Pochsy
Artifice of Eternity
+702|5513|Toronto
My interest in the topic limited my search to the first result on Google when "macrobiotic" is the search term. Do send me the literature, though. If there's more to I'm willing to give it the time of day.
The shape of an eye in front of the ocean, digging for stones and throwing them against its window pane. Take it down dreamer, take it down deep. - Other Families
Larssen
Member
+99|1857
I wonder what peppers, tomatoes and potatoes ever did to the author. Are these evil foods? Also, why is pork always the outcast meat. Those poor pigs.

It reads like religious scripture:

You should eat in a focused, thoughtful, and slow manner without distractions, such as the television. You should only eat food to satisfy hunger, and you should chew it many times until it’s nearly liquefied. You should drink water or other beverages, such as dandelion root tea, brown rice tea, and cereal grain coffee, only to satisfy thirst.
Lmao at the end it even says that cooking with electricity is evil.

Last edited by Larssen (2020-10-17 05:12:07)

Superior Mind
(not macbeth)
+1,755|6663
That blurb of advice is common sense if you want to recover from illness or remain healthy.

Nightshade vegetables exacerbate certain conditions like arthritis. Healthy individuals shouldn’t have a problem with them. 

Poschy, there is a huge amount of literature on macrobiotics. There are also plenty of poorly written articles and wiki pages about it by people who have no idea what it really is or have never tried it.

No where in macrobiotic literature are things deemed evil.

Last edited by Superior Mind (2020-10-17 05:17:01)

unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6742|PNW

Suppose it'd be easier for Americans (for example) to effect change in their health in part through diet if more Americans had access to one-on-one input from nutritional therapists and dietitians. Making it so exclusive to a certain paid threshold I think only increases the reach of fad flim-flam and one-size-fits-all nonsense.

It's amazing how people magically became sensitive to things like gluten and MSG when those become hot-button, isn't it. Anyone remember the dihydrogen monoxide hoax on social media?

I don't feel like public school PE, as I experienced it, didn't bother very much with this. Get in a line, run some circles, shoot a few baskets. Where was the science? Could cooperate with the biology department here. Revive home ec with sections on how to buy healthy and frugally. A lot of parents aren't going to be teaching this in detail. There needs to be some kind of jump-start somewhere. If we want to eventually have universal health care, a healthier-eating nation will cut down on some of the overhead.

What you can do right now to evade America's No. 1 killer
By Dr. Tom Frieden
https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/22/health/h … index.html
uziq
Member
+492|3422
please not this again. if you want to recover from serious illness your best hope is those pesky ‘chemicals’ and inventions of modern medical science. synthesise away, pharmaceutical companies! please, do give me anti-virals and antibiotics! open me up!

let’s not talk about how steve jobs cured his cancer by avoiding nightshade (?) vegetables or whatever the fuck.

‘i’m afraid the cancer has metastasised into your colon and pancreas. the good news is this week we have vegan chilli in the canteen, no red meat, and we’re cutting out all red peppers from now on. you’ll be out in a month!’

Last edited by uziq (2020-10-17 05:23:50)

Pochsy
Artifice of Eternity
+702|5513|Toronto
I also read this as a desperate attempt to optimize the minutia of life in recognition that so many other things are outside of one's control. It's an arational risk mitigation strategy where the cure is, in fact, worse than the poison of not having control.

Last edited by Pochsy (2020-10-17 06:45:01)

The shape of an eye in front of the ocean, digging for stones and throwing them against its window pane. Take it down dreamer, take it down deep. - Other Families
uziq
Member
+492|3422
there's a lot to criticize about 'big pharma' but a lot of the alternative medicine stuff elides with anti-vax and general anti-science.

funny how trump was against the science of covid, climate change, etc, until it directly imperiled his life. then he's right into hospital for the latest and greatest in scientific cures. 'maybe it'll go away', 'it'll get colder'. ok. maybe not.

if someone wants to fight serious illness by aligning their chakras or homeopathy or whatever then good luck to them. i guess it's less of a tax burden.

