Chi: Is it real?

[Joseff Lea]

RatioFitness, I don't think cancer is a good example. I could be wrong, but I believe that cancer is faaaar less common in the East anyway.

If eastern medicine is just as good western medicine then you can't cherry pick which types of diseases you compare. That seems fair to me. Of course if eastern medicine is only good at treating certain types of pathologies then that's fine, but I was responding to the claim that it was equal in general.

Also, you're right that cancer is more prevalent in west but I'm not sure I see the relevance here.

Then you can't cherry pick how the stats work. Do you know that in China, you pay a doctor to keep you well? You don't go see a doctor when you're sick - if you GET too sick, you stop paying him. They work to _prevent_ sickness.

Then if cancer is less prevalent in China than the US, and these people are being treated by doctors, then their cancer prevention rates are going to kick our asses.

I think you may have a point here and that prevention is better than cure, In a ideal world you would go to the doctor once a year, have full blood test, brain scans, full skin exam for melanoma, physical exams etc so that you could pick up anything early. I wonder if they have this sort of approach in Japan (where life expectancy is the highest in the world 88ish I think), whereas in the UK/US you have to be ill before being treated and the cumulative damage of those small "niggling" diseases/injuries could lower your life expectancy. Any ideas?

However to say that cancer prevention rates in china are better due to eastern medicine may be false, life expectancy is much less in china (roughly 10 years less) and as cancers tend to develop later in life you would expect there to be less. Also some cancers may not be detected and the body may be buried without a post-mortem (I'm thinking in rural china here). Further the amount of processed foods (which is linked to all sorts of cancers) we eat in the western world is much greater. So I think you would be hard pushed to conclude that eastern medicine is significantly responsible for reducing cancer when compared to western

I've decided that on my off days that I'm going to try a bit of meditation/self hypnosis (I have a book about self hypnosis and I think it's essentially the same) and see how far I can develop the aforementioned skills of reducing body temperature etc, I will report my progress in my log.

[Aaron Griffin]

I've decided that on my off days that I'm going to try a bit of meditation

Meditation is something completely different and has been shown to scientifically cause *physical* brain changes - the broad category it falls under is called neuroplasticity. Awesome stuff, that.

PS I heartily recommend meditation - 5-10 minutes per day is enough

[Joseff Lea]

Phrak

Thank for the advice, I was going to start with about 5 mins and then work my way up to about 20. I plan on doing some traditional style meditation and also I'm going to try something a friend of mine who did karate recommends, basically just hold a basic karate stance and relax as much as possible at one point he worked up to doing 20 mins of that a day and he said it was much easier to get into "the zone" (I mentioned this earlier). Any more thoughts/advice?

Meditation is something completely different and has been shown to scientifically cause *physical* brain changes

hmm I'm sure I'll come to understand what you mean once I start. I believe that how learning works is that you create new pathways between nodes in the brain and physically change the brain, Is this what you mean?

[Gavin Strelitz]

Start with about 5 mins a day and work up to 20-25 mins. Try and meditate at the same time each day and try not to lie down, you'll most probably end up falling asleep. Also, try a few different techniques (breath-counting, visualisation, chanting, your mates's karate stance, etc...) until you find the technique that really resonates with you.

The start is the hardest part but it gets better and better.

[Aaron Griffin]

also I'm going to try something a friend of mine who did karate recommends, basically just hold a basic karate stance and relax as much as possible at one point he worked up to doing 20 mins of that a day and he said it was much easier to get into "the zone" (I mentioned this earlier). Any more thoughts/advice?

This sounds roughly like zhan zhuang, which is standing meditation in various postures. It's Chinese though (Karate is Japanese).

[Joshua Naterman]

Phrak

Thank for the advice, I was going to start with about 5 mins and then work my way up to about 20. I plan on doing some traditional style meditation and also I'm going to try something a friend of mine who did karate recommends, basically just hold a basic karate stance and relax as much as possible at one point he worked up to doing 20 mins of that a day and he said it was much easier to get into "the zone" (I mentioned this earlier). Any more thoughts/advice?

