Anyone In Terested In Natural Herbs? Do They Work? Things Like Schisandra Etc

[yerrag]

I hope it helps. It's increasingly difficult to find a qualified Chinese Medicine practitioner. I should say that just because someone can read blood tests doesn't mean jack unfortunately, and having been trained in China unfortunately doesn't mean what it used to. You might in fact be better off seeing the aforementioned old wise man who reads your pulse / tongue and doesn't tell you anything. Who knows?

I've got my fingers crossed on this. The old man has treated many actually, including my sister. But I don't know if he'll help me. It requires me to just follow his tune, no questions asked. I can't give any input based on my own experience. It helps to know the terrain of the patient, and this includes his history, and his past symptoms, and this includes having a listening ear. I don't know if not listening is wise of an old man. I feel there's a lot of old martial arts thinking that goes into his approach, just like in a guru-disciple relationship, or in a a military general -private relationship. You as the patient must listen, and never talk. You have not earned that right!

It would be nice if the world is static and I can abide by the old world's rules. And the old world is much more known than the new world. The new world is filled wth man-made interventions such as vaccines that change how our body works. If the body has been modified by such modern interventions, it may be possible the old world of medicine has to adapt to deal with this modern scourge. But if we go by old rules as used by the ancient, unmodified, with no adaptation to the new world, the old ways won't be effective anymore in this new world.

Take my case. I have immune complexes that deposit in my kidneys. These immune complexes came from antigens and antibodies coming together. The antigen is an old form of life - bacteria, but the antibody is possibly from a modified immune system in my body that came to be because of vaccinations. This nouveau immune complex is not something the body could easily get rid of, and it gets stuck in the kidneys more tenaciously. And this causes inflammation, which is manifested externally as high blood pressure. If I did not have any vaccination, my body would know better how to get rid of the immune complexes and I wouldn't have hypertension.

The TCM doctor would give me a TCM decoction that is suitable for hypertension arising from arterial plaques. The medicine would lyse plaque off my blood vessels, but instead of lowering my blood pressure, it would actually increase my blood pressure. It's because the plaque contains its share of immune complexes. When lysed, the plaque would release immune complexes and these get deposited in my kidneys, further increasing inflammation and increasing my blood pressure. Not only would the immune complexes cause high blood pressure, it would deposit in my liver and impair my blood sugar regulation. It would also deposit in my knee fluids, and I would feel arthritic pain from the inflammation there. It would also settle in my heart capillaries, and I would experience irregular heart beats.

I would feel these effects taking the first TCM decoction, and I would know this isn't the TCM decoction for me. I would attempt to tell my TCM doctor what it's doing to me. And I would be told she has never encountered such reaction from any patient of hers. It's said to convey to me I must let her do all the thinking, and just leave it to her. For her, my talk about lysing of plaque causing immune complex to accumulate in my kidneys and causing an increase in blood pressure makes no sense. After all, what patient could possibly know this, especially one who isn't a doctor, TCM or western?

But I'll still give her unimpeded access to healing me and I'll shut up- for now. I'll just observe her to see how good her training and method of troubleshooting is. Is she going to confine herself to what she's been taught in school, or is she willing to develop a better understanding of approaching healing? At this moment, I'm giving her the license to experiment on me. But I'm a little concerned she cannot understand what I'm talking about when I bring out the subject of immune complexes. I hope she doesn't act like the carpenter who sees everything as a nail. Still, her not understanding what I'm talking about does not make her a terrible TCM doctor. Maybe, my pathology is just beyond the capability of TCM medicine as taught to her. Or maybe she just has to expand beyond her sinecure to be more adaptable to the challenges of the new world of medical doctors making chimeras of people.

 

[gately]

I've got my fingers crossed on this. The old man has treated many actually, including my sister. But I don't know if he'll help me. It requires me to just follow his tune, no questions asked. I can't give any input based on my own experience. It helps to know the terrain of the patient, and this includes his history, and his past symptoms, and this includes having a listening ear. I don't know if not listening is wise of an old man. I feel there's a lot of old martial arts thinking that goes into his approach, just like in a guru-disciple relationshi, or in a a military general -private relationship. You as the patient must listen, and never talk.

It would be nice if the world is static and I can abide by the old world's rules. And the old world is much more known than the new world. The new world is filled wth man-made interventions such as vaccines that change how our body works. If the body has been modified by such modern interventions, it may be possible the old world of medicine has to adapt to deal with this modern scourge. But if we go by old rules as used by the ancient, unmodified, with no adaptation to the new world, the old ways won't be effective anymore in this new world.

Take my case. I have immune complexes that deposit in my kidneys. These immune complexes came from antigens and antibodies coming together. The antigen is an old form of life - bacteria, but the antibody is possibly from a modified immune system in my body that came to be because of vaccinations. This immune complex is not something the body could easily get rid of, and it gets stuck in the kidneys. And this causes inflammation, which is manifested externally as high blood pressure. If I did not have any vaccination, my body would know how to get rid of the immune complexes and I wouldn't have hypertension.

The TCM doctor would give me a TCM decoction that is suitable for hypertension arising from arterial plaques. The medicine would lyse plaque off my blood vessels, but instead of lowering my blood pressure, it would actually increase my blood pressure. It's because the plaque contains its share of immune complexes. When lysed, the plaque would release immune complexes and these get deposited in my kidneys, further increasing inflammation and increasing my blood pressure.m Not only would the immune complexes cause high blood pressure, it would deposit in my liver and impair my blood sugar regulation. It would also deposit in my knee fluids, and I would feel arthritic pain from the inflammation there. It would also settle in my heart capillaries, and I would experience irregular heart beats.

