In my last 2 short posts, I have briefly explained the misapplication of scientific technologies to traditional medicines and that its failure to properly evaluate the true value of these tried-and-true therapies has landed us in the vicious cycle (VC), with apparently no viable natural alternatives. The reason is that, due to this misapplication of technologies, traditional medicines, such the Chinese herbs or Indian medicines, have never been properly evaluated and subsequently modernized the right way to still retain their age-old traditional attributes, hence their well-known and documented values. Instead, what we currently have is not traditional herbal medicines, but chemicals arbitrarily selected to represent them. These chemicals can simply be isolated and, if feasible, promptly synthesized. Being made from petrochemicals, containing also such brand-new, totally unknown ones as impurities, they will fit right into our VC. I was trained in Big Pharma’s chemical-oriented technologies and have used them for decades. Even now, at times, if I am not thinking totally straight, these technologies still take over my mind. Thus, toxic chemical drugs have so occupied my thinking along with the apparent ruination (or at best, tossing-aside) of Chinese medicine that I almost did not realize there is another way to deal with the VC. That was after months of being active on LinkedIn, having connected with a whole new movement heading towards alternative healthcare; I changed my mind.
From a few dozen connections several months ago to now, close to 3,500. Many of my colleagues are drug experts and over half are alternative-oriented, and practicing non-drug therapies. With genuine herbal supplements and natural chemicals from nature (not synthesized from brand-new toxins), we can build an alternative path based on mostly Chinese tonic herbs and formulas that have doubled safely as both food and medicine for millennia. Some of which are already being used as herbal supplements, though much confusion still exists in this field. I am going to try to change that, hopefully with your support.
If this is the first time you hear or read about the VC, please first read my paper, “A Disruptive Concept in Drug Therapy” or my new book, “My Life & Rollercoaster Career,” at least its Introduction, to get an overall picture of what modern drug therapy and traditional medicines actually are. The VC is described there many times.
This VC is now firmly established in our life and occupies a key part of our healthcare, whether we like it or not. However, one thing I really don’t like and have been trying in recent years to figure out, is how this totally one-sided scenario could have emerged. I still have not found the answer. Yet, the drug makers have finally arrived at this VC, by chance, or by design. Since all synthetic drugs have toxic effects at their recommended dose levels (not just megadose) and can cause new diseases that are, in turn, treated with more new drugs, hence the VC. It goes on one after another. The pharmaceutical industry and its associates control this VC. No need to make drugs that work, or safe. Just safe enough not to kill test animals too soon. Our modern drug scientists (discoverers & developers) call this ‘evidence-based’ medicine, while they refer to traditional medicines non-scientific and anecdotal, no matter how long the tradition or how well documented, intimating that our ancestors were ignorant. The simple truth is, neither modern drug therapy nor traditional tried-and-true medicine is scientific, as explained earlier in my previous posts here or on my blog (www.ayslcorp.com/blog).
We are now at a point that our conventional scientific endeavors are moving too fast, often tainted or corrupted by money. It seems every scientific undertaking related to health and sickness is incentivized by the amount of profit one can make. To maximize profit we have patents to prevent others from doing the same thing so that, depending on our conscience, we can demand any price, and no one can do anything about it. I’m sure many patents are legitimate, especially those with easily measurable outcome. However, with synthetic drugs or complex herbs for disease treatment, the uncontrollable nature of the elements of time and our extremely complex and well-organized body, are in their way. A patented synthetic drug does not guarantee it would work decades after it has been approved and is in human use. How do you judge the performance of these medicines and grant them patents? What if it causes cancer or some new diseases (or increases the incidences of old ones) 5 years, or even 25, after approval? What happens then? The drug maker would return our money? I know I am not supposed to ask so many questions to upset the status quo. But I can’t help it.
