Complexity Theory

[Guest guest]

To all,

I wrote my last post about relationships and the football team analogy before reading some of the posts that came after the one I answered. I was offline for a couple days and had a whole lot of emails and got impatient.

 

I am thinking that we already have the complexity theory we need. It's called Chinese medicine. In terms of biochemicals, we just need to figure them out energetically and apply our rules of understanding to them. Personally, I don't particularly care what baicalin does. I don't want baicalin alone in me. I want Huang Qin. It's nice to read research literature on what baicalin, saikosaponin-a, silymarin, etc. do in vitro and in vivo, but this doesn't really tell me what Huang Qin, Chai Hu and Milk Thistle are going to do inside me or anyone else. It does, however, give me something to go on and something to convince Western-type scientific mindsets with. And it does give me biomarkers, which I believe are useful for potency assays.

 

I am not convinced that reductionist thinking and relationship thinking are two ends of a continuum. Chinese medicine is its own continuum, with the continuum being the relative emphasis on root and/or branch treatment. The difference between Eastern and Western thought begins with the most basic assumptions, such as Aristotle's "If a, then not b," which means if a particular thing is a particular thing, it can't be something else. Chinese medical philosophy and its antecedents see "a" and "b" not as things but as relationship partners, and their relationship can change depending on circumstances, needs and perspective. The difference between Western and Eastern world views is the difference between a great nothingness filled with isolated objects and a great unmanifestness manifesting an energetic field with varying degrees of density, the denser areas being what we call "things."

 

I don't yet see how these opposing world views can be reconciled practically. As one of my first mentors used to say, "If you start with an illogical premise, you arrive at an illogical conclusion," no matter how beautiful your reasoning along the way. To put this in context, I would say if you start from different premises, you arrive at different conclusions, inevitably. Someday the Western medical model has to catch up with the latest physics, which as far as I can tell sees the universe as an energy field with varying degrees of density. Medical science is the last bastion of Newtonian physics.

 

So maybe applied quantum physics is the common East/West denominator. I don't know enough about it to know how this can be applied to herbal research.

Joseph Garner

[Guest guest]

, acugrpaz@a... wrote:

> I am thinking that we already have the complexity theory we need.

It's called Chinese medicine. >>>

 

 

Joseph:

 

One neither replaces or is subordinate to the other. Chinese

medicine and Complexity Theory share similar interests in the regard

that they have the same aim, to describe living systems. The rules

and relationships described by either can be useful in illuminating

the role of the other.

 

<<< In terms of biochemicals, we just need to figure them out

energetically and apply our rules of understanding to them. >>>

 

Can you give some examples?

 

 

> I am not convinced that reductionist thinking and relationship

thinking are two ends of a continuum. Chinese medicine is its own

continuum, with the continuum being the relative emphasis on root

and/or branch treatment. >>>

 

They are the two types of cognitive processes that dominate Western

and Eastern cultural thinking respectively. Nisbett's book goes into

great detail regarding the tacit premises in the way that these

cultures see and think about things differently. I am lead to the

conclusion that there is no objective reality waiting " out there " to

be described. The observer and the observed are intimately

inseparable. We who are born into an analytically thinking culture

and have ambitions to work in the manner of dialectical thinking may

have sufficient motivation and resources to bridge these ideas. Root

and branch is a specific case in CM and doesn't really apply here.

 

> To put this in context, I would say if you start from different

premises, you arrive at different conclusions, inevitably. >>>

 

This is exactly Nisbett's point and conclusion from his research.

But many of those premises are culturally determined and not

consciously noticed by the individual.

 

 

> Someday the Western medical model has to catch up with the latest

physics, which as far as I can tell sees the universe as an energy

field with varying degrees of density.>>>

 

I hope you are right. It would be nice to think so but we also need

to consider that, beyond the being culturally determined, Western

medicine is strongly driven by the profit motive. Research

into " pure science " died out in the 60s; now there has to be a

bottom line to any inquiry. For example, some active ingredient that

they can synthesize and patent from herbs.

 

There are still some other Western methods outside of Complexity

that may be applied, but I don't know enough about them yet to offer

any opinion.

 

 

Jim Ramholz

[Guest guest]

Jim Ramholz wrote:

<<< In terms of biochemicals, we just need to figure them out

energetically and apply our rules of understanding to them. Joseph >>>

 

>Can you give some examples?