Last edited by uziq (2020-10-17 09:14:05)

Superior Mind
(not macbeth)
+1,755|6663
I know macrobiotics sounds like bullshit. I worked in the hard sciences thru the second half of college. This is not a religious epiphany. Nor is this something that can alone be analytically grasped. Once you eat according to our evolutionary needs the body begins functioning properly and repairing. The foreign concepts and loose sounding vocabulary used in mb makes sense once you feel the effects and study at the same time. None of it contradicts medical technology. It does give answers to missing portions of medical knowledge, and illuminates possible overuse of certain of those tech. The treatment of type 2 diabetes is an easy example. I’ve cooked for someone with adult-onset diabetes and they were able to go off their bp meds & insulin entirely after a week or two. You can think I’m a liar or imagining things, but I’m not suggesting you take my word for it. Only oneself can prove something like this. If you don’t care, that’s cool, doesn’t bother me. I’m also here to discuss l’meme d’jour.
uziq
Member
+492|3422
yes but diabetes is a metabolic disorder that is tied to diet and health. lots of borderline diabetics can be nudged back into health if you get them active and eating well.

that’s different from saying macrobiotics can treat serious illness.
Superior Mind
(not macbeth)
+1,755|6663
I not talking about a borderline diabetic. This was someone who had been diabetic for 10-15 years. I’ve also met people who recovered from late stage cancers. Macrobiotics doesn’t have a 100% track record, but neither does anything else. Again, don’t take my word for it. But saying it’s new age drivel without doing your own investigation is a waste of typing tbh. I’m not going to bother digging up papers from medical journals and excerpts from books to try to convince people on a gaming forum. I’ve plenty of people irl to have those exchanges with. Obviously if anyone’s interested I’m happy to go further.

The reality is that there is an overwhelming majority who are culturally predisposed to revolt at this kind of thinking at first glance. However, by and by, I can almost guarantee that a majority of western civilization will ultimately adopt something like a macrobiotic diet in the coming centuries after having been validated by science.

Optimistic, yes.

Last edited by Superior Mind (2020-10-17 11:54:55)

uziq
Member
+492|3422
being in support of provable, repeatable scientific evidence is being 'culturally predisposed' now? nice cant.

as i said, it's really pointless to discuss these things with anyone who is a 'convert'. there are any number of cognitive biases at work, not least placebo effect.

mainstream science, nutrition, medicine and pharmaceuticals is established on the principle of the scientific method. we're talking thousands of repeatable, and indeed repeated, experiments. meta-studies. large datasets and meaningful statistical analysis of trends. that is not 'a cultural disposition' or an 'intolerance'. it's the best method we have.

are you 'culturally predisposed' to mistrust vaccines? no, because that is a nonsense phrase.

if macrobiotics works, it'll be written about in the medical literature, not by cranks on the internet who talk about 'scary chemicals' and 'having zen focus on your chewing'.

i very much doubt that adjusting your diet and doing pilates is going to reverse late-stage cancer and transendothelial migration of cancer cells, but hey, what do i know, i consume 'nightshade' vegetables and live in rank ignorance of macrobiotic wisdom.

Last edited by uziq (2020-10-17 11:56:28)

Superior Mind
(not macbeth)
+1,755|6663
I think the cultural predisposition I’m referring to is the absence of an energy body theory in western science. That is the most dramatic difference between, for example, Chinese/Indian medicine and modern western medicine. I was certainly raised to call bullshit on anything which relied on spiritual or religious sounding vocabulary. I’m not able to or out to prove the existence of qi or prana , but in my experience it’s an effective modality to work in. And as I’ve said, this modality doesn’t contradict or refute western medicine. I see it as complementary. For me it’s been a useful tool for understanding life. Based on my personal experience with western medicine, it would have been foolish of me to assume it provided all possible answers and solutions and in fact would have most likely left me nearly dead or dead by now if I hadn’t sought answers elsewhere. Does that mean I don’t go to the doctor for check ups or blood tests? No. The reluctance of science to touch ideas that have anything to do with these archaic concepts have nothing to do with them not having a long standing tract record of efficacy - it’s simply a cultural taboo and researchers are afraid of losing grant funding. There would be nothing compromising to medical science in conducting a study on cancer patients, for example, put on macrobiotic regimens. The threat would ultimately be to the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. Huge profits would be lost if doctors started prescribing dietary regimes instead of drugs and surgeries as a standard course for treatment.

