David T.
I really enjoy it when my back decides to hurt for 3 days straight. I'm so glad I was riding shotgun when we t-boned a car doing 40. FML.
Betty N.
i have a friend who just finished chiropractory school and needs volunteer patients for hours (read:free). i also go to an amazing sliding scale acupuncturist who works magic. $20-$50, whatever you can afford. she makes my knee pain disappear for 5 weeks with 3 simple needles.
Josh Robbins.
Sorry Betty, I have to respectfully disagree with your recommendations of treatment. Neither of these treatments have been proven to work beyond the placebo effect and are ravaged by made up, unproven ideas of "chi' and "innate intelligence" that "flows" through us. It's a waste of money, yes people can "feel" better after these treatments but this is because of a well establish phenomenon call the placebo effect. And in many cases, using these treatments can do unnecessary harm, whether it's spinal or neck manipulation to cure headaches or using needles to cure cancers. When we tell people these treatments are effective, we divert them from real, clinically proven treatments that actually work beyond a placebo, this in turn causes harm because they are not getting the treatment they actually need. This is very harmful indeed. I don't expect anyone to take my word for it, please read what studies have shown, what scientists are saying and make an informed decision. I'm not trying to put you down, I know you're trying to help, but in my opinion that help could cause a great deal of unnecessary harm.
Chiropractic:
Part I
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=537
Part II
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=538
Acupuncture:
http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=14
Betty N.
yeah, i go get acupuncture for sore muscles. it works better than massage, and it isn't just "in my head". also,fuck western medicine. I don't trust it at all.
Josh Robbins
So, hopefully not, if you get cancer you won't seek "western" treatments? Instead you will see an acupuncturists for your cancer?
Western medicine is by far one the biggest success stories in human history. It's so easy to observe this, compare first world life expectancies to the third world:
First World: 77–83 years (e.g. Canada: 80.1 years, 2005 est.)
Third World: 35–60 years (e.g. Mozambique: 40.3 years, 2005 est.)
Form Wikipedia: "During the 20th century, it is estimated that smallpox was responsible for 300–500 million deaths. In the early 1950s an estimated 50 million cases of smallpox occurred in the world each year. As recently as 1967, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that 15 million people contracted the disease and that two million died in that year. After successful vaccination campaigns throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the WHO certified the eradication of smallpox in December 1979. To this day, smallpox is the only human infectious disease to have been eradicated."
Do we worry about measles and polio? Seriously fuck western medicine!
David T.
If it weren't for antibiotics, I'd be dead a few times over. No joke.
That lung/sinus infection I brought back from Australia last year was about 2 weeks away from killing me.Josh Robbins
Shit man that sucks! Anyone who travels across the world can understand the importance of disease control and western med. Someday I'll go to Africa and get some of those nifty parasitic worms, and maybe a bit of AIDS.
Betty N.
i honestly don't trust vaccines. American laboratories created AIDS to use in germ warfare. Real talk. i don't trust the industry of western medicine. america is waaay over medicated and with a very high price tag. if I get cancer? a bullet would be way cheeper and easier for everyone involved. real talk.
Josh Robbins
Betty I posted actual data proving the efficacy of vaccines, it was a small example of the millions upon millions of lives they have saved and continue to save. Your response?....."I don't trust vaccines". Well, then I can't help you, even with actual data in front of your face, you write it off without showing how my interpretation of the data is wrong. When I see that small pox was eradicated due to vaccines, I interpret that as a good thing, you oddly enough interpret that as something you shouldn’t trust.
As for your AIDS was created by American laboratories claim, wow...just wow, I don't even think I should bother with this one. But I'm a sucker for abuse, first off the Human Immunodeficiency Virus appeared sometime between the late 19th century or early 20th century. At that time our understanding of virology was poor and we certainly didn't understand genetic engineering. HIV is a mutated cousin of the Immunodeficiency Virus found in Chimpanzees called SIV. Felines have a similar virus called FIV. So America certainly couldn't have "created" AIDS simply because nobody gets infected with AIDS, they get infected with HIV that in turn causes the syndrome we call AIDS. Even today with all of our genetic understanding, we don't have the ability to take a virus like SIV and purposefully mutate it into HIV to kill off people. If you think we can please explain how we "made" it in the early 1920's? Also what is the benefit? America has spent an enormous amount on AIDS relief, research and education on AIDS prevention. So what exactly was the gain from creating it? You clearly don't understand the biology of viruses and how they change, mutate and transmit to humans via zoonosis. We were able to eradicate small pox with a vaccine because small pox is a DNA strained virus. DNA strained viruses mutate slower than RNA based viruses. HIV happens to be an RNA based virus, it mutates so quick that we can’t develop a vaccine to fight it, oh yeah you don't trust vaccines anyway so even if we did develop a vaccine for HIV you'd be against it right? Also who exactly where we at war with in the 20's to use "germ warfare" on?... Africa? Come on! Where do you come up with this?