I would feel these effects taking the first TCM decoction, and I would know this isn't the TCM decoction for me. I would attempt to tell my TCM doctor what it's doing to me. And I would be told she has never encountered such reaction from any patient of hers. It's said to convey to me I must let her do all the thinking, and just leave it to her. For her, my talk about lysing of plaque causing immune complex to accumulate in my kidneys and causing an increase in blood pressure makes no sense. After all, what patient could possibly know this, especially one who isn't a doctor, TCM or western?

But I'll still give her an unimpeded access to healing me and I'll shut up. I'll just observe her to see how good her training and method of troubleshooting is. Is she going to confine herself to what she's been taught in school, or is she willing to develop a butter understanding of approaching healing? At this moment, I'm giving her the license to experiment on me. But I'm a little concerned she cannot understand what I'm talking about when I bring out the subject of immune complexes. I hope she doesn't act like the carpenter who sees everything as a nail.

Man, I gotta tell you that your experience is all too common. What you've written about that practitioner reeks of Mao's systemized "TCM" to me. Two huge red flags are the practitioner acting bewildered by you having a negative reaction and other being that he isn't listening to you. Now if something he gives you in the future makes you feel significantly worse, please consider stopping it right away. There is a frightening level of damage that can be done with strong medicinal herbs, which was my original point in posting on this thread.

I understand where you're at, I understand willing to take the risk, but please tread carefully. It's completely normal to respond negatively to herbs, especially when you first begin working with a decent practitioner, not because of some detox/herx effect or whatever, but because your potential negative reactions give the herbalist important clues as to how best to treat you, and so sometimes that is, oddly, half the point. The system of medicine is empirical beyond pulse and tongue, and how you respond with symptoms matters a lot. Working with someone who is not listening to you (or believing you) when you experience those negative reactions is dangerous territory.

There's two age-old stories with these "old wise TCM dudes."

One is exactly what you've just said: Doc, the formula made me worse! "I've never heard of that happening. All my patients improve."
The other is: Doc, I've been coming to see you for two years and I'm not getting better. "Well your pulses have been better every week."

This is what I mean when I say there are very few good practitioners left. It certainly might be worth the risk, you definitely hear success stories here and there, but again, please tread carefully.

 

[yerrag]

Man, I gotta tell you that your experience is all too common. What you've written about that practitioner reeks of Mao's systemized "TCM" to me. Two huge red flags are the practitioner acting bewildered by you having a negative reaction and other being that he isn't listening to you. Now if something he gives you in the future makes you feel significantly worse, please consider stopping it right away. There is a frightening level of damage that can be done with strong medicinal herbs, which was my original point in posting on this thread.

I think that whether the doctor is TCM or Western, conventional or wholistic, they generally want to cover their **** no matter how good their intentions are. They would feign ignorance if needed, as a way to protect themselves. It's not as bad outside the very litigious USA, but doctors have their own code of conduct very much defined by their need to survive. So when I talk to doctors, there's always that understanding in me that they're not really leveling up with me, and that I have to fill in the blanks myself.

I understand where you're at, I understand willing to take the risk, but please tread carefully. It's completely normal to respond negatively to herbs, especially when you first begin working with a decent practitioner, not because of some detox/herx effect or whatever, but because your potential negative reactions give the herbalist important clues as to how best to treat you, and so sometimes that is, oddly, half the point. The system of medicine is empirical beyond pulse and tongue, and how you respond with symptoms matters a lot. Working with someone who is not listening to you (or believing you) when you experience those negative reactions is dangerous territory.

That's true about the doctor using herbs initially to probe my terrain and my condition, and from there be able to get a clue as to the direction they should head. I mean, it's what I'd find myself doing often when sizing up the suitability of an herb or a formula. And it appears to be working, as the second TCM decoction I'm taking now is slowly putting me back to where I started with. My temperature is getting back to normal, my feeling of being sick is gone, my arthritic pains are disappearing, and my blood pressure is going down. I just hope in my subsequent visits I can see more progress. I'm just back to homebase now, I need my TCM doctor to not necessarily knock the ball out of the park, but to just steadily get me to cover all the bases.

 

[Twohandsondeck]

@gately so you're still peddling around from city to city in search of the next guru that will offer you a working dietary template in tandem with an acute herbal routine of adequately-conditioned herbs?

Sarcasm aside, my question is: besides having poor results when trusting a rare pokemon to practice their 'medicine' with you... 1) What are/were you suffering from and 2) did anything truly help you by your estimation?

Sorry if you already mentioned that, I resorted to skimming.

 

[gately]

@gately so you're still peddling around from city to city in search of the next guru that will offer you a working dietary template in tandem with an acute herbal routine of adequately-conditioned herbs?

Sarcasm aside, my question is: besides having poor results when trusting a rare pokemon to practice their 'medicine' with you... 1) What are/were you suffering from and 2) did anything truly help you by your estimation?

Sorry if you already mentioned that, I resorted to skimming.

I eventually found someone who helped me a lot, as I wrote. And I stopped moving around. There’s been a lot of ups and downs, a lot of mistakes on my part along the way.

You’re insanely rude, and I won’t interact with you further. Vaya con dios.

 

[Twohandsondeck]

You’re insanely rude, and I won’t interact with you further. Vaya con dios.

To be expected. God bless!