Meditation is something completely different and has been shown to scientifically cause *physical* brain changes

hmm I'm sure I'll come to understand what you mean once I start. I believe that how learning works is that you create new pathways between nodes in the brain and physically change the brain, Is this what you mean?

That description is neuroplasticity, yes. The ability of the brain to develop new pathways. It doesn't happen as quickly as in early childhood but our brains are much more plastic (changeable) than most practitioners have given them credit for.

Learning physical skills requires much more neural reconfiguration than just learning new information, but both will cause brain remodeling to some extent.

[RatioFitness]

I have to cherry pick examples. If I listed every single one this would be twenty thousand page post, and none of us can handle that. I don't even know if the server can handle that. It is important that we understand the limitations of our system as well as its broad applications.

Let me start by saying you have some excellent points. It is not practical to check for every problem, because that's an awful lot of tests. The interesting thing about eastern medicine is that they tend to look for a lack of wellness. I do not pretend to understand their intricacies, I am not formally educated in the subject and I have done virtually no reading into the diagnostic routines they use. I do not have time to learn everything, which I am not happy about. I like to learn, but everything takes time and I am quite busy. I would love, as I am sure many of us would, to hear a simple explanation of eastern medicine diagnostic practices. It may be as simple as a different perspective. If we are looking head on and they are looking from the left, they will see things we cannot and we will see things they cannot.

Doctors, by and large, get tired of constant self-education. They deal with people with all kinds of complaints day inand day out, and if I saw 10,000 people over the course of 3 years and 4-6,000 of them just wanted pills and didn't care what I had to say, it would probably mess with my willingness to keep reaching out as well. When all people want is a bottle, why should they waste their time trying for something better? Then you have the ego of many MDs, as you mentioned, and they can be quite stubborn and unwilling to be open to new ideas even when they are from their own field of study! Amazing. I don't understand that.

Because that probably doesn't make you get better sooner. Last I heard there are no cures for the common cold.

Do you know why you have not heard about what xylitol does? Because it costs 6 bucks a pound at the vitamin shoppe and that is enough for you to use for months at least. The drug companies can not make any money with it. Go to pubmed and search for xylitol and sinusitis. Read about how it works and what it does. There has been solid research since the '70s at the very latest, and I believe even earlier than that, that consistently and conclusively shows that xylitol is effective for a variety of issues. It is not a cure per se, but it literally reduces bacterial counts to the point where the body can overwhelm them much more quickly. It is more of an enabler that allows our own biological mucus systems to function more efficiently. I made my own xylitol and saline mix for 6 bucks and I haven't even gone through one bottle in the past 12 months. I have enough for 15-20 refills. Who's going to make money off of that? Why would they give us something that makes them no money when they can keep selling us chemicals with higher mark ups? That's what I would do if I was a business that was concerned with the highest profit margin.

Did you know that marijuana smoke is an effective treatment for athsma? That came out of either Harvard or Stanford Medical School in the late '70s. It was considerably more effective than the prescription medicines available at the time.

Did you know that putting honey, chewed up plant leaves, or simple sugar on a burn helps it heal 33% faster than our best drugs? Did you know that there is a 90%+ reduction in fungal infection when using sugar instead of the silver whatever the hell they use in burn units? You know why you haven't heard about that? Because honey is at the store. Sugar is at the store. Plant leaves are all around us. If there is glucose in it, it helps your body heal faster and somehow prevents infection.

The list really does go on forever. I will type no more after this post is finished, I promise!

Aspirin. We got it from native americans who chewed willow bark. Drug companies send headhunters, specialists in finding medicine men, out into native cultures around the world so that they can refine the active chemical compounds in the local remedies and sell them. This was a Discovery Channel special! Drug companies are essentially refining herbal medicine and reselling it at a premium. Now, it is perfectly fair to say that there are advantages to that outside of the obvious monetary ones, but think about what is actually going on. It's a money game.

If it wasn't a money game, why are 90% of spinal fusions done with a technique that is only best for 20-30% of patients? The answer is because it costs twice as much money. This was an NPR special. A huge scandal up in the northeastern US.

