Traditional Chinese Medicene-Quack or Workable?

[General Mung Beans]

Is traditional Chinese medicine in general quack medicine? This includes such things as acapuncture, ginseng, and other Chinese herbal medicine. I'm asking this because I come from an Asian background and many people in my family thinks traditional Chinese medicine works and they sometimes buy that sort of stuff.

[Eleas]

Is traditional Chinese medicine in general quack medicine? This includes such things as acapuncture, ginseng, and other Chinese herbal medicine. I'm asking this because I come from an Asian background and many people in my family thinks traditional Chinese medicine works and they sometimes buy that sort of stuff.

This is imprecise. What does "in general" mean? The whole range of folklore ideas? The underlying model(s) of explanation, or the treatments themselves?

[General Mung Beans]

Is traditional Chinese medicine in general quack medicine? This includes such things as acapuncture, ginseng, and other Chinese herbal medicine. I'm asking this because I come from an Asian background and many people in my family thinks traditional Chinese medicine works and they sometimes buy that sort of stuff.

This is imprecise. What does "in general" mean? The whole range of folklore ideas? The underlying model(s) of explanation, or the treatments themselves?

The treatments themselves. How effective are they?

[Ghost Rider]

Is traditional Chinese medicine in general quack medicine? This includes such things as acapuncture, ginseng, and other Chinese herbal medicine. I'm asking this because I come from an Asian background and many people in my family thinks traditional Chinese medicine works and they sometimes buy that sort of stuff.

This is imprecise. What does "in general" mean? The whole range of folklore ideas? The underlying model(s) of explanation, or the treatments themselves?

The treatments themselves. How effective are they?

Again, give something more precise. While Eleas, noted a difference between Models or Treatments, give specifics that one can compare with versus asking us to dig hundreds of examples and hoping that satisfies your particular want.

[Serafina]

You could ask about specific treatments.

In general, there is some value to some treatments, but as a whole it is clearly no alternative to western medicine.
That's of course because western medicine (aka modern medicine) is based upon scientific principles, while TCM is based on folklore, guesswork and tradition.

[Eleas]

You could ask about specific treatments.

In general, there is some value to some treatments, but as a whole it is clearly no alternative to western medicine.
That's of course because western medicine (aka modern medicine) is based upon scientific principles, while TCM is based on folklore, guesswork and tradition.

Indeed. And, as is often the case, some of what has been established by guesswork does work, and occasionally gets added to the body of folklore and tradition for that reason. It is often mythologised to some degree because that's how people remember things easier, and because it satisfies the need for order.

[Broomstick]

Too vague to be answered easily.

Does ephedra - a component of some Chinese medicine - improve lung function? Yes, yes it actually does in situations like asthma. However, I have no way of knowing what else is included in a "traditional remedy" for asthma or colds or pneumonia.

Some items, such as rhinoceros horn for impotence, is worse than useless - while harmless to humans it is leading to the rapid dwindling of rhinos and may contribute to their extinction.

Acupuncture? Appears to have SOME effect SOME of the time in SOME people... but there is no underlying scientific (that is, testable) explanation for how it would work and the results seem erratic at best.

Yin/yang concepts? Wow, that's everywhere. Too broad to speak of without narrowing things down.

Concepts of combining various tastes in every meal - the idea you should have something sweet, something sour, something bitter, etc in a diet.... well, given that you would need a variety of foods and flavorings to achieve this it might well result in a varied and thus more likely to be balanced diet.

Some aspects of traditional Chinese medicine might even be outright harmful, depending on what ingredients are included.

In other words - can you be more specific?

[General Mung Beans]

Sorry I couldn't clarify earlier-I was curious about the properties of ginseng.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Sorry I couldn't clarify earlier-I was curious about the properties of ginseng.

You could've just gotten right to the point and said you wanted to know specifically about ginseng in your opening post?

Your Google-fu also sucks.
NIH page on ginseng.

Ginseng's properties . . . it has this property of parting fools with their money, as properly-controlled double-blind scientific studies with statistically significant sample sizes have not convincingly demonstrated ginseng's alleged medicinal properties. The NIH states that in some cases, projected effects are based on extrapolation from animal studies. Most of the studies on humans have been small-scale, poorly designed, or poor and/or deceptive in their reporting.

What little concrete data does exist suggests that maybe ginseng has some sort of possibly beneficial effect on blood sugar levels.

As for the rest of traditional Chinese medicine, if it's effective, it is effective by pure accident. Someone somewhere discovered that certain herbs seem to have some salutatory effect on people. Just as they discovered that poking people with needles seems to have a pain relieving effect. Of course, like any other trial-and-error based medicine system with no founding in empirical science . . . traditional Chinese medicine is filled with bullshit that made it in solely because of the placebo effect.

[mr friendly guy]

Many people have covered the basics of it, but again I think a lot of it is this appears to work and over time they made up explanations for it.