With so many scientific advancements, each of us digging deeper and deeper into our own hole (specialty), say, on a hill, with no idea how they would affect the hill (our health), nor do we even care, just doing research for the sake of research? I assume the hill would eventually collapse and all that digging was for naught, at least as far as the hill is concerned. I think this is similar to our current life-science research efforts. Some of our research has produced great results, many of which find specific invaluable applications in our daily lives. But how can they help our health? I don’t think we know, because most of us are free thinkers with a free will, though some of us might have been brainwashed by Big Pharma at a young age and then dragged into the VC, not knowingly. I was one such scientist for decades. But fate has led me through a rollercoaster career and eventually ended up where I am – an entrepreneurial herbal scientist, not just a chemist or herbalist, but a scientist with insight into these fields. I can see the benefits of our herbal tradition, not just seeking out any particular chemical in the herbs we like or in which we have the expertise to turn the chemical into a modern drug, eventually synthesized. There doesn’t seem to be any concerted effort to set a defined goal to benefit the health of the general public. However, I do have some ideas and plans.
Regardless, what is health anyway? We are now firmly established in this VC era. We live by some average numbers based on statistics, without taking into consideration an individual’s own constitution. If we are within the normal range, we are deemed healthy. Otherwise, the medical and pharmaceutical establishments will prescribe drugs to bring your numbers back to normal.
There are various criteria for good health or optimal health. Some people have taken drugs from an early age and have always taken them for one thing or another. These people with all these drug molecules inside their bodies may feel ‘fine’ in general, but they are prone to aches and pains that can be alleviated by more drugs, some brand new. Then, when they become seniors, half of them take over half-a-dozen prescription drugs daily. They may survive to 70 or 80. But is this a truly healthy life compared to the one lived by many who seldom, if ever, take drugs, legal or illegal?
I like to tell people about the Chinese dish chop suey when comparing good health (or just surviving) to optimal or great health. Among the Cantonese people, legend has it that chop suey started during the Gold-Rush era (ca 1849), when many young men, mostly from my mother’s village, Sun Wui (Xinhui) and nearby ones, especially Toy San (Taishan) (Mandarin spelling in italics) went to San Francisco, or “Gold Mountain,” to seek fame and fortune. They mostly ended up in the food and laundry, or other service businesses. Being frugal, they didn’t throw away the leftovers but saved them, mixed them up and stir-fried them the next day with maybe some fresh beansprouts and called it chop suey (meaning “mixed bits & pieces”) to serve to their customers. For my millennial and younger colleagues and friends, you have grown up in the more recent era when communication with Asia and other faraway countries is already instant or only minutes away. I bet you have never tasted chop suey, because most Chinese restaurants don’t serve it anymore. However, back in the 1950’s and 1960’s, it was a popular dish in Chinese restaurants for non-Chinese Americans. That represented ‘Chinese food’ to them up until probably 1980’s or 1990’s when you could get practically any Chinese food close to those served in Hong Kong. So, if you only knew chop suey as Chinese food and liked it, you hadn’t tasted real Chinese food. The difference between them was like night and day. That’s why I like to give this as an example to describe our health in America. Many people with all these drug molecules in their body may think they are healthy because they can easily get hold of drugs to treat their ups or downs to return to their drug-maintained normal. However, they have probably never known true health without drugs. Mine belongs to the latter, truth health without drugs. I want to help introduce this to our younger generations by bypassing the VC.
Our body is naturally resilient. If we take good care of it through good nutrition, regular exercise, and avoid stress and drugs, it has self-healing powers that allow it to right itself from an occasional abuse, whatever it is.
With such a body system, we can be naturally healthy without synthetic drugs in our alternative path parallel to that of the VC. More than half of my connections are practicing in such areas as nutrition, lifestyles, natural therapies, herbs, acupuncture, moxibustion, qigong, tuina massage, gong fu, energy healing, etc.), true prevention (not what is practiced by the medical or pharmaceutical professions where prevention simply means detecting a disease early and treating it with more toxic drugs), and many others. This has probably been ongoing for some years while I was busy winding down my business after losing two of my major products to another company that persuaded the younger generation of my client to switch to cheaper versions without much genuine extracts in them [see “Chapter 9: Adulteration Continues to be a Major Problem” of my newest book, “My Life & Rollercoaster Career.”].
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