In reviewing my past posts over the years I can also admit I took things too seriously here assuming it was just like rl- because my rl was way too serious for a kid. I left for years because I was frustrated with the constant flaming. Now I see it’s virtues- or at least the fun it all. It’s also not unfair to cast me aside in your minds as a foolish pothead.
uziq
Member
+492|3422
. Based on my personal experience with western medicine, it would have been foolish of me to assume it provided all possible answers and solutions and in fact would have most likely left me nearly dead or dead by now if I hadn’t sought answers elsewhere.
okay, well, if you get covid-19 on one of your walks or develop cancer, disavow that pesky western medicine and rely on your prana to see you through then.

western science doesn't have an 'energy body theory' because there's no evidence of 'body energy' and there's nothing to be usefully done with a metaphor or metaphysical concept.

western philosophy/medicine has understood the connection between one's physical fitness and mental state. mens sana in corpore sano. we understand that these systems are holistic and work in complementarity to one another. but 'chi' and 'prana'? ok if it helps you to imagine balls of glowing energy in your solar plexus or whatever-the-fuck. the next time you get really sick i do take it you'll go to an E.R., though, rather than sitting in transcendental meditation.
Superior Mind
(not macbeth)
+1,755|6663
It’s all case dependent. Sometimes it’s necessary to intervene with serious treatments like surgery, chemo or radiation. That doesn’t mean a macrobiotic prescribed diet won’t help someone heal in those cases. It’s still important to remove or mitigate the cause of an illness. Eating bowls of ice cream to fatten up while taking a course of chemo for lung cancer is an insane contradiction that will go barely criticized by your average oncologist.
uziq
Member
+492|3422
i quite agree that someone needs a healthy diet and environment otherwise it's senseless to keep treating the symptoms/effects of disease. but we can still discuss this within the paradigm of western science and rather more boring mechanistic understandings of the human organism. what the fuck does qi have to do with it? are we going to prescribe singing bowls for people with bowel cancer?
Superior Mind
(not macbeth)
+1,755|6663
Why would Indian doctors be required to study Ayurveda along side western medicine if the latter made the former obsolete?
uziq
Member
+492|3422
is the indian medical system the envy of the world?

that's like arguing for the merits of chinese traditional medicine because it has so many practitioners and adherents. sorry, eating white rhino tusk is not going to make you super virile.

any of the benefits that ayurveda confers could be given in a secular-western context and stripped of the spiritual baggage.  regulating your diet and keeping in shape is not exactly beyond the ken of western science.

Last edited by uziq (2020-10-22 18:14:45)

Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6076|eXtreme to the maX
Indians consume colossal amounts of antibiotics which they can buy freely without prescription.
Between bat viruses and antibiotic resistant bugs its hard to say which will wipe us out.
Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй!
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+634|3689
Indians are good people. They will help us in the grand Crusade against Islam.
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6076|eXtreme to the maX
They'll probably give us the gift of unkillable TB
Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй!
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+634|3689
A pandemic is a small price to pay to see the armies of the Elephant god raze Mecca.
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
Superior Mind
(not macbeth)
+1,755|6663
Casting aside traditional Chinese medicine over rhino horn is like casting aside western medicine over the opioid crisis. Look how incorrectly we’ve treated people to disastrous consequence. Same goes for the rhino, they’ve been met with disaster. Rhino horn may not actually have any real medical use, but to suggest opioids should be used except on dying casualties or in other extreme situations is a breach of the Hippocratic oath imo.
uziq
Member
+492|3422
the opioid crisis is a major public healthcare crisis, but it is almost entirely america’s own making. your problem there is rampant and unregulated capitalism. doctors filling scrips from dodgy practices for endless supply of hospital-grade, addictive painkillers? no.

opiates are a major breakthrough and they are useful, and used, in hospital settings the world over, every day. you won’t call them a ‘tragedy’ and advert for chinese traditional medicine when you’re in hospital recovering from surgery. they have many more uses than just palliative medicine for the dying. like how fucking ignorant are you to dismiss a drug that alleviates the suffering of tens of millions of people every day? the significant difference is that opiates are not widely available outside of the hospital setting in most of the rest of the world. forklift drivers don’t go home here and spend 9 months in a percocet haze. this is a problem of the american system’s devising, not ‘western medicine’.

