Saturday Morning Ruminations

Humvee driving in Baghdad. No wonder they hate us.

So, the Jedi are not to be trusted. And R2D2 was really the secret leader of the rebellion. A little light reading for Saturday morning. Priceless.

Speaking of light reading, how about a map of the relationships in the New Testament?

Yes, Chinese herbs work. And on the organs and diseases we prescribe them for. So now they want to extract the "vital" ingredient. Once again missing the point. When we do formulas, they are for individual people, with their own diagnoses and there are other herbs included to regulate or harmonize the prescription. Nobody gets addicted to valerian root, the same cannot be said for valium.

Yes, acupuncture does help Parkinson's. It is an extreme form of dry heat and wind, like a sirocco. Strokes, palsy and tremors also fall into the internal wind category, while a cold or flu is an expression of external wind. In China they start treating stroke patients with acupuncture and herbs as soon as they are stabilized.

With all this good data finally coming out, I might renew my license. I was pretty discouraged for a while. Patient compliance is spotty at best, but then I shouldn't take it personally. Those people who usually need to do the most to improve their health, don't do anything. Which is why my friend L. is such a success story. And when he told his doctor about it, it was suggested that I didn't know what I was talking about. 70 pounds later ...he thinks his doctor is a pill pusher and doesn't know anything about nutrition. Which might be why people don't tell their doctors about alternative therapies. Why, when you know they won't approve and will tell you that any improvement is all in your mind and that even though acupuncturists have extensive training in herbology and pharmacology is a required course for us, that we don't know what we are doing. Oh yeah, and we are tested by the state. Whatever.