Guest guest Posted January 4, 2004 Report Share Posted January 4, 2004 Below are 2 studies I stumbled across in an infertility search. It is unclear, but the first study below seems to characterize endometriosis as always being blood stasis; they differentiate the disease, not the patient. It does not appear that only patients with a blood stasis dx were chosen, but rather any patient with endo. but we would need to read the whole study in order to be sure. If the patients were not differentiated and results are valid (a big if), then we have to ask how we could expect better success rates than 80-90% using pattern differentiation. I have read 1000's of abstracts of CM research over the years and most clinical studies I have seen seem to be done allopathically. Yet they still exhibit high success rates. I would remind members of a post by Bob Felt several months ago, where he reminded us that condition based treatment has a long successful history in china side by side the bian zheng tradition. Perhaps we are being hasty by insisting on only teaching the bian zheng system of prescribing a the gold standard. I don't think research supports this, thus we are basing our bias on the words of the literate physicians of the past. However they assumed that others failed at medicine because they did not study the classics. But it could have been any number of other factors. When an educated person sees an uneducated person messing up, the natural elitist assumption is that lack of education is the cause. I do it all the time. And I am often wrong. despite my personal bias for the TCM approach, CHA was founded to support any approach to chinese herbology that was supported by either research or tradition. It now appears that both research and tradition lend support to a condition based approach to treatment. If this is true, what would the training of such a px entail? Would it be like naturopathy is practiced in some states? Where chinese formulas are prescribed for conditions (modern like hepatitis or traditional like cough) without pattern differentiation. Or in modern japan, where many MD's prescribe herbs allopathically. Should we support or oppose this? If we opposed it, what would our basis be? Fact is, Md's and Nd's can practice this way right now in most states where they are licensed. If we supported it, we would be admitting that much of our knowledge base was not necessary for successful practice. One could just as well be an expert in modern physiology and pharmacology. Now do not get too worried about this logical inevitability. Because our training also leads to safe effective practice. thus, the value of both approaches to education and therapy will be validated. And this may be one of those paradigmatic conundrums that rocks the boat of " normal science " . As the chinese have always evidenced in their medical literature, there is not one right theory or method. In western science, there are single solutions often being sought. When western science accepts that alternate maps have equal validity, something of great significance will have changed. We can keep pressing our point that science is always wrong or stats don't matter. But when we reject western science as an alternate map of value, how different is that from rejecting five phase or kanpo. Zhong Xi Yi Jie He Za Zhi. 1991 Sep;11(9):524-6, 515. Related Articles, Links [Treatment of endometriosis with removing blood stasis and purgation method] [Article in Chinese] Wang DZ, Wang ZQ, Zhang ZF. Long Hua Hospital, Shanghai College of TCM. According to the method of differentiation of symptom complexes of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), endometriosis is a disease of blood stasis and mass in the lower portion of abdomen. 76 cases were treated by TCM prescription named endometriotic pill No 1 with rhubarb as the main ingredient. The chief functions of the rhubarb were removing blood stasis, disintegrating mass and purgation. The total effective rate was 80.26%. Among them, the effective rate of dysmenorrhea was 88.89%, that of pelvic pain was 66.72%, that of intercourse pain 72.12%, and diminishing in size of mass or nodule 22.15%; 3 cases of 22 infertility got pregnant (13.63%). The results revealed that the endometriotic pill No 1 yielded distinct improvement in the treatment of endometriosis, including clinical symptoms and signs, laboratory assay of blood rheology, serum Ig, subgroup of T lymphocyte (OKT system) and PG. PMID: 1773464 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] Zhongguo Zhong Xi Yi Jie He Za Zhi. 1994 Jun;14(6):337-9, 323-4. Related Articles, Links [Clinical study of the treatment of endometriosis with traditional Chinese medicine] [Article in Chinese] Liu JX. Chengdu College of TCM. 46 endometriotic patients were treated by the method of removing Blood Stasis and resolving Phlegm, softening and resolving the Lump (RBS-RP-SRL). The total effective rate was 91.3%. Among them, the effective rate of dysmenorrhea was 97.6%, that of anal tenesmic was 94.3%, that of intercourse pain 86.7%, and 86.7% diminished in size of mass or nodule, 6 of 10 infertility patients became pregnant. It was showed by the laboratory assay that the cases were in the abnormal condition of nail bed microcirculation and hemorheology, which could be significantly improved after treatment. The results revealed that it was effective in treating endometriosis with the method of RBS-RP-SRL. Publication Types: Clinical Trial PMID: 8000220 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] Chinese Herbs FAX: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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