I'm sorry if I sound like I'm lambasting you, because that's not my intention. I want you to be aware of what is going on around us and start looking into it on your own because you have good questions and you deserve good answers. The major limitation of medicine in the US is that most research funding is from pharmaceutical companies and they are not going to fund research unless it has the potential to produce future profits. That is good business, plain and simple. That's money. It's not evil, it's not good, it's just how things are done. That is why there will always be stiff resistance from the big players in American medicine to the adoption of other alternative methods, at least until there is a way to make money off of the alternatives in equivalent quantities.

I have not provided any links because these are simple searches to make. Google and pubmed have it all. I encourage everyone to find their own answers. If I did not go find MY own, I would have nothing to contribute here. We need to each be responsible for our own self-education.

Whew, you can write. I don't have answers to all those questions, but I do thank you for taking the time to write all that. I don't know if I have any specific response to what you've said, so we'll just leave it at that for now.

[RatioFitness]

RatioFitness, I don't think cancer is a good example. I could be wrong, but I believe that cancer is faaaar less common in the East anyway.

If eastern medicine is just as good western medicine then you can't cherry pick which types of diseases you compare. That seems fair to me. Of course if eastern medicine is only good at treating certain types of pathologies then that's fine, but I was responding to the claim that it was equal in general.

Also, you're right that cancer is more prevalent in west but I'm not sure I see the relevance here.

Then you can't cherry pick how the stats work. Do you know that in China, you pay a doctor to keep you well? You don't go see a doctor when you're sick - if you GET too sick, you stop paying him. They work to _prevent_ sickness.

Then if cancer is less prevalent in China than the US, and these people are being treated by doctors, then their cancer prevention rates are going to kick our asses.

Friend, you must first provide me with the statistics before you can accuse me of misusing them.

Are you sure they don't go to doctors when they get sick? Perhaps that it true, but I don't know what they think that will accomplish.

Lastly, you cannot assume that their lower cancer rates are due to their medical practices. If you have data that shows that its the specific cause, then I would love to see that also, but there are many potential causes that could explain the difference.

[Asclepius]

Hey everyone, I was looking up a thread I posted a little while ago and saw this thread, so I figured I would share my experience.

Up until this year, my college had a club for the Yan Xin Life Science and Technology organization. PLEASE tell me if anyone has ever heard of it.

A little background info. is that the organization is based off of Dr. Yan Xin's practice and teaching (though he is only listed as the "technical advisor" for the organization, or something along those lines I believe, and not the president or anything like that). He is essentially a master qigong practicer and healer.

Now, I joined this club because I had been interested in qigong ever since hearing about it from a high school psych teacher. Went to this club, and the actually practice is extremely odd at first with the technique, but that isn't the important thing.

The important thing about this is that Dr. Yan Xin is actually dedicated to researching the SCIENCE behind qigong. There are numerous accounts of him healing wheelchair bound people, and one in particular that sticks out in my mind is an account given by a factory worker who was healed by him, and literally less than a minute after being healed (which took a few minutes in itself), this dude went from having a broken back from an accident on the job to doing pull-ups in Dr. Xin's office.

So, anyway, the SCIENCE. There is actually a lot of research behind this technique. I have no idea why this isn't know so well, but there is an actual research facility, and I have a published paper sitting in front of me that I dug up just for this thread. The title is "Structure and property changes in certain materials influenced by the external qi of qigong" by Xin Y, Hui L, Hongmei L. Basically, external qi was emitted on various objects, and there were measured changes in the structure of said objects. For example, this guy was able to get protein crystals to form through qi emission. The impressive part is that changes were observed whether he was next to the substance, in the other room, or in one experiment, over the phone 1900 km away.

There are books about this stuff that have been written and are essentially filled with research done and personal experiences (the latter which may not mean much, but the former speaks for itself).

