OLD CONTENT
In the light of the debate over 'Medicare for All' here in the States (which implies Western medical care, in other words, disease care) I think we should share different non-Western medical practices that we have tried.
I'll start out: I started Urine therapy over a year ago. I don't get constipated anymore, I feel less hungry because I'm retaining more nutrients and enzymes, and I can go on longer fasts without loosing energy. The secret is urea: In the blood it's toxic, that's why it never gets reabsorbed from the bladder like other components of urine, but when it's swallowed it has a cleansing effect on the colon.
I think UT is a really good example of non-western medicine because it precludes any kind of pharmaceuticals, drugs, alcohol, and even meat and dairy.
---
Decolonization refers to rejection of culture and/or reversal of changes imposed during the colonial era. For example, putting up statues of people other than colonialists alongside the statues of colonialists is not decolonization. Only destroying the statues of colonialists is decolonization.
Similarly, mere marketing of non-Western medicine is not decolonization. In the context of medicine, decolonization should strictly mean phasing out of Western medical practice or, better yet, Western medical knowledge. In practice, public availability of Western medicine (which is already widely the case around the world) has not anywhere led to demand for phasing out Western medicine. What happens instead is that the non-Western medicine is interpreted and judged by the standards of Western medicine.
The video you posted is a good example of this. Look at what is on the whiteboard. "Urea":
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urea#History
Urea was first discovered in urine in 1727 by the Dutch scientist Herman Boerhaave,[30]
"amino acids":
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amino_acid#History
The first few amino acids were discovered in the early 19th century.[21][22] In 1806, French chemists Louis-Nicolas Vauquelin and Pierre Jean Robiquet isolated a compound in asparagus that was subsequently named asparagine, the first amino acid to be discovered.[23][24] Cystine was discovered in 1810,[25] although its monomer, cysteine, remained undiscovered until 1884.[24][26] Glycine and leucine were discovered in 1820.[27] The last of the 20 common amino acids to be discovered was threonine in 1935 by William Cumming Rose, who also determined the essential amino acids and established the minimum daily requirements of all amino acids for optimal growth.[28][29]
The unity of the chemical category was recognized by Wurtz in 1865, but he gave no particular name to it.[30] Usage of the term "amino acid" in the English language is from 1898,[31] while the German term, Aminosäure, was used earlier.[32] Proteins were found to yield amino acids after enzymatic digestion or acid hydrolysis. In 1902, Emil Fischer and Franz Hofmeister independently proposed that proteins are formed from many amino acids, whereby bonds are formed between the amino group of one amino acid with the carboxyl group of another, resulting in a linear structure that Fischer termed "peptide".[33]
"fatty acids":
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Eugène_Chevreul
Michel Eugène Chevreul (31 August 1786 – 9 April 1889)[1] was a French chemist whose work with fatty acids led to early applications in the fields of art and science. He is credited with the discovery of margaric acid, creatine, and designing an early form of soap made from animal fats and salt.
"stem cells":
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stem_cell
Research into stem cells grew out of findings by Ernest A. McCulloch and James E. Till at the University of Toronto in the 1960s.[2][3]
"hormones":
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretin#Discovery
Secretin was the first hormone to be identified.[10] In 1902, William Bayliss and Ernest Starling were studying how the nervous system controls the process of digestion.[11] It was known that the pancreas secreted digestive juices in response to the passage of food (chyme) through the pyloric sphincter into the duodenum. They discovered (by cutting all the nerves to the pancreas in their experimental animals) that this process was not, in fact, governed by the nervous system. They determined that a substance secreted by the intestinal lining stimulates the pancreas after being transported via the bloodstream. They named this intestinal secretion secretin. Secretin was the first such "chemical messenger" identified. This type of substance is now called a hormone, a term coined by Starling in 1905.[12]
Do you see what is going on? The guy is trying to argue why urine therapy is effective using Western models! Even if everyone believes him, no decolonization has occurred; all it means is that he would have inaugurated one more form of Western medicine!
You yourself fall into the same trap:
"I'm retaining more nutrients and enzymes"
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enzyme#Etymology_and_history
In 1877, German physiologist Wilhelm Kühne (1837–1900) first used the term enzyme, which comes from Greek ἔνζυμον, "leavened" or "in yeast", to describe this process.[11] The word enzyme was used later to refer to nonliving substances such as pepsin,
I already warned about this when talking about "B12" in the other topic.
I am not discouraging you from studying urine therapy, but I advise you to start by throwing out all the Western models from your mind. Only then can you properly study urine therapy as a non-Western medical practice (as you claim to want it to be).
---
What is "nutrition", then?
aryanism.net/culture/aesthetics/food/
What "nutrition" is destroyed from dry-cooking? Water-soluble nutrients like Vit. C can be destroyed via heat (as well as water and oxygen)... which doesn't seem to matter as vitamins were discovered by westerners...
How does a child prevent getting rickets without dependency on Vit. D (and calcium and phosphorus, I believe)?
---
"What is "nutrition", then?"
www.dictionary.com/browse/nutrition"What "nutrition" is destroyed from dry-cooking?"
Eat a slice of raw carrot. Eat another slice of carrot grilled for an hour. Can you tell which is more nutritious?
