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Acupuncture
Acupuncture is a form of alternative medicine and a component of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) in which thin needles are inserted into the body. Acupuncture is a pseudoscience; the theories and practices of TCM are not based on scientific knowledge, and it has been characterized as quackery. There is a range of acupuncture technological variants that originated in different philosophies, and techniques vary depending on the country in which it is performed. However, it can be divided into two main foundational philosophical applications and approaches; the first being the modern standardized form called eight principles TCM and the second being an older system that is based on the ancient Daoist '' wuxing'', better known as the five elements or phases in the West. Acupuncture is most often used to attempt pain relief, though acupuncturists say that it can also be used for a wide range of other conditions. Acupuncture is typically used in combination with other forms o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Traditional Chinese Medicine
Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is an alternative medicine, alternative medical practice drawn from traditional medicine in China. A large share of its claims are pseudoscientific, with the majority of treatments having no robust evidence of effectiveness or logical mechanism of action. Some TCM ingredients Traditional Chinese medicine#Safety, are known to be toxic and cause disease, including cancer. Medicine in traditional China encompassed a range of sometimes competing health and healing practices, folk beliefs, Scholar-official, literati theory and Confucianism, Confucian philosophy, Chinese herbology, herbal remedies, Chinese food therapy, food, diet, exercise, medical specializations, and schools of thought. TCM as it exists today has been described as a largely 20th century invention. In the early twentieth century, Chinese cultural and political modernizers worked to eliminate traditional practices as backward and unscientific. Traditional practitioners then selec ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Moxibustion
Moxibustion () is a traditional Chinese medicine therapy which consists of burning dried mugwort ('' moxa'') on particular points on the body. It plays an important role in the traditional medical systems of China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and Mongolia. Suppliers usually age the mugwort and grind it up to a fluff; practitioners burn the fluff or process it further into a cigar-shaped stick. They can use it indirectly, with acupuncture needles, or burn it on the patient's skin. Moxibustion is promoted as a treatment for a wide variety of conditions, but its use is not backed by good evidence and it carries a risk of adverse effects. Terminology The first Western remarks on moxibustion can be found in letters and reports written by Portuguese missionaries in 16th-century Japan. They called it ''botão de fogo'' (), a term originally used for round-headed Western cautery irons. Hermann Buschoff, who published the first Western book on this matter in 1674 (English edition 1676) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alternative Medicine
Alternative medicine refers to practices that aim to achieve the healing effects of conventional medicine, but that typically lack biological plausibility, testability, repeatability, or supporting evidence of effectiveness. Such practices are generally not part of evidence-based medicine. Unlike modern medicine, which employs the scientific method to test plausible therapies by way of Guidelines for human subject research, responsible and ethical clinical trials, producing repeatable evidence of either effect or of no effect, alternative therapies reside outside of mainstream medicine and do not originate from using the scientific method, but instead rely on testimonials, anecdotes, religion, tradition, superstition, belief in supernatural "Energy (esotericism), energies", pseudoscience, fallacy, errors in reasoning, propaganda, fraud, or other unscientific sources. Frequently used terms for relevant practices are New Age medicine, wikt:pseudo-medicine, pseudo-medicine, unortho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wuxing (Chinese Philosophy)
( zh, c=五行, p=wǔxíng), usually translated as Five Phases or Five Agents, is a fivefold conceptual scheme used in many traditional Chinese fields of study to explain a wide array of phenomena, including terrestrial and celestial relationships, influences, and cycles, that characterise the interactions and relationships within Science and technology in China, science, Traditional Chinese medicine, medicine, Confucianism, politics, Taoism, religion and social relationships and education within Chinese culture. The five agents are traditionally associated with the classical planets Mars, Mercury (planet), Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn as depicted in the #Etymology, etymological section below. In ancient Chinese astronomy and Chinese astrology, astrology, that spread throughout East Asia, was a reflection of the seven-day planetary order of Fire (wuxing), Fire, Water (wuxing), Water, Wood (wuxing), Wood, Metal (wuxing), Metal, Earth (wuxing), Earth.), they are Wood, Fir ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cupping Therapy
Cupping therapy is a form of pseudoscience in which a local suction is created on the skin using heated cups. As alternative medicine it is practiced primarily in Asia but also in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America. There is no conclusive evidence supporting the claimed health benefits of cupping, and critics have characterized the practice as quackery. Cupping practitioners attempt to use cupping therapy for a wide array of medical conditions including fevers, chronic low back pain, Anorexia (symptom), poor appetite, indigestion, hypertension, high blood pressure, acne, atopic dermatitis, psoriasis, anemia, stroke rehabilitation, nasal congestion, infertility, and dysmenorrhea, menstrual period cramping. Despite the numerous ailments for which practitioners claim cupping therapy is useful, there is insufficient evidence demonstrating any health benefits. Cupping is generally not harmful for most people. However, there are some risks of harm, especially from we ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Quackery