i mean you mention the hippocratic oath. there’s about 1,000 things about the american healthcare system that make a mockery of it. bankrupting someone over an ambulance ride or charging them to hold their newborn baby as part of the ‘deluxe birthing insurance package’ sounds pretty up there.

you can’t mention chinese traditional medicine and opiates in the same breath, though. chinese traditional medicine doesn’t do SHIT. opiates are incredibly useful. you keep talking about these limit cases where ‘i would have died if i only relied on western medicine’: but how many people suffer avoidably or die because they reject western medicine and rely on spurious, unproven, bullshit folk remedies? the next time you’re sick and in serious suffering, say you break a pelvis in a car accident and you are writhing in agony, unable to find comfort whilst it slowly heals, you won’t ask for ginger tea or do tai chi. get fucking real man, jesus christ.

this seriously sounds like a religious faith. you talk about ‘western medicine’ the way scientologists talk about psychology.

western medical practice, for long after hippocrates and into the early modern era, actually had these 'spiritual ideas', too. most of europe up until the age of enlightenment used a theory of bodily humours. it went the same place as our understanding of infectious disease, before knowledge of germs: into the dustbin of history because it had no USE. 'body energy' theories belong in the dustbin with any number of other ancient ideas, like exposing children or leeching/bloodletting the sick. we used to think you got depressed because you had a 'lachrymose humour' or were quick to anger because of 'an excess of bile'; just like we used to think that you got sick by inhaling 'miasmatic' or 'pestilential' air, such as those who lived near swamps or rivers (yes, it’s not mosquitoes, it’s body energy!) neat and poetic ideas but of no use to anybody: particularly when large swathes of the population are frequently being cut down by plagues. how's the acupuncture or hot cupping treatment for covid-19 coming along?

Last edited by uziq (2020-10-23 01:45:18)

Superior Mind
(not macbeth)
+1,755|6663
You can think traditional medicine does nothing, that doesn’t mean it does nothing. The core of it across cultures is an understanding of food’s effects on the body. That medieval anecdote you mention of being quick to anger being caused by an excess of bile actually aims in the right direction. Everything about a person sheds light on their physical health, including their emotional states. This isn’t even breaking news to modern medicine, it’s simply not integrated widely. Your physical state and emotional state both cause and maintain each other. You can see consistency in types of attitudes and emotional expressions with people of certain conditions. And I said opioids had their use in extreme situations. Breaking your pelvis could be one of those.
uziq
Member
+492|3422
medicine already knows this. the way you are portraying western medicine is basically a bad caricature. western medical science KNOWS that diet, fitness, environment, etc, all impact on the person’s health. and, again, speak only for america’s example: general practitioners in the U.K. are equally keen to dispense with lifestyle guidance/dietary advice, pharmaceutical prescriptions and referral to mental health services.

could the integration be better? absolutely. it comes down to funding and organisation, though, not an essential blindspot of western medicine.

and i dismiss chinese traditional medicine because it doesn’t do anything. you would do well to research the placebo effect and any other of about 20 cognitive biases that influence this matter. acupuncture aimed at ‘your qi and flows of energy’ does a sum-total of fuck all. ditto hot cup treatment.

it’s so supremely ironic to be how quick you are to criticise and dismiss opiates and yet you put some highly tendentious value on chinese cures. do you know what a breakthrough it was to find, isolate, synthesise and develop a class of painkillers such as opiates? do you know how many bottomless leagues of human misery, throughout history, were solved by this? imagine falling from a horse in the middle ages and suffering a nasty break to your femur. imagine requiring surgery to remove bullets/buckshot or to amputate a limb aboard a naval ship in the 18th century. do you have any idea how much wailing, gnashing of teeth, and begging for death are implied in these long annals of suffering, pre-opiates and pre-anaesthesia? the only things available to medieval medicine, indeed, was to sublimate the experience of pain into something like a virtue.

and yet you heartily recommend nonsense cures where people go and subject themselves voluntarily to pain.

you’ve got it all backwards i’m afraid. let me know how the qi channelling goes the next time you get toothache.

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