Jim<

 

Both Z'ev R. and Bob Flaws have written extensively on the energetics of such drugs as Prednisone and Valium. Bob describes Prednisone as, I believe, a cooling surface-relieving category medicinal, which draws energy from the Mingmen and circulates it superiorly and superficially while cooling, much like Chai Hu. Obviously each medicinal is more complicated than just its category, and I'm definitely for those who can, combining biochemical understanding with energetic theory. I just think that a thorough reading of a medicinal's functions, indications and side effects, whatever the source and whatever the medicinal, can tell us enough to come up with a working energetic understanding of it, which will tell us not only when and on whom to use it, but how to more effectively combine drug and herb therapy.

 

When I look at the side effects of birth control pills, they almost all look like blood stasis to me. Shmuel Halevi in the JCM makes a good case that the underlying mechanism leading to this is kidney qi xu caused by the BC pills. It's a fascinating overall topic and one that we all, it seems to me, need to be more versed on, considering that most of our patients are on some drug(s). I heard NPR talking about a new book about integrating Chinese herbs and modern drugs, but I don't know any more about it, didn't recognize the authors' names.

 

As far as integrating Eastern and Western thought, I recall that physics has long struggled with the contradictory finding that the universe seems to simultaneously act like a wave and a particle, which makes no apparent sense to the reductionist outlook but one the Chinese would probably welcome. Perhaps modern physics has an answer now. I need to read physics again. I doubt if we're going to come up with a unified field theory online.

Joseph

[Guest guest]

Joseph,

This is one of my favorite posts of the recent past for both your reference to prednisone and to physics.

To combine recent posts on Chai Hu actions, I don't know if Chai Hu acts on cox-2 (cyclooxygenase) despite Medline searches. I sense it does not ... but rather acts upon liver and/or hypothalamic-pituitary homeostasis. Aspirin and similar compounds do act upon (inhibit) cyclooxygenase, and so they reduce synthesis of prostaglandins. Prednisone is a synthetic of our own adrenal gland's cortisol which acts proximally in the biosynthetic pathway to cyclooxygenase. It acts right next to cell membranes on phospholipases. So cortisol reduces synthesis of both prostaglandins and leukotrienes (molecules of anaphylaxis that cause asthma attacks and other Type I hypersensitivities.)

Regarding physics: A surgeon friend of mine declined to join our discussion here as he felt the "modality" of CM had not been authenticated. I sent him a copy of Ted Kaptchuk's "Web.." which he found interesting but still declined to consider CM of real interest to the Western clinician. He was a little put off that I found it both interesting as well as quite useful ... perhaps more useful in some ways than WM. He wondered about double blind studies showing authentication of CM outcomes. I asked him, "What about WM's use of Schroedinger's equations to describe the statistical behavior of a partical in a one dimensional box?" :-) !!! Both he and I had to take physical chemistry and deal with that problem. WM in 2003 has not caught up with early 20th Century physics. CM and physics are way out ahead. So your comments, Joseph, brought me a chuckle.

Emmanuel SegmenBoth Z'ev R. and Bob Flaws have written extensively on the energetics of such drugs as Prednisone and Valium. Bob describes Prednisone as, I believe, a cooling surface-relieving category medicinal, which draws energy from the Mingmen and circulates it superiorly and superficially while cooling, much like Chai Hu. Obviously each medicinal is more complicated than just its category, and I'm definitely for those who can, combining biochemical understanding with energetic theory. I just think that a thorough reading of a medicinal's functions, indications and side effects, whatever the source and whatever the medicinal, can tell us enough to come up with a working energetic understanding of it, which will tell us not only when and on whom to use it, but how to more effectively combine drug and herb therapy. When I look at the side effects of birth control pills, they almost all look like blood stasis to me. Shmuel Halevi in the JCM makes a good case that the underlying mechanism leading to this is kidney qi xu caused by the BC pills. It's a fascinating overall topic and one that we all, it seems to me, need to be more versed on, considering that most of our patients are on some drug(s). I heard NPR talking about a new book about integrating Chinese herbs and modern drugs, but I don't know any more about it, didn't recognize the authors' names.As far as integrating Eastern and Western thought, I recall that physics has long struggled with the contradictory finding that the universe seems to simultaneously act like a wave and a particle, which makes no apparent sense to the reductionist outlook but one the Chinese would probably welcome. Perhaps modern physics has an answer now. I need to read physics again. I doubt if we're going to come up with a unified field theory online.Joseph