Quackery, often synonymous with health fraud, is the promotion of fraudulent or Ignorance, ignorant medicine, medical practices. A quack is a "fraudulent or ignorant pretender to medical skill" or "a person who pretends, professionally or publicly, to have skill, knowledge, qualification or credentials they do not possess; a charlatan or snake oil salesman". The term ''quack'' is a Clipping (morphology), clipped form of the archaic term ', derived from a "hawker of salve" or rather somebody who boasted about their salves, more commonly known as ointments. In the Middle Ages the term ''quack'' meant "shouting". The quacksalvers sold their wares at markets by shouting to gain attention. Common elements of general quackery include List of diagnoses characterized as pseudoscience, questionable diagnoses using List of questionable diagnostic tests, questionable diagnostic tests, as well as untested or refuted treatments, especially for serious diseases such as alternative cancer trea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Meridian (Chinese Medicine)
The meridian system (, also called channel network) is a pseudoscientific concept from traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) that alleges meridians are paths through which the life-energy known as " qi" (''ch'i'') flows. Meridians are not real anatomical structures: scientists have found no evidence that supports their existence. One historian of medicine in China says that the term is "completely unsuitable and misguided, but nonetheless it has become a standard translation." Major proponents of their existence have not come to any consensus as to how they might work or be tested in a scientific context. History The concept of meridians are first attested in two works recovered from the Mawangdui and Zhangjiashan tombs of the Han-era Changsha Kingdom, the ''Cauterization Canon of the Eleven Foot and Arm Channels'' ''Zúbì Shíyī Mài Jiǔjīng'') and the ''Cauterization Canon of the Eleven Yin and Yang Channels'' ''Yīnyáng Shíyī Mài Jiǔjīng''). In the texts, the me ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chinese Herbs
Chinese herbology () is the theory of traditional Chinese herbal therapy, which accounts for the majority of treatments in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). A ''Nature (journal), Nature'' editorial described TCM as "fraught with pseudoscience", and said that the most obvious reason why it has not delivered many cures is that the majority of its treatments have no logical mechanism of action. The term herbology is misleading in the sense that, while plant elements are by far the most commonly used substances, animal, human, and mineral products are also used, some of which are poisonous. In the they are referred to as () which means "poison-medicine". Paul U. Unschuld points out that this is similar etymology to the Greek and so he uses the term ''pharmaceutic''. Thus, the term ''medicinal'' (instead of ''herb'') is usually preferred as a translation for (). Research into the effectiveness of traditional Chinese herbal therapy is of poor quality and often tainted by bias, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Menses
Menstruation (also known as a period, among other colloquial terms) is the regular discharge of blood and Mucous membrane, mucosal tissue from the endometrium, inner lining of the uterus through the vagina. The menstrual cycle is characterized by the rise and fall of hormones. Menstruation is triggered by falling progesterone levels, and is a sign that pregnancy has not occurred. Women use feminine hygiene products to maintain hygiene during menses. The first period, a point in time known as menarche, usually begins during puberty, between the ages of 11 and 13. However, menstruation starting as young as 8 years would still be considered normal. The average age of the first period is generally later in the developing world, and earlier in the developed world. The typical length of time between the first day of one period and the first day of the next is 21 to 45 days in young women; in adults, the range is between 21 and 35 days with the average often cited as 28 days. In the b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yin And Yang
Originating in Chinese philosophy, yin and yang (, ), also yinyang or yin-yang, is the concept of opposite cosmic principles or forces that interact, interconnect, and perpetuate each other. Yin and yang can be thought of as complementary and at the same time opposing forces that interact to form a dynamic system in which the whole is greater than the assembled parts and the parts are as important for the cohesion of the whole. In Chinese cosmology, the universe creates itself out of a primary chaos of primordial qi or material energy, organized into the cycles of yin and yang, force and motion leading to form and matter. "Yin" is retractive, passive and contractive in nature, while "yang" is repelling, active and expansive in principle; this dichotomy in some form, is seen in all things in nature—patterns of change and difference. For example, biological, psychological and seasonal cycles, the historical evolution of landscapes over days, weeks, years to eons. The origin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Huangdi Neijing
' (), literally the ''Inner Canon of the Yellow Emperor'' or ''Esoteric Scripture of the Yellow Emperor'', is an ancient Chinese medical text or group of texts that has been treated as a fundamental doctrinal source for Chinese medicine for more than two millennia. The work comprises two texts—each of eighty-one chapters or treatises in a question-and-answer format between the mythical Yellow Emperor and six of his equally legendary ministers. The first text, the , also known as ''Basic Questions'', covers the theoretical foundation of Chinese Medicine and its diagnostic methods. The second and generally less referred-to text, the , discusses acupuncture therapy in great detail. Collectively, these two texts are known as the or . In practice, however, the title ''Neijing'' often refers only to the more influential . Two other texts also carried the prefix in their titles: the and the , both of which have survived only partially. The book was popular among Taoists. Over ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
