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la_belle_laideThe thing about Chinese medicine is that they got it. They knew that certain herbs and applications worked. They had something for everything, fr depession to high blood pressure, from diabetes to prolapsed uterus. They really did treat it all, and still do. It seems to me that they were awesome observers. They looked at the world around them, saw cycles that couldn't exist without each other, saw creation and destruction in everything, saw light and dark, and basically took in everything that ever was or would be, and applied it to their entire world view, including medicine. If it works in the world outside of the human body, it must work inside, too. "As above, so below." If you had a fever, you took a cooling herb. If you were suffering from chills, you took a warming herb. If something was rising that shouldn't be (food, blood pressure, gas,) you took a lowering herb. If things were lowering too fast (diarrhea, heavy periods,) you took a rising herb.
And, those treatments did what they were supposed to do, and they still do what they are supposed to do. It amazes me how people can deny that herbs can affect your physiology. If you take cyanide, you are poisoned. If you eat spice, you feel warmed. how can people even question that what you put into your body--even if it is not in colored pill form--affects your physiology? It's undeniable. And there's more and more evidence towards this as western scientists study these totally ancient ideas, like ginseng and green tea etc.; things Chinese medicine has used for millennia.
(Tangentially I'd like to add that the reasoning behind much of this is no more or less than the reasoning behind witchcraft itself: creation or destruction, healing or harming, through the use of directed energy. I've even run into the pentagram already in the Creation Cycle.)
But now it's time for the two to intersect. I agree with the holism of Eastern medicine much more than I agree with the Western treatment of symptoms instead of illnesses; yet I need to know the reason why. I do, to a point, believe in chi, and the forces of energy (physics and chemistry and all natural science agree that everything has energy, which can never be destroyed; is it so far fetched to believe that it might flow in channels through living organisms? Electricity, blood, countless chemicals follow established paths along the bodies of living organisms, so couldn't energy also do the same thing?) I get that; I do.
But even if so, there is more to it than "dispersing liver fire" or "bringing chi and blood to the stomach." I'm willing to accept that that is a part of how acupuncture and herbs work, and I thoroughly do accept that this is a reflection of the natural world onto the human body. And I dig metaphors, I really do. My first degree is in literature. Metaphor and I are old, familiar bed-fellows. We still get together to make out a few times a week.
But now it's time to understand the science of why these remedies work the way they do. All herbs are made up of certain molecules which affect physiology in countless different ways. That is what I wish to understand. I don't want half of the reasons; I don't want just the metaphorical side. I want all the reasons. I want the eastern medicine with the western reasons. There are thousands of books on the effects of digitalis on the heart, mushrooms on the brain, all manner of poisons; countless studies of vegetables and their effects on health, the exact mechanisms by which they change the body chemistry. Why are there so few western studies on the effects of Oriental herbal medicine? And why are people so quick to dismiss the fact that they work; that they must work? Is it because they feel like Oriental medicine is its own metaphysical thing and is totally separate from "real" medicine and therefore neither practitioners nor proponents nor patients of it require any such knowledge?
Well, I do. I want to know, in scientific terms, what does what.
So at some point, these classes are going to need to intersect. I am keeping an open mind and really enjoying the history behind Oriental medicine, but so far, that's what it is to me: history. Now it's time to start figuring out the other half of it.
Says she who has only been in school for a week. LOL!
/rant
So anyway, madly enough, so far my favorite classes are anatomy/physiology and chemistry. Although, chemistry is giving me a bitch of a time with the math parts of it. I recognize that this is simple math, like 9th grade level or below; things I should have learned even in junior high. Yet I just keep on struggling with it. Even with the use of a calculator I still have to do it four or five times to arrive at the right number. There are just so many of them. And I suspect that this isn't something that anyone can really, truly help me with. I just keep doing it wrong no matter how many times I read the text on the right way to do the formulas. I sat in the quiet student lounge today for over an hour, doing the simplest of problems over and over till I got them right, but even though I recognize them as so simple and so basic, still they were hard for me and I know I still got some of them wrong. For years in school my teachers all said that if I tried harder I could do better. Believe me, at least at this point, it is not for lack of trying. So that's problematic. But! The other aspects of chemistry I really am coming to love. Which is so cool for me, because I was so afraid of it for so long. Take the numbers out of chemistry and it borders on philosophy, on art. I view it with stupid awe and ridiculous excitement.
