Ayurvedic treatments

Cynic · Post by **Cynic** » Sat Dec 19, 2009 12:06 am

So I'm finally giving in to my parents and trying out an ayurvedic treatment center in India. Some of the stuff is wonky (purging and having a bucket of medicated oil on your head, for example) but I'm doing it mainly because I'm tired of being a sick bastitch and also to appease my mother who just had a triple bypass. so any of you have any advice/rants/criticism about Ayurveda and such. please do tell.

for lulz and help with advice -- here is a link to a possible place I'll be going with the list of the treatments

TEH AYURVEDA

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sat Dec 19, 2009 12:21 am

It's alternative medicine specifically because it doesn't work.

You can tell it's fake by the first two sentences, in which they talk shit about how the meticulously comply with ancient practices.

Hint: If your practice can't be improved by modern medical knowledge in the last 60 years, your "practice" must be swindling rubes.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Dec 19, 2009 12:35 am

Ayuveda came up with some kind of cool shit back in like forever ago. Heating iron needles to do cataract surgery with. For classical era bullshit, that shit is impressive.

And um... that's about it. These days people in Traditional India fucking die of leprosy while people in the major cities can go to hospitals and get a cycle of antibiotics for like 5 dollars in Rupees.

-Username17

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Sat Dec 19, 2009 9:21 am

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0W7Jbc_Vhw

Hilariously awesome poem. Best line:

By definition, alternative medicine has either not been proved to work, or has been proved not to work/do you know what they call alternative medicine that's been proved to work?/_/Medicine

Judging__Eagle · Post by **Judging__Eagle** » Sun Dec 20, 2009 1:40 am

Except for one thing, a lot of new pharma is "alternative" medicine.

Shiritai · Post by **Shiritai** » Sun Dec 20, 2009 3:30 am

Be especially careful about anything taken orally, since lead, mercury, and arsenic are part of a few ayurvedic remedies.

mean_liar · Post by **mean_liar** » Mon Dec 21, 2009 6:25 pm

Can we ask what you're sick with? Feel free to ignore this if you don't want to divulge.

Cynic · Post by **Cynic** » Mon Dec 21, 2009 9:26 pm

http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?p=113152

sorry, for being lazy.

mean_liar · Post by **mean_liar** » Tue Dec 22, 2009 1:02 pm

Have you tried daily zen meditation? If your migraines are psychogenic then it might help.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Tue Dec 22, 2009 1:08 pm

But migraines would make meditation hard. So by successfully meditating, the migraines would have already stopped. That's almost Zen.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Wed Dec 23, 2009 4:25 am

You can totally meditate while having a migraine.

It's umm... Interesting. Like meditating while on LSD. Plus sea sickness.

It's not like the headache makes it better or worse, really, it's meditating. How much harder does it have to be?

-Crissa

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Wed Dec 23, 2009 7:21 am

I'm pretty sure meditation involves clearing your mind of all distractions, and ignoring things like the explosive pain in your head.

Though it's interesting you mention LSD. I hear from a reliable source* that LSD can stop migraines while they're happening.

*House MD

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Wed Dec 23, 2009 10:57 am

The only proof is that it works on cluster headaches. No therapeutic value, eh?

But yeah.

-Crissa

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Wed Dec 23, 2009 5:39 pm

I've got a neophyte's education in Traditional Chinese Medicine, and that came with a very small amount of knowledge of Ayurveda. Anyway, what I learned from TCM probably applies to most well-established archaic medical practices: some of it works, some of it does not. Better outcomes result from maximizing the placebo effect in any case, so please try to believe in it. The theory is a combination of empirical (but not scientific) knowledge and mystical bullshit. If you're lucky, the treatment you get stems more from the first and less from the second. The biggest advantage of these sorts of medicines is that you can do them in a kitchen or in the woods rather than a hospital. They also sometimes have good dietary counseling.

On the subject of migraines: apparently the majority of regular (monthly/weekly) migraines are caused by and over medicated 'see-saw effect'. Physical addiction to pain medication (even ibuprofen) coupled with immediate heavy medication when a migraine starts coming on basically keeps the brain oscillating continuously between a heavily medicated state and a drug withdrawal/migraine state.

In one trial, people who were taken off all pain medications went from suffering weekly migraines to having only 1 to 3 per year. That first week must have been hell though...
I'll ask my wife to give me the link; she gets migraines (hormonal, like almost all female migraine sufferers), so it was of particular interest to her.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Wed Dec 23, 2009 8:18 pm

Yeah, I was warned when I started hormone therapy that my migraines might get worse.

They actually got better. Most years I don't even have them anymore.

-Crissa

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Wed Dec 23, 2009 8:31 pm

Crissa wrote:Yeah, I was warned when I started hormone therapy that my migraines might get worse.

They actually got better. Most years I don't even have them anymore.

-Crissa

It's amazing what a delicate balance the human body exists in. Epilepsy can be the same way; puberty is usually the onset. My mother completely stopped having seizures after her first pregnancy, another big hormonal rebalancing. It makes predicting the effects of drugs all the more difficult--and I can't imagine that hormones in the water supply are making things any more straightforward.

I wonder if you could help men with migraines by putting them on birth control pills or testosterone or something...

mean_liar · Post by **mean_liar** » Thu Dec 24, 2009 4:38 pm

Ideally you'd be meditating while NOT having a migraine.