For example the plant Artemisia annua was used to treat fevers, not specifically malaria although it does have anti malaria properties. Now that we have isolated the active ingredient, what is to stop us making drugs from it? Why nothing plus we can make semi synthetic derivatives from it.

This is the only specific example I am aware of, however I do know that the Chinese are interested in investigating traditional medicines with proper scientific tests, so they may be seeking to find the active ingredient and make pills from it.

I have also heard it said that a lot of Chinese medicines have high dose natural steroids in them. A lot of times steroids do make you feel better even if its just suppressing the symptoms.

Now if we are generous, you may argue that these type of treatments may be a poor man's drugs assuming the country doesn't have government subsidised pharmaceuticals like in Australia. The problem is you don't know what is the active ingredients and which ones do nothing, and lets not mention potential drug interactions.

With the accupuncture issue, I think some trials (usually small ones suggest some benefit). The problem is how do you make a placebo accupuncture needle? Some people apparently have tried where the needle doesn't pierce the skin, or they try accupuncture on any spot (so called sham accupuncture). The problem with the latter is that if you suspect accupuncture works by the action of the needle on the skin rather than because it targets a specific magical spot called the acupoint, then this type of test won't differentiate.

There are a few ideas on how accupuncture works, namely a) it stimulates the production of endorphins (I can't recall the evidence for this, but it is quoted) and b) it competes with painful stimuli (ie the gate theory). Touching on the gate theory a bit more, its thought that nerve fibres can only transmit so many impulses before it becomes overloaded and fails to transmit. The nerves don't distinguish between painful and non painful impulses. So its thought that we can overload it with non painful stimuli (the accupuncture needle is pretty thin and it really doesn't hurt), one could reduce the pain impulses. This is similar to how he a person rubs their arm after injuring it and seems to relieve pain.

One further note on accupuncture, I have heard that TENS machine for pain relief does use a similar principle to accupuncture (mainly those which twirl the needle after piercing the skin). Apparently it also evokes those two principles I listed above.

Hope this helps your query.

[Vendetta]

As for the rest of traditional Chinese medicine, if it's effective, it is effective by pure accident.

Not entirely true. Sometimes it's "Effective" because the remedies are contaminated with significant quantities of aspirin.

With the accupuncture issue, I think some trials (usually small ones suggest some benefit). The problem is how do you make a placebo accupuncture needle? Some people apparently have tried where the needle doesn't pierce the skin, or they try accupuncture on any spot (so called sham accupuncture). The problem with the latter is that if you suspect accupuncture works by the action of the needle on the skin rather than because it targets a specific magical spot called the acupoint, then this type of test won't differentiate.

One of the larger acupuncture trials did "proper" acupuncture, "sham" acupuncture*, and poked people with toothpicks.

All three had the same effect. You can read about it here.

* The problem with "sham" acupuncture as a control is that there are multiple schools of acupuncture, and the points chosen for the "sham" acupuncture in one school could well be the treatment points in another.

[PaperJack]

I think chinese medicine was invented like this:


Bo-bung gets sick.
An-nie said: "Oh no! Bo-bung has stomach-ache! We're too poor to afford medicines, so I'll try making him eat some herbs in the garden and he'll hopefully get better."
An-nie picks up random herbs in the garden, and coincidentally picks up a herb that actually helps.
Bo-bung gets better, An-nie thinks it's because of her herbs, and from now on when somebody gets a stomach-ache, An-nie picks the same herbs as the last time and gives them to the sick person.


and so on for all the other ailments.

[mr friendly guy]

One of the larger acupuncture trials did "proper" acupuncture, "sham" acupuncture*, and poked people with toothpicks.

All three had the same effect. You can read about it here.

* The problem with "sham" acupuncture as a control is that there are multiple schools of acupuncture, and the points chosen for the "sham" acupuncture in one school could well be the treatment points in another.

I skim read the actual medical publication, mainly the abstract and the comment. I find it interesting they didn't touch on proposed mechanisms for acupuncture since they have been postulated for some time now. Especially with things like the gate theory of pain it wouldn't matter which parts of the body you touched, as long as you generate a non painful stimuli.

[rapidsquirrel]

I skim read the actual medical publication, mainly the abstract and the comment. I find it interesting they didn't touch on proposed mechanisms for acupuncture since they have been postulated for some time now. Especially with things like the gate theory of pain it wouldn't matter which parts of the body you touched, as long as you generate a non painful stimuli.

The last thing I saw on the actual mechanism for acupuncture was a recent study done on mice. Something about chemical called adenosine being at high levels in the acupuncture group of mice versus the control group. You can find the paper here here.

[Zed]

I think chinese medicine was invented like this:


Bo-bung gets sick.
An-nie said: "Oh no! Bo-bung has stomach-ache! We're too poor to afford medicines, so I'll try making him eat some herbs in the garden and he'll hopefully get better."
An-nie picks up random herbs in the garden, and coincidentally picks up a herb that actually helps.
Bo-bung gets better, An-nie thinks it's because of her herbs, and from now on when somebody gets a stomach-ache, An-nie picks the same herbs as the last time and gives them to the sick person.


and so on for all the other ailments.