Anatomy and physiology, well, wow. Only one day of it, and I remembered so vividly why I loved it the first few times, and how much I loved it. It is deeply satisfying to know these things. Not only to know them but to start to understand them all over again. I had forgotten so much and I picked it all back up in the first class. These classes go exceedingly fast, by the way! They are massively accelerated. The first class comprised about a half a semester of the bio class I took in college, and we're already responsible for knowing all the material. It's a lot of memorization, but fortunately for me, it's an awful lot of word-logic. Gross anatomy is easy for me because things are exactly what they sound like.
How I will do when these things start to get more complicated remains to be seen. But I think that if I can keep up the passion I feel for it, then it should sink in relatively easily. I'm the kind of person who will read a biology book for pleasure. So I hope that I can continue along that way.
Well! And that's me, at one whole week of school. That's my mana'o. Let's see how this progresses. :)
Now, some meme spam! Including the icon one that's going around. ^_^
The icon meme!
HOW MANY ICONS DO YOU HAVE: 36
OUT OF HOW MANY AVAILABLE ICONS SPACES: 12
IF YOU COULD BUY SPACE FOR MORE, WOULD YOU: No, I don't even use the space that I have.
DO YOUR ICONS MAKE A STATEMENT: Some of them do!
WHAT FANDOM DO YOU HAVE THE MOST ICONS OF: Final Fantasy VII.
AND THE SECOND MOST: Gosh. My own novels, actually. O_O
WHAT SHIP DO YOU HAVE THE MOST ICONS OF: I don't actually have any 'ship icons, so you'll notice that I fudged that one.
ARE YOUR ICONS MADE MOSTLY BY OTHER PEOPLE: THE CHRIST ON A CRACKER ONE IS NOT MINE. I really only put it up there to show someone else. I never use it. It is still one of my favorite icons ever.
DO YOU MAKE ICONS: Yup!
ARE THEY ANY GOOD: Not really!
ANIMATED ICONS ARE: Pretty cool; I wish I could make them. I used to have a funny one of Kilik from Soul Calibur going "This one gang wanted me to join because I'm pretty good with the bo-staff," but it randomly stopped working. WTF?
DO THE MEME.
Coding can be found here
House is on tonight! ^_^
Lala, fin!
And, those treatments did what they were supposed to do, and they still do what they are supposed to do. It amazes me how people can deny that herbs can affect your physiology. If you take cyanide, you are poisoned. If you eat spice, you feel warmed. how can people even question that what you put into your body--even if it is not in colored pill form--affects your physiology? It's undeniable. And there's more and more evidence towards this as western scientists study these totally ancient ideas, like ginseng and green tea etc.; things Chinese medicine has used for millennia.
(Tangentially I'd like to add that the reasoning behind much of this is no more or less than the reasoning behind witchcraft itself: creation or destruction, healing or harming, through the use of directed energy. I've even run into the pentagram already in the Creation Cycle.)
But now it's time for the two to intersect. I agree with the holism of Eastern medicine much more than I agree with the Western treatment of symptoms instead of illnesses; yet I need to know the reason why. I do, to a point, believe in chi, and the forces of energy (physics and chemistry and all natural science agree that everything has energy, which can never be destroyed; is it so far fetched to believe that it might flow in channels through living organisms? Electricity, blood, countless chemicals follow established paths along the bodies of living organisms, so couldn't energy also do the same thing?) I get that; I do.