[Guest guest]

On Wednesday, March 12, 2003, at 08:40 AM, acugrpaz wrote:

 

> Both Z'ev R. and Bob Flaws have written extensively on the energetics

> of such drugs as Prednisone and Valium. Bob describes Prednisone as, I

> believe, a cooling surface-relieving category medicinal, which draws

> energy from the Mingmen and circulates it superiorly and superficially

> while cooling, much like Chai Hu. Obviously each medicinal is more

> complicated than just its category, and I'm definitely for those who

> can, combining biochemical understanding with energetic theory. I just

> think that a thorough reading of a medicinal's functions, indications

> and side effects, whatever the source and whatever the medicinal, can

> tell us enough to come up with a working energetic understanding of

> it, which will tell us not only when and on whom to use it, but how to

> more effectively combine drug and herb therapy.

 

It depends if you look at the proposed nature of a medicinal , its

pharmacodynamics, or a medicinal's pharmacokinetics. how it interacts

with the body after being metabolized. I see the nature of prednisone

as warm to hot, but after using it for an extended period of time at a

high dosage, it leads to a cold, vacuous condition when discontinued.

Most patients I see who use prednisone short term develop rapid,

flooding pulses, eventually becoming quite rough and often chaotic. In

addition, the tongue body tends to be red, with turbid or slimy yellow

coating, and some patients develop disturbed spirit-mind. These are

all heat or damp-heat signs. Long-term, the yang qi tends to be

exhausted, and the patients exhibit cold vacuity signs, with slow

pulses, pale swollen tongues, weight gain and exhaustion. The Chinese

studies I've seen seem to agree. One group of studies was translated

into English as " Steroid Syndrome " by C.S. Cheung at Harmonious

Sunshine Cultural Center. This group of studies concludes that

generally one needs to supplement kidney yin while patients are on

prednisone, and supplement kidney yang after discontinuing the drug.

 

A possible reason for the above is proposed by the Arndt-Shultz Law of

pharmacology, which states the medicinal effects of a substance are

determined by the amount of time it is taken, the dosage given, and the

strength of the substance. Shultz further stated that 1)'medicines in

large doses evoke the symptoms of the very condition that they are used

to treat 2) small doses stimulate, larger doses inhibit, and extreme

doses kill . You can read about this in Volume IV of Harris Coulter's

" Divided Legacy " , perhaps the best modern history of medicine in the

West.

 

I agree with Bob Flaws that prednisone liberates and scatters essence

to the exterior, and tends to relieve exterior skin conditions and

reduce inflammations. However, I wonder if the mechanism of action

will differ from Chinese medicinals. Skin diseases can seem to be

alleviated by suppression, i.e. pushing them to a deeper level of the

body, perhaps into the blood. It is known that skin diseases sometimes

alternate with asthma or rheumatoid arthritis. When eczema is relieved

by cortisone cream, sometimes asthma can flare up. I am aware of the

homeopathic theory of disease repression, I have not, however, been

able to draw a conclusive idea of Chinese medical theory on this

subject. Do scattering, wind-dispelling medicinals suppress skin

diseases? Is skin rash ever a side effect of exterior-releasing

medicinals? I've been looking at the SHL concept of transmuted

patterns as one possible explanation. Basically, inappropriate

treatment of exterior patterns can cause them to fall inward.

 

While we can propose some chai hu-like effects, prednisone also reminds

me of fu zi, which while quite hot, can lead to kidney yang vacuity

cold by overstimulating the kidney yang and scattering the essence.

Its heat and acridity have a scattering effect, which is why it is

usually taken with yin supplementing medicinals or spleen supplementing

medicinals, to 'ground' it. In Chinese medicine one cannot supplement

kidney yang without simultaneously supplementing kidney yin, or the

yang supplementation qualities will be lost.

 

It is interesting that prednisone is recommended in " Steroid Syndrome "

to be taken with liu wei di huang wan (as one recommendation).

 

Just thinking out loud here.