On a personal note, I practiced this for the better part of a year, and I remained fairly skeptical at most times with it. That is, until one day at a meeting and I was doing the technique. Years ago, I had gotten into an accident and basically had a very stiff neck when twisted a certain way that was clearly noticeably different from the other side. Not really painful, just a weird kink that was left over from the accident. Anyway, that one time I was practicing, I felt this extremely weird sensation in my neck. At first, it was admittingly uncomfortable, then just vanished. I went to turn my neck, and it was like a lock had been opened. I regained full ROM in my neck from that accident.

I have since fell out of practicing, kind of because the whole point of the club was practicing together, but I thought people may enjoy my story and see that there is real quantitative measurements of qi.

P.S. You can find these research articles I talked about strewn about on the internet.

[Joseff Lea]

Asclepius

That's pretty cool that this guy is actually applying scientific rigour to qi, I have to say though some of his claims seem extraordinary to say the least. The trouble with a lot of these miraculous healings is that they are not independently verifiable. As far as I know the only way to cure someone’s paralysis is with stem cells which is a highly experimental technique and not ready for trials in humans yet (I believe that they have had some success with mice though) .

I found the paper that you mentioned and when I have time I will give it a proper review (I have to do a lot of this kind of thing at uni), at the minute I don't have the time as exams are imminent but hopefully I’ll remember to have a proper look in about a months’ time.

It’s great that your practice helped cure your neck, I suppose in the long run it doesn't matter if you were really channelling qi or not the important thing is that you are better. What I find objectionable is people in vulnerable positions e.g. with cancer, being charged a fortune for a unproven treatment when we know that there are some viable treatments, I think this is highly unethical

[Asclepius]

spinelli -

There was a way that the basic process of qi direction is explained in one of the scientific books I mentioned on the subject (can't for the life of me remember the title right now though).

Other people in the club I was in explained benefits they have received. Several people described it helping with depression/anxiety/other psychological disorders. I remember one guy gave an account of how when he was little, he had an appendectomy, but this was actually long after his appendix had been leaking for quite a while (can't remember if it had actually burst). what had happened when they performed the surgery was the surgeons found that his other organs had oddly moved around the appendix and kind of made a protective shell around it so that it didn't infect the rest of the body quite as rapidly (though eventually surgery had to be performed). So, after surgery, his organs were kind of displaced due to being contorted in this weird protective position (this didn't happen because of qigong - this occurred naturally when he was young, long before practicing qigong). The qi part comes into play when he started practicing well later in his life, and he claims that after a while of practicing, he could actually feel his organs shifting around inside and reconfiguring themselves into what he believed was their natural orientation inside.

The interesting part of this practice I was involved in was that not only did it seem to work on debilitating ailments, but it fixed long preexisting ailments that really didn't get in the way of every day life (my case and the above case are examples - possibly minor inconveniences, but certainly nothing that would get in the way of daily living).

Also, I took the time to dig up a book I had borrowed from a club member on a conference for the organization that he attended in 1998, and there are many accounts of people being healed to a degree at this conference. One story in particular stands out, which was about a woman with multiple sclerosis who was wheelchair bound being able to stand up and walk, unassisted even by a cane, for about 300 meters after Dr. Yan Xin emitted some qi to the conference attendees. I should also note that this isn't really a cult sort of thing or where Dr. Xin asks for $3,000 to change your life.

I still really don't know almost anything about this practice (talking about it really makes me want to restart practicing on my own), but this may be the most un-snake oil type practice I've ever come across. There is a point where all of those miracle-doctor first-hand accounts of being healed are farce and where they turn to fact, and this may be the latter from what I have seen so far.

[RatioFitness]

Asclepius, I too will look at your paper when the semester is over.

As for now, I think I have assume chi is not responsible. All the things that you are mentioning like depression and anxiety are mental and so they are highly suggestive to placebo effects. Even pain can be drastically reduced or even eliminated purely through mental means. However, none of this requires chi/qi as an explanation. In the case of your friend who felt his organs moving around - was he opened back up to objectively verify this occurred? Until I have evidence to the contrary, it's more rational for me to assume that he simply wanted to believe this happened to him and so he imagined it.