But even if so, there is more to it than "dispersing liver fire" or "bringing chi and blood to the stomach." I'm willing to accept that that is a part of how acupuncture and herbs work, and I thoroughly do accept that this is a reflection of the natural world onto the human body. And I dig metaphors, I really do. My first degree is in literature. Metaphor and I are old, familiar bed-fellows. We still get together to make out a few times a week.
But now it's time to understand the science of why these remedies work the way they do. All herbs are made up of certain molecules which affect physiology in countless different ways. That is what I wish to understand. I don't want half of the reasons; I don't want just the metaphorical side. I want all the reasons. I want the eastern medicine with the western reasons. There are thousands of books on the effects of digitalis on the heart, mushrooms on the brain, all manner of poisons; countless studies of vegetables and their effects on health, the exact mechanisms by which they change the body chemistry. Why are there so few western studies on the effects of Oriental herbal medicine? And why are people so quick to dismiss the fact that they work; that they must work? Is it because they feel like Oriental medicine is its own metaphysical thing and is totally separate from "real" medicine and therefore neither practitioners nor proponents nor patients of it require any such knowledge?
Well, I do. I want to know, in scientific terms, what does what.
So at some point, these classes are going to need to intersect. I am keeping an open mind and really enjoying the history behind Oriental medicine, but so far, that's what it is to me: history. Now it's time to start figuring out the other half of it.
Says she who has only been in school for a week. LOL!
/rant
So anyway, madly enough, so far my favorite classes are anatomy/physiology and chemistry. Although, chemistry is giving me a bitch of a time with the math parts of it. I recognize that this is simple math, like 9th grade level or below; things I should have learned even in junior high. Yet I just keep on struggling with it. Even with the use of a calculator I still have to do it four or five times to arrive at the right number. There are just so many of them. And I suspect that this isn't something that anyone can really, truly help me with. I just keep doing it wrong no matter how many times I read the text on the right way to do the formulas. I sat in the quiet student lounge today for over an hour, doing the simplest of problems over and over till I got them right, but even though I recognize them as so simple and so basic, still they were hard for me and I know I still got some of them wrong. For years in school my teachers all said that if I tried harder I could do better. Believe me, at least at this point, it is not for lack of trying. So that's problematic. But! The other aspects of chemistry I really am coming to love. Which is so cool for me, because I was so afraid of it for so long. Take the numbers out of chemistry and it borders on philosophy, on art. I view it with stupid awe and ridiculous excitement.
Anatomy and physiology, well, wow. Only one day of it, and I remembered so vividly why I loved it the first few times, and how much I loved it. It is deeply satisfying to know these things. Not only to know them but to start to understand them all over again. I had forgotten so much and I picked it all back up in the first class. These classes go exceedingly fast, by the way! They are massively accelerated. The first class comprised about a half a semester of the bio class I took in college, and we're already responsible for knowing all the material. It's a lot of memorization, but fortunately for me, it's an awful lot of word-logic. Gross anatomy is easy for me because things are exactly what they sound like.
How I will do when these things start to get more complicated remains to be seen. But I think that if I can keep up the passion I feel for it, then it should sink in relatively easily. I'm the kind of person who will read a biology book for pleasure. So I hope that I can continue along that way.
Well! And that's me, at one whole week of school. That's my mana'o. Let's see how this progresses. :)
Now, some meme spam! Including the icon one that's going around. ^_^
| default | oldest | newest |
| | | |
| saddest | happiest | angriest |
| | | |
| cutest | sexiest | funniest |
| | | |
| fave ship | fave fandom | fave animated |
| | | |
| best quote | best textless | best stolen idea |
| | | |
| use the most | favorite | |
| | | |
HOW MANY ICONS DO YOU HAVE: 36
OUT OF HOW MANY AVAILABLE ICONS SPACES: 12
IF YOU COULD BUY SPACE FOR MORE, WOULD YOU: No, I don't even use the space that I have.
DO YOUR ICONS MAKE A STATEMENT: Some of them do!
