for a diverse range of clinical manifestations.

While we can remove ‘confounders’ in the laboratory, we can never really remove them from real life. So why don’t we develop a science around the Uncertainty Principle (in health/medicine at least; I think other branches of Science are onto it from what I can tell).

But I guess this is where the ‘profitability’ discussion enters stage right....

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