Seems an improvement over Western 'let's put leeches on it!' medicine.

[Lusankya]

I think chinese medicine was invented like this:


Bo-bung gets sick.
An-nie said: "Oh no! Bo-bung has stomach-ache! We're too poor to afford medicines, so I'll try making him eat some herbs in the garden and he'll hopefully get better."
An-nie picks up random herbs in the garden, and coincidentally picks up a herb that actually helps.
Bo-bung gets better, An-nie thinks it's because of her herbs, and from now on when somebody gets a stomach-ache, An-nie picks the same herbs as the last time and gives them to the sick person.


and so on for all the other ailments.

Actually, Chinese medicine was regularly researched, particularly by Daoist priests. Now they didn't know that much about how to predict how things would happen, but they did experiment with new combinations of chemicals. Gunpowder was actually developed as part of Chinese research into new medicines.

[Werrf]

Seems an improvement over Western 'let's put leeches on it!' medicine.

Not really, since it's the same damn thing.

The style of care offered by early western medics, often parodied as "put leeches on everything", would be best described as traditional western medicine. It involved using herbs, poultices, and blood-letting. The difference between it and Chinese traditional medicine is that its practitioners eventually learned to apply the scientific method to figure out what worked and what didn't, and left most of the quackery behind. Chinese traditional medicine has not done that, and shows no signs of doing so.

[Zed]

That's a rather tautologous claim, as any Chinese doctor who adopts modern standards of evidence will automatically no longer be a practicioner of traditional Chinese medicine. By definition, practitioners of Chinese traditional medicine haven't adopted modern standards of evidence. It's a fringe practice - the traditional (and, elsewhere, New Age) remnants of what was once as rational an explanation and therapy for disease as could be found. It was based on evidence (although with a lesser understanding of statistics) and it could provide very detailed explanations about diseases. It was quite rational, seen from the perspective of its time. It's absurd New Age crap from our current, more informed perspective, but I think it doesn't deserve the mockery displayed in this thread (e.g. "if it's effective, it is effective by pure accident").

[montypython]

Seems an improvement over Western 'let's put leeches on it!' medicine.

Not really, since it's the same damn thing.

The style of care offered by early western medics, often parodied as "put leeches on everything", would be best described as traditional western medicine. It involved using herbs, poultices, and blood-letting. The difference between it and Chinese traditional medicine is that its practitioners eventually learned to apply the scientific method to figure out what worked and what didn't, and left most of the quackery behind. Chinese traditional medicine has not done that, and shows no signs of doing so.

There is considerable difference between western concepts such as the 4 humours compared to TCM concepts, which has more elements based on observed effects, whether placebo or direct medicinal.

Manfred Porkert in his The Theoretical Foundations of Chinese Medicine: Systems of Correspondence makes the point:

Chinese medicine, like many other Chinese sciences, defines data on the basis of the inductive and synthetic mode of cognition. Inductivity corresponds to a logical link between two effective positions existing at the same time in different places in space. (Conversely, causality is the logical link between two effective positions given at different times at the same place in space.) In other words, effects based on positions that are separate in space yet simultaneous in time are mutually inductive and thus are called inductive effects. In Western science prior to the development of electrodynamics and nuclear physics (which are founded essentially on inductivity), the inductive nexus was limited to subordinate uses in protosciences such as astrology. Now Western man, as a consequence of two thousand years of intellectual tradition, persists in the habit of making causal connections first and inductive links, if at all, only as an afterthought. This habit must still be considered the biggest obstacle to an adequate appreciation of Chinese science in general and Chinese medicine in particular. Given such different cognitive bases, many of the apparent similarities between traditional Chinese and European science which attract the attention of positivists turn out to be spurious.

[PainRack]

As for the rest of traditional Chinese medicine, if it's effective, it is effective by pure accident. Someone somewhere discovered that certain herbs seem to have some salutatory effect on people. Just as they discovered that poking people with needles seems to have a pain relieving effect. Of course, like any other trial-and-error based medicine system with no founding in empirical science . . . traditional Chinese medicine is filled with bullshit that made it in solely because of the placebo effect.

Not purely accidental. There were ancient attempts to systematically review or analyze components of TCM in ancient China which included testing various herbs or treatments on volunteers or ill subjects, then observing the effects.
They simply lacked the modern knowledge or the scientific method to actually sift out the gold from the sands.

For example, one of the fathers of TCM in IIRC the Ming Dynasty earned his title because he not only collected various treatments for treating various diseases/symptoms, he systematically tested them on himself and other subjects before publishing it in the Imperial Medical Encylopedia. Now, the real problem comes up with...... what is the diagnosis?


The best part about this is that accupuncture in and as of itself isn't actually TCM per se. It was introduced relatively late in Chinese history, and the modern component of accupuncture that lives on is derived mostly from models that emerged during the Qing dynasty.