WHAT FANDOM DO YOU HAVE THE MOST ICONS OF: Final Fantasy VII.
AND THE SECOND MOST: Gosh. My own novels, actually. O_O
WHAT SHIP DO YOU HAVE THE MOST ICONS OF: I don't actually have any 'ship icons, so you'll notice that I fudged that one.
ARE YOUR ICONS MADE MOSTLY BY OTHER PEOPLE: THE CHRIST ON A CRACKER ONE IS NOT MINE. I really only put it up there to show someone else. I never use it. It is still one of my favorite icons ever.
DO YOU MAKE ICONS: Yup!
ARE THEY ANY GOOD: Not really!
ANIMATED ICONS ARE: Pretty cool; I wish I could make them. I used to have a funny one of Kilik from Soul Calibur going "This one gang wanted me to join because I'm pretty good with the bo-staff," but it randomly stopped working. WTF?
Coding can be found here
Your Word is "Peace" |
 You see life as precious, and you wish everyone was safe, happy, and taken care of. Social justice, human rights, and peace for all nations are all important to you. While you can't stop war, you try to be as calm and compassionate as possible in your everyday life. You promote harmony and cooperation. You're always willing to meet someone a little more than halfway. |
House is on tonight! ^_^
Lala, fin!
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no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 01:57 am (UTC)I'm curious though - in your classes, do you feel that most people associate this kind of medicine with "witchcraft" or wicca? I'm religious, and there's nothing in alternative medicine that I know off the top of my head that conflicts with my beliefs. If anything, I think it's much more appropriate. Why put manmade chemicals in our bodies when we can use things found in nature that were put there for a reason? I think both of our belief systems can approve of that. Doesn't change the way i feel about it either way - I still think it's vastly underappreciated. What do you think?
SO loooking forward to what you'll learn in coming weeks, and lookin' forward to your opinion on this :) ENJOY your schooling, I'm jealous!
no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 02:24 am (UTC)What works, works. ^_^
Tao itself is kind of neat though, and is similar to witchcraft in terms of things like the elements, energy and stuff like that.
I'll probably be posting more on this. But what I'm really waiting for is the hard science. :D
no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 03:41 am (UTC)Looking forward to your next post!
no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 03:03 am (UTC)Ha, i was JUST about to post something nerding out in exactly the same way about my polymer chemistry course, which in the past 3 days i've already blown through five lectures and the first homework, i'm just so sucked in.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 03:08 am (UTC)I hope that I can get that level of excitement for this chemistry class. I mean, I feel it and all, but I don't have the mad math skillz (which I know you do) to feel completely at ease. I want so badly to just get it.
I'm so interested to read your thoughts on the subject.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 01:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 01:10 pm (UTC)Math is not hard, people just present it in difficult and confusing ways, i think. Some things you just have to accept as a convention, like that whole thing you posted the other day about why you have to write 1-times-blah. That is somebody's attempt to establish a convention (because in other situations, you might need to write 2-times-blah if the elements of the equation change) but it wound up just being confusing and feeling unnecessary and stupid to you. And i agree, i thought that shit was frustrating, too, when peopel answered my "why?" questions with something like "You just do." Fuck off, you don't just do; there is a reason for everything in math and at least TRY to explain it. Anyhow.
I had the good fortune of a dad who LOVES math and can teach it to a post, pretty much, so he really helped me learn it. (Seriously, he says that about teaching community college: "I don't care how stupid you are, I can still teach you this shit!" Well, not to people's faces, that's just what he says to himself. And me and my mom. But he's right.)
no subject
Date: 2009-01-13 11:28 pm (UTC)I utterly appreciate your offer to help. I mean, I know this is really simple stuff. Sometimes just asking the question helps me figure it out, because then I've put it into terms I obviously understand. And if that doesn't help, then definitely someone using a different way of presenting it often does.
I might just take you up on that. Or once in a while I might post one of my math predicaments on here in hopes of getting a different view on it. :)