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.

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.

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?

A friend of mine who's a doctor shared this story when I asked

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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.

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

I appreciate your views. But is there nothing positive from alternative medicine? Have you ever had a sickness which Western medicine couldn't cure but you got it cured through alternative treatments?

The impression I'm getting is that most people believe everything should be fixed with surgery or drugs and there is absolutely no benefit whatsoever with nutrition or fasting to ones health. Even on the topic of fighting cancer, those anecdotal stories you hear here and there. Or from testimonials you can find online, are we saying all of them are untrue? That western medicine is the only thing which can cure cancer?

I'm sure you have heard that is a drug works on 100 people, it doesn't mean it works for all people.

Can we not give some credit to any non drug based treatment? Really none at all? Absolute bs?

I’ll give you a couple of pertinent reasons why I would advocate for allopathic medicine (that is the proper nomenclature to apply, it is not “Western” medicine) and not alternative methods as far as disease (not only cancer) treatment is concerned.

Firstly, as a doctor, governed by the rules and statutes that both protect as well as prosecute practitioners, I don’t have the luxury to quote statistically improbable, anecdotal cases that may be a mathematical outlier to give false hope to patients. We have to deal with empirical evidence and the evidence must be backed up by statistical outcomes.

A tik-tokker can claim that his words in his videos are for entertainment purposes when his “advice” causes the death of a follower. A doctor has no such defense.

Secondly, unlike proponents of alternative methods, allopathic medicine does not reject an alternative suggestion but instead subjects it to rigorous scientific scrutiny and research. If the statistics and the trials demonstrate efficacy and safety above and beyond that which can be attributed to chance (ie statistically significant outcome), then, the alternative method is incorporated into allopathic medicine and ceases to be labelled “alternative”. A prime example would be the use of artemisinin for malaria treatment.

It’s not us versus “them”, but that’s not often the case with supporters of alternative approaches. They will reject allopathic treatment and hype up the side effects without acknowledging the benefits, and they are quick to quote anecdotal cases of unexpected or unexplained “healing” without understanding why, or even ensuring the full facts are listed (eg the case quoted re colon cancer and carotene hyperdoses - surgery was conveniently left out of the whole story).

I hope this gives you a snippet into the view commonly held by doctors when it comes to alternative strategies.

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.

It is reported that 80.9% of cases are mild, with flu-like symptoms and can recover at home.

13.8% are severe cases, developing severe diseases including pneumonia and shortness of breath.

4.7% are critical and can include respiratory failure, septic shock, and multi-organ failure.

Above statements are based on cases in China as of February 11, a paper by the Chinese CCDC, released on February 17 and published in the Chinese Journal.

Source

So there is a good chance that some of us will able to get through it without ever realising it. However for those who have one or more condition listed below, precaution steps are vital:
- Chronic respiratory disease
- Cardiovascular disease
- Age 60 & above
- Hypertension
- Diabetes
- Smoker

Due to the nature of the virus which is not fully understood, it is better to take necessary means to avoid it, furthermore not to spread it to your loved ones and be part of the statistics.

Currently what make most people worried is the virus ability to infect others when there is no symptom or during incubation period. From my opinion, it is less likely to spread, my logic are as follows:

Those with fever are much likely to spread the virus easily to others compared to those with no symptoms, because when your body are OVERRUNS with harmful microorganism, your immune system next step is to increase your body temperature to kill, halt or slowdown the harmful microorganism replication, which will usually result in better fighting chance for your immune system.

More dangerously are fever with cough/flu symptom, it will result super spreader category, because the virus attack and reside in your lungs, cough is an action to clear your throat by forcing air out of your lungs. Cough can spread droplets as far as six metres into air and objects, get the picture now?

No symptom/incubation = virus hardly replicate enough to caused harm to the body, hence very unlikely to spread.

Currently the best way to differentiate normal fever and Covid-19 are shortness in breath, other symptoms are simply too common for Malaysian folk. So please wear mask or stay home if you have any of those symptoms.

Disclaimer: I'm not advising or advocating any ideas, I'm just expressing my thoughts due to countless toxic comments against any narrative different from their own. Do not generalize what I stand for, and take it with a pinch of salt.

So please read it with an open mind.

First you need to understand the basic, which is healthcare industry market size is worth more than a trillion dollar worldwide, and it is still growing steadily. They spend billions of dollar on commission, marketing, and advertisement.

Like any other business, profit is the main focus, so here is my question: Are you telling me that they will never jeopardize our health for profits? Please don't be guilible and naive when answering it, be critical.

Imagine if I'm selling you a product, but I give no guarantee that it will work as intended, due to many reason such as the strain evolve, no herd immunity and so on. Would you buy that product? Because like many new vaccine flooding the market, it doesn't have any solid scientific proof of its effectiveness.

Now here comes the brilliant part of the marketing, because herd immunity is the main focus, and because everyone values their own/children life more than anything, it makes them go hostile to anyone that have different opinion regarding the vaccine industry.

Not only they could get away with selling product that is not guarantee to work, but they are able to demonize anyone that don't subscribe to their doctrine.

You know what is irony? Herd immunity. To inform everyone to quietly take your vaccine is synonymous to be treated as cattle, which has no capacity to think for itself whatsoever.

I would like to remind everyone that I'm not againts vaccine in general, there are vital vaccine that comes with many years of scientific research and proof of its effectiveness. What I'm against is any discrimination of people's freedom to choose what to do with their own body.

By any chance if you get angry with the logic and explanation I put fourth, I'm terribly sorry, there is no vaccine to cure that disease, tough luck.