Ok this is going to be an interesting topic. There are quite a few believers of alternative treatments and usually they are the ones kena bashed and labeled gullible, stupid etc.

Let's have a good discussion here. Doctors like hgsgmy, please come in.

Let's start with the CAM believers. Do you personally know anyone who's in remission through alternative treatment? What is it that they have tried?

Doctors, have you had any patients who decided to go CAM and recovered? What are your thoughts about it? Why do you not support CAM? Can CAM work hand in hand with conventional? What if a patient is terminal, if the patient wants to try CAM, is it still stupid?

This is serious kopitiam so let's be respectful. The aim of this thread is to help people understand more about the benefits and dangers of CAM and conventional medicine.

There's no such thing as "alternative" treatment.

Alternative treatment implies that such treatment options are valid choices, when there is no scientific proof for these treatments, meaning going through well designed, usually double-blinded clinical trials, multiple stages, to prove efficacy, dosage, risk and side effects, safety, and can be reproduced. Anecdotes, like my aunt's neighbour's son's classmate ate this and they say good, is pointless and nothing but stories.

Effective treatments have gone through rounds and rounds of studies, billions of RnD funds, and years of research done by thousands and thousands of really smart people.

That's the term used - complementary and alternative medicine. I didn't come out with that term.

Anyway we know what they are, let's not discuss about the definition here.

Perhaps you can share your experience and thoughts why do you think they don't work.

Then how do you explained someone with zero covid vax and get zero covid, just minor flu?

But the billions of R&d 4 times vaccine and wear mask still can get covid?

delete if you dont like this

We have already been through this many times. The vaccine doesn't stop infection 100%, it reduces your chances of hospitalization and death drastically. The people who get COVID and die while already vaccinated is many times less than the unvaccinated people who get COVID and die, percentage wise.

It's probability, not black and white, 0% or 100%. Only small kids deal with absolute black and white.

A friend of mine who's a doctor shared this story when I asked him about breast cancer (a family of mine was diagnosed this).
Some details might be fuzzy but enough to get the gist of it.

This lady was diagnosed with breast cancer, so the way forward is mastectomy.
She was not keen on having hers removed (thinking about her hubby ) and wanted to seek alternative treatment, against the doctors advise since time is critical in tackling cancer.

Some period of time later she came back for follow-up, this time her whole left breast is black-blue and smells rotten. She said that she's been exploring multiple alternative treatment but to no avail.
A lot of practitioners she met have made promises but came empty, so she jumped from one alternative treatment to another.
Even at this time, she still insists on saving her breast somehow, but she will not agree to the mastectomy. Wasn't much my friend could do at that point.

She never came back to the hospital after that as far as he knows.

IMO in most cases you should treat alternative medicine as the last-ditch attempt if modern medicine have failed you, not the other way around.

I've heard many stories like this from my friend too. He's oncologist. So many people, especially Chinese but Malay also got, when prognosis come out only stage1/2, don't want to listen to doctor, want to listen to aunty uncle yima guje eat this MLM product go this sinseh, then come back to doctor too late, already stage 4. Want to help also cannot help.

Even during chemotherapy, many failed chemo patients also mostly Chinese patients because a lot of food don't eat, or simply eat dunno what herbs. In the end not enough nutrition body cannot tahan have to stop chemo.

many years ago, i personally knew someone who had stage 4 cancer. Doctor said no hope, told her to prepare for last days and say goodbye to love ones.

So she went to Mexico spent several months there, some kind of alternative treatment, eat lots of organic vegetables.

it didn't work, she passed away many years ago

Mine was mostly Malay, so I don't think it's any less prevalent across race. Very sad to have the saveable cancer patients miss that window by going to alternative medicine.

Another point although off-topic is breast cancer on women. It's generally easily detectable, yet alot of them won't have them removed because of the 'value' attached to the women themselves, but that'd require a separate discussion altogether.

CAM is for health preserving. but when comes to cancer, even tcm use poison to fight poison.

han dynasty 2000 years ago ppl use arsenic with mixture of other stuff to treat cancer.

this specific way of treating cancer is now use to treat specific leukemia, even published and use in US.

actually some chemo also uses herbs/plants

"However, some plant extracts have been found to have anti-cancer effects and have been turned into chemotherapy drugs. These include vincristine from the periwinkle plant, and taxanes from the bark of the Pacific yew tree"

Well friend practice in Penang ma so obviously will be more Chinese there. Really very sad. Screening also very taboo for some. Like prostate and colon have to go from behind some also pantang.

Sorry to ask, I heard that for the Malays, there is even option for rawatan Islam. Is that true and would you count that as alternative treatment?

Alternative medicine never truly address the core cancer cells, but merely alleviate the symptoms or overall health.
And then you have chemotherapy that directly kills cancer cell. Its a no brainer actually which one is the most effective. Sure, there are plenty of super foods, antioxidants out there. You can eat brocolli everyday but it won't treat the tumor. Same goes with alternative medicine.

My mom was offered Vitamin C injection treatment for her breast cancer. Was quoted 200k for the program. And this is where I realize that so-called practitioners are making money off of gullible people and selling empty promises.

I rather pay thousands for drugs that inhibits my mother's hormone which feeds the cancer cell directly than giving her something that is only working 1% of the time.

For me, seek professional medical help first. Any form of supplements, herbs or chants only serve as a complimentary treatment. Not the other way around.

There is, yes it count as alternative treatment, to my knowledge the origin for malay's alternative treatment can originate from pseudoscience, indonesian root, siamese root or islamic root.

I'd trust the islamic one out of perceived knowledge of historical accumulation (same way I'd trust chinese medicine), problem is the practices are very intermingled (e.g. siamese ritual using indonesian herbs with islamic chants) that it doesn't look like anything identifiable anymore.

Personally if you ask me it's mostly just scams that it's not worth trying to sieve through to find the legitimate ones.

If you look, got lots of stuff which support your body while you are doing conventional therapy.

There is this guy got colon cancer. Done one cycle of chemotherapy and then he said nope. Started on pure carrot everyday until he turn yellow due to taking too much carrot. Cancer gone until today. His name is Chris and he wrote a book about his story. Chris beats cancer.

Stuff like green tea extract, lycopene, sulphorophane are very potent natural cancer killer.

If can got immunotherapy, it's better than chemotherapy. Chemotherapy is massive bombing and immunotherapy is targeted bombing. Immunotherapy makes your body attack the cancer cell and have been shown some gut health is involve. Without a specific bacteria in the gut, immunotherapy won't work.

So cannot leave out both world.

After reading and watching youtube
1. There is no cure for cancer but can extend life (and suffering) with chemo
2. MRNA learning from COVID should be used for targeted cancer destruction but seems like we are still far away from it

interested enough to do short research on this, and
he had surgery to remove the cancer part, the chemo therapy he rejected is follow-up treatment after surgery

the surgery removed the cancer, he didnt beat cancer

Prime example is Steve Jobs. Had pancreatic cancer, surgery to remove it would have sufficed but nope. Delayed for 9 months and you all know the rest of the story. The riches man on the planet spent 9 months on alternative medicine. Must have spent a shit tonne of money on injections to salves to supplements.

That obviously didn't work

Sarcasm cap firmly on:

For some, they might argue that Jobs didn’t use google because he was waiting for Apple to come up with its own search engine to trawl the internet for the holy grail of mystical alternative treatments.