"Water-soluble nutrients like Vit. C"
Do you think people in the ancient world (who had no notion of "Vitamin C" in their minds) would be unable to tell which is more nutritious?
(For that matter, how old were you when you first learned about "vitamins"? Try to remember back to before you learned this. I am quite confident that even then you would have been able to tell which slice of carrot is less nutritious had you been asked back then.)
"How does a child prevent getting rickets"
Sunlight.
"without dependency on Vit. D"
"Vitamin D" is just the model you choose to use to
describe what is going on. The ancients were well aware that exposure to sunlight is healthy for children's bones without any notion of "Vitamin D" in their minds. This is what I am trying to get the world back to.
---
I have no idea what nutrition tastes nor feels like (I ate heaps of junk food as a kid - Mum was rad like that - and I think that put my body out of whack).
It is stupid of me to assume the ancients themselves were stupid and ate whatever all willy-nilly and I think that's because I'm a bit pedantic about knowing EXACTLY what's going into my body and if it's keeping me healthy. Being observational (what the people of the ancient times would have been, I suppose) just seems too... risky? idunno
---
The first concept (common to many independently derived non-Western medical systems) that I suggest you try to grasp is hot and cold, which refers not to temperature but to the character of the food:
Which end of the scale do you prefer, tastewise? This will tell you something about what kind of nutrition is good for you. (Part of your answer is likely to vary depending on when you ask yourself the question. But there are also likely to be some constants independent of occasion, which should reflect your personality.)
"I'm a bit pedantic about knowing EXACTLY what's going into my body and if it's keeping me healthy."
The problem is that what keeps you healthy will not necessarily be the same as what keeps the next person healthy. You are an individual.
The real problem is that Western medicine does not treat people as individuals, instead callously treating us as particular cases of a generalization (hence RDAs). If you believe that knowing what's going into your body provides you with sufficient information to know if it's keeping you healthy, then even you yourself have failed to treat yourself as an individual!
What should be going into your body is not a set of rigid RDAs, but whatever is required by your unique body on each unique day as it interacts in real time with unique (and constantly changing) environmental conditions (habitat, weather, activity, stress, etc.).
"Being observational (what the people of the ancient times would have been, I suppose) just seems too... risky?"
What is more risky: trusting your own sensitivity, or assuming your body just happens to be the most average body in every parameter (which is what RDAs assume everyone is)?
And yes, if you have been Westernized, then the former really may be more risky at first. But we have a duty to recover as much as possible of the innate sensitivity that Western civilization has beaten out of us.
---
Ha!
www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/are-vitamins-a-waste-of-money-a-new-study-says-yes-231521620.htmlLike most people, you probably have a stash of vitamin and mineral supplements in your bathroom cabinet. In fact, nearly 70 percent of people take supplements, according to the industry trade association, the Council for Responsible Nutrition. Fueled by an increasing focus on health and “wellness,” dietary supplements have become so popular that they’re now a $32 billion industry.
But do they actually improve your health? Several studies have found that taking supplements aren’t associated with living longer and now a massive new study, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, shows that the vast majority won’t help you live a longer life or reduce the risk of cardiovascular problems.
I do not take supplements.
Our bodies will always use the vitamins and minerals that are in food much better than in supplements.”
Maybe it's time to start thinking in terms of the foods themselves as integral entities instead of - as per Western reductionism - attributing the value of the food to the value of supposed "vitamins" and "minerals" supposedly "in" food?
Repost:
frbkrm.com/2013/02/17/139/
www.shen-nong.com/eng/lifestyles/food_property_food_tcm.html---
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7554683/Hate-crime-psychologist-brutally-killed-South-African-home.htmlA brilliant psychologist and specialist in hate crime and violence in South Africa was brutally butchered and had her throat slit in her own home by a gang of armed robbers.
Leading scholar Dr Mirah Wilks was ambushed and attacked by the men who had waited until her husband Frank left to worship at the local synagogue, leaving her home alone.
The group had climbed up onto the roof and removed tiles and dropped down inside the house and stabbed Mirah at least twelve times in the chest and back then cut her throat.
...
Dr Wilks, 69, was renowned for her research into hate crimes, trauma and violence and was a highly respected former Chair of the Psychological Society of South Africa.
...
She had also gained degrees at the University of Queensland in Australia and the University of Pennsylvania in the USA and was working at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg when she was murdered.
Dr Wilks had moved to Australia from Israel as a young girl and had a daughter Tarryn and son Brett in Melbourne, Victoria, with husband Frank and the family later emigrated to South Africa.
...
Counselling psychologist Dr Ingrid Artus said: 'We have a scarcity of psychologists in South Africa and the service they provide to society are vital and her loss will impact on patients.
Azania does not need Western psychologists. It should be thinking about building its own system of psychology (and medicine more generally), ideally based on local ancient approaches, that can eventually replace the Western disciplines as the national (and ultimately international) default. We are here to help with this.
---
---
Example of Western attitudes towards medical practice:
"I went to med school therefore only I know what medicine is right!"
This also illustrates the (Western) corruption of education which now only serves as a means to gain qualifications.
Home
Search
Login
Register