" america is waaay over medicated and with a very high price tag."
I showed you the difference between the highly medicated First world compared to the Third world, so explain how that data fits your "high price"? What high price? We live longer healthier lives, do some homework, go ahead and compare the infant mortality rate, or compare the death rates of mothers giving birth, give me some data that shows western societies are worse off health wise than societies that use acupuncture and voodoo dolls? If the "high price" is living almost twice as long, with much fewer viruses than I'm happy to live with that high price.
A personal account of how western medicine saved my life: At age 8 my brother accidentally broke my nose with a baseball bat, this caused a staph infection in my nose. The staph infection literally "ate" all of the cartilage in my nose (my nose was just a lump of skin) and would have moved to my brain and it would have been fatal if I hadn't sought "western medicine". They gave me doses of intravenous antibiotics to kill the bacteria and saved me. Yeah fuck it right? If this happened to an eight year old in the third world do you think doing therapeutic touch and a dose of herbs would save him, or would it take western medicine?
" if I get cancer? a bullet would be way cheeper and easier for everyone involved. real talk."
I don't believe for a second that if you got cancer you'd just shoot yourself. Easy for you to say it now, I'd bet you'd be crying for the best possible treatments. By the way, western medicine has been enormously successful at treating certain cancers and continue to improve especially if they are caught early enough. My own grandma gets random skin cancers that she just simply gets cut off by those evil doctors and she lives on. What the hell are you talking about? A bullet? I call bullshit. Real talk.
Betty N.
yeah, blah blah blah... really, i'm not taking the time to read that. you're a sheep. believe everything the american medical journals tell you. and yes, yes i would kill myself if i got cancer. also? you're a dick. real talk.
David T.
Betty, don't just cop out with that "blah blah blah" bullshit. If you really believe that strongly that Western Medicine is evil and untrustworthy, say WHY.
Back up your arguments with facts, or at least valid opinions. Maybe what alternative drugs you've used and what they've cured.
When you have to resort to name calling, you lose the argument.
I don't agree with the Western approach to throwing drugs at every single problem (anti-depression meds, mood stabilizers, and various drugs that are for issues easily resolved by diet or proper vitamins... Or just working out issues), but I wouldn't give up antibiotics or vaccines for anyone.
On the flip side, I've never had a flu shot and have never contracted the flu. Not once. Iiiiinteresting.
Betty N.
I'm not trying to argue. I was trying to give you an honest suggestion for back pain treatment. a treatment that WORKS for me. I didn't ask to be prodded at for my beliefs. and yes, i'd rather drink nettle tea than take bennadryl for allergies. also, local honey has its merits. and now i have this DICK (yes, dick) telling me what i would and wouldn't do if i got cancer? that's an ass-hole if i've ever smelled one. i'm not here to argue. I'm here to help.
Josh Robbins
"i'm not taking the time to read that." Obviously you did because I called you out at the end calling bullshit on your claim that you'd kill yourself and you replied back "yes, yes I would kill myself", so if you didn't read it, why would you say that? Yes I've been a sheep for western medicine because it works and I have the data to back it up, I have my very life to prove it. You're a sheep for crazy conspiracy theories from losers with wild imaginations on the internet who make up shit without anything to back it up. Go back and actually read the conversation, I was very respectful, saying "I'm not trying to put you down, I know you're trying to help, but in my opinion that help could cause a great deal of unnecessary harm."
You came back with a "fuck western medicine". I didn't come on with a "fuck acupuncture". You weren't respectful from the get-go. You set the tone. If people listened to your advice, many of us, including myself wouldn't be talking right now. That's the point, your words are beyond dangerous, your words can kill people and you better be damn sure of what you're saying when people’s lives are at stake and you'd better back it up.
David, you haven't gotten the flu because the majority of us have been vaccinated. It's due to something called herd immunity. If we all just stopped, we would have an epidemic of flus. Case in point mumps and measles are on the rise after almost eradicating them, and why? Because the well trained, highly educated doctor Jenny McCarthy has been quite successful with misinforming people about the MMR vaccine. Her sheep have listened and now people are getting hurt. That's why I say the things I do, there are consequences for saying "fuck western medicine" and if we listen to her we will have the great heath of the third world and that's where Betty wants to take us, yeah and I'm the dick?
When you resort to name calling and claims you can't back up and plugging your ears with a blah blah blah, you loose.
****And then she never responded back****