[Asclepius]

Asclepius, I too will look at your paper when the semester is over.

As for now, I think I have assume chi is not responsible. All the things that you are mentioning like depression and anxiety are mental and so they are highly suggestive to placebo effects. Even pain can be drastically reduced or even eliminated purely through mental means. However, none of this requires chi/qi as an explanation. In the case of your friend who felt his organs moving around - was he opened back up to objectively verify this occurred? Until I have evidence to the contrary, it's more rational for me to assume that he simply wanted to believe this happened to him and so he imagined it.

I'm not going to argue with you, but I will say that you are overlooking glaringly supportive anecdotal evidence, mainly the countless stories of people who had crippling disabilities and were either fully cured or partially cured, such as the examples I already gave of the man who BROKE HIS BACK and the woman who had MS. The man received direct treatment and was cured. The woman received less directed treatment and was able to get up from a wheelchair that she had been bound to for almost a decade and walk 300 m. Yes, anecdotal evidence, but evidence nonetheless.

If you are implying that some other force has been coincidentally been at play here when qi was applied, then your guess is as good as mine. The placebo effect is strong, but strong enough to heal broken nervous tissue?

[Joseff Lea]

Asclepius -

I can certainly understand how this form of practice could help alleviate psychological conditions as well as minor annoying pains. In fact I think doing something akin to qigong combined with a good diet would drastically improve almost anyone's quality of life, especially if the work at a desk or don't do much exercise. I also think that it may be possible that by curing these minor ailments (chronic knee injuries, bad posture, depression etc) would reduce cumulative damage on the body and increase life expectancy (note: As far as I know this is just a theory and there is no evidence to support it)

However I am very skeptical about his ability to influence people's health externally; beyond that of a placebo effect which can be very powerful. MS is not a very well understood disease, it is also strange in the way it comes and goes and I would have thought it conceivable that a person with MS could make themselves walk for a while if the truly believed that there was qi acting upon them.

As for the paper you mentioned earlier an immediate problem I can see with their methodology is that the trial isn't double-blind, it isn't even blind, so you now should consider the results as suggestive evidence rather than proof and you would need many more similarly trials which reach the same conclusion before you can consider it proof of qi. I'm not saying that Dr. Xin is a liar or a charlatan and I think that it's great that he is trying to prove his theory, as long as he doesn't try to stop people from taking proven medicines and isn't charging people a fortune then I think he's probably doing good and I wish him all the best.

I would encourage you to start practicing again, let us know how it goes .

[RatioFitness]

Asclepius, I too will look at your paper when the semester is over.

As for now, I think I have assume chi is not responsible. All the things that you are mentioning like depression and anxiety are mental and so they are highly suggestive to placebo effects. Even pain can be drastically reduced or even eliminated purely through mental means. However, none of this requires chi/qi as an explanation. In the case of your friend who felt his organs moving around - was he opened back up to objectively verify this occurred? Until I have evidence to the contrary, it's more rational for me to assume that he simply wanted to believe this happened to him and so he imagined it.

I'm not going to argue with you, but I will say that you are overlooking glaringly supportive anecdotal evidence, mainly the countless stories of people who had crippling disabilities and were either fully cured or partially cured, such as the examples I already gave of the man who BROKE HIS BACK and the woman who had MS. The man received direct treatment and was cured. The woman received less directed treatment and was able to get up from a wheelchair that she had been bound to for almost a decade and walk 300 m. Yes, anecdotal evidence, but evidence nonetheless.

If you are implying that some other force has been coincidentally been at play here when qi was applied, then your guess is as good as mine. The placebo effect is strong, but strong enough to heal broken nervous tissue?

I understand, friend. I can see that you and I have very different views on what constitutes evidence. I do not trust anecdotes very much on such things. As they say, the plural of anecdote is not data, but anecdotes.

I won't bother you further.

[Joseff Lea]

Just found this, thought some of you may find it interesting.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12661646

[Joshua Naterman]

That rules. Really, really interesting research.

[Gavin Strelitz]

Interesting article for sure.