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Herbalism and surgery (?)

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amy green
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I am having a debate with someone who is trying to diss natural therapies. She has mentioned that herbs would be no good if we needed surgery. I told her that herbalism has its place and was never meant to be a substitute for surgery. She told me I am wrong and that I should look into the history of medicine a bit more.
I can find nothing that says herbalism could be used as an alternative to surgery.

I would welcome any knowledge on this....

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Tashanie
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In a word no it couldn't. Herbal products could be used to complement the surgery ...to aid recovery, reduce sickness as any complementary therapy could. Complementary therapies including herbalism might reduce the need for surgery by promoting healing from within but thats about it.

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amy green
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In a word no it couldn't. Herbal products could be used to complement the surgery ...to aid recovery, reduce sickness as any complementary therapy could. Complementary therapies including herbalism might reduce the need for surgery by promoting healing from within but thats about it.

Thank you for replying. Yes, after more searching I did discover this, i.e. that herbs can be beneficial in the run up to an operation and also to aid recovery afterwards so I have put this to her - also asking that she supplies the evidence to back up her claim.

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Tashanie
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Thank you for replying. Yes, after more searching I did discover this, i.e. that herbs can be beneficial in the run up to an operation and also to aid recovery afterwards so I have put this to her - also asking that she supplies the evidence to back up her claim.

Do let us know what she says but I won;t hold my breath waiting for evidence to be supplied

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amy green
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Do let us know what she says but I won;t hold my breath waiting for evidence to be supplied

I think she may know that she is on a sticky wicket since she said she might look into it, i.e. is having tea and put the onus on me saying that I brought it up!(?) However, I pointed out that I was merely responding to her original claim that cited herbalism as ineffective as a replacement for surgery.

She is taking another tact also, i.e. 'do a search on "ancient treatments for cancer," particularly Chinese and Indian'.

I told her that not everything in the past will hold up, just as old understandings of conventional medicine have now been improved on. I did say that visualisation is used to be of some benefit in helping to treat cancer and provided a link from cancer researchuk.org to this effect.

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Energylz
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She sounds like someone who views such therapies and treatments as "Alternative" rather than "Complementary" (even when you tell them it's complementary they just hear it as "Alternative" for some reason).

Complementary therapies work well alongside orthodox medicine, and most are not (and should not be) considered an alternative for it.

As an example, some herbal remedies could be useful alongside surgery to act to calm a person beforehand, or to help as an astringent or antiseptic following surgery etc. rather than using chemical equivalents (or as well as). Even dentists use clove oil in temporary fillings as it acts as a local anaesthetic/pain killer.

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amy green
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She sounds like someone who views such therapies and treatments as "Alternative" rather than "Complementary" (even when you tell them it's complementary they just hear it as "Alternative" for some reason).

Complementary therapies work well alongside orthodox medicine, and most are not (and should not be) considered an alternative for it.

As an example, some herbal remedies could be useful alongside surgery to act to calm a person beforehand, or to help as an astringent or antiseptic following surgery etc. rather than using chemical equivalents (or as well as). Even dentists use clove oil in temporary fillings as it acts as a local anaesthetic/pain killer.

Yes she labels alternative therapies as 'pseudoscience'. Thanks for your explanation. She has backed off, i.e. not produced the evidence to back up her original claim that herbalism was meant to be used in place of surgery. Ha...she clearly overstepped the mark there!

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Crowan
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She is taking another tact also, i.e. 'do a search on "ancient treatments for cancer," particularly Chinese and Indian'.

Cancer was pretty rare in the ancient world. It is one of the illnesses of modernity.

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amy green
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Well, she finally replied to that claim of herbalism being used in place of surgery...

Back to the beginning. Appendicitis is an infection. Before antibiotics were available, people tried to treat infections with herbs. So they were using herbs instead of surgery. Now that we have X-rays, CT scans and antibiotics, we don't need to let people die of infections anymore.

To which I replied...

Oh come on...that is a very poor, redundant argument! Ha - laughable! Back then nothing else was available i.e. we didn't have the benefits of technology that we do now. This is hardly the same thing as saying that herbalism is now used to take the place of operations - that is a false statement! As mentioned, herbalism can be used beneficially with the run up to an operation and also to aid recovery afterward.

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Energylz
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Some herbs are also antibacterial and can be ingested to fight infections (if the person knows which and how much).
So, now we have antibiotics (which are becoming less effective - way to go science!) and direct surgery and scans.... errr... so what, that's doesn't mean that the herbal methods of yesteryear were not working or doing something to help people recover. If her scientific solution is to treat someone's symptoms by removing the symptomatic issue with surgery, then good luck to her... she'll end up with nothing left.... ooops she's got a headache... better remove her head.

Seriously, if that's supposed to be a valid argument for saying that complementary therapies are pseudoscience or quackery... then it falls flat on it's face (but that's ok, we can treat the bruise with arnica... oh, perhaps she doesn't believe that's effective)

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