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Alt Med (Understanding Alternative Medicine)

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Alt Med (Understanding Alternative Medicine)

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Alternative medicine is a non-conventional way of delivering treatment to heal the body such as yoga, acupuncture, homeopathy and massage therapy. It might actually be a better substitution to drugs and chemicals as it has less side effects but the medicine must  be approved by NNHPD, to make sure it is not harmful to the body. It also has its disadvantages because it takes a longer period of time for the healing to occur in comparison to the Western practice of medicine.

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Relationship with others (Mind Body Medicine)

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Relationship with others (Mind Body Medicine)

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According to mind body medicine, physical affection can help a person to handle their stress effectively and in children, it can improve their psychological skills and functioning along with promoting physical growth and increase in human function. It also says that we have various fields of energy in our body that can be affected by energy fields of others and the changes in the physical and psychological health.

Personally, I have always been a closed off person and I find it hard to express my emotion at times, often keeping them all to myself only. And I never quite get the hype of physical affection, in fact, physical contact such as holding hands and hugging used to make me uncomfortable because I'm not used to it. My friends from high school would probably know all about my distaste towards hugging compared to my pre-u and university friends because I am trying to outgrow that discomfort.

I'd like to think I'm doing a little better on the matter of physical contact now, I have an eleven-year old brother, and as I grow older and probably be away from home for most of the time, I have become very affectionate towards him and I've finally understand the power of touch. Because often when I'm home, I would always find ways to hold him, hugging him and carrying him despite his increasing weight. After all, human touch in very important in mind body medicine and especially in children, because it helps the secretion of growth hormone and provide a better mental state for them. Plus, holding my little brother would always calm me down and relaxes me, here's to hoping he won't grow too fast in my absence, even if he does, I hope he's better than me and that I have helped in every way that I could.

On the other hand, mind body medicine also emphasize on the importance of client-provider relationship. In my "Diagnosis, what diagnosis?" entry, it clearly shows the lack of this aspect which led to everything that went down there. Because I think all the medical practitioners there probably didn't trust me and probably dubbed me as students that used being sick as an excuse to skip classes, which is a total opposite of the truth. Practitioners should be in constant communication with the patients where trust is the foundation in the doctor-patient relationship. The positive attitude of the doctors can also contribute to faster healing and a more effective treatment, but sadly this aspect of healing process is often overlooked and has gone unnoticed. Personally for me, I think it is crucial to have a good client-provider relationship, because if only they had trusted me then, things might have been different. I actually lost a friend to pneumonia last year, it probably went undiagnosed for quite some time for her and it just spread to all of her organs and her body could not handle it, it might have helped it was diagnosed early.

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During this semester, I've been having a hard time trying to focus and study, I tend to procrastinate a lot and when I finally get started on my works I couldn't contribute my whole attention to it, I get distracted easily and ended up not finishing the said work. This is frustrating and a huge waste of time, often times I will procrastinate by watching my tv shows, cartoons and sport matches. I tried to do my work with music in the background, but often got distracted by it and when I tried it without music I can't focus either, so I'm just basically going around in circles these past couple of months.

I learnt of Binaural beats during class with Dr Sam, initially I pay it no mind because I prefer listening to my preferable taste of background music (Indie music) while doing my work and studying, but once I looked for Binaural beats to replace my usual background music and I actually worked quite well for me, I managed to cover a lot of chapters for my revision and actually finished my work.

I feel glad that I  manage to learn about Binaural beats in this course because it has proven to improve my own productivity and help me with improve my focus.

Aside from Binaural beats I do enjoy ASMR sometimes, granted it's not often but I do fancy watching hair cutting videos or barbers, it does get me tingling sometimes. Plus, I was my little brother's barber when I'm home, so it's like getting two birds with one stone, it calms me down, but it also show me how to cut hair and I can practice it on my little brother later on.

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As the title suggested,  I was not doing well in high school which is why I ended up repeating my SPM, in fact I bet no one from my high school would ever believe me getting into UM, neither could I, but here I am somehow.

Long short story, high school was not a pleasant experience for me, despite all the good crowds I hung with and the relations that I built, I was quite lost, it wasn't them that made the experience disastrous but me, myself and I. I mean as a teenager, what else is there to do besides fighting against your own demons and failing in the process. It sounds like I'm rambling now but what I'm trying to say is that in Ayurveda, our health comes from a perfect balance between our body, mind, environment and spirit, and diseases usually occurs due to external factors.

In high school I lack all the balance which prompted me to get sick quite often then which now leads to my family dubbing me as the kid who got sick often, and it worries them especially now that I'm far away from home. But now that I think back about it now, those frequent periods of sickness I experienced were probably due to the imbalance mentioned before. Let me start with the mind element, academically, I had a very low self-esteem back then due to being put in a class with high performing students and being separated from my friends of the my first three years of high school, and because of that I was unmotivated and often looked down on my own abilities and I never even bother trying to improve myself which contributed to me being stressed out and bummed about my result all the time, yet still not doing anything about it.

Moving on to the spirit part, it was in close relation to the state of my mind, my spirit was always on the down low, even though non-academically I was doing fine, my extra curricular involvements were satisfying, I was president of all the clubs I'm in, I was even the captain of the netball team, I was actually feeling battered about my academic performance. But instead of asking for help, I keep up the façade that I was fine and that I did not care much about my results and I was happy being the way I was. Looking back on it now, I truly wish I would've confided in someone and try to ask for help instead of just dismissing everything as if it lacks importance when in fact it was everything. So yeah, my spirits were dimmed the second I stepped into my second half of high school.

In contrary to the previous two elements, the next ones were the one that I actually manage to keep in balance for, the body and environment. Back in high school I was quite active with sports and exercising, granted it was not as much as it was when I was in primary school, but I was working my body for the better, so the balance was kept in this part. The same goes to my environment, as I mentioned previously the people I met in high school were lovely including my over-achieving classmates, on the rare occasion that I asked them for help in my study, they did not hesitate to help, although it was being surrounded by them that my self-esteem took a pummel, but they were all nice and warm and some might say I actually had a good support system (not that I ever decided to use them), so the people were the best part of my high school experience.

So basically, I have two well-balanced and two unbalanced elements mentioned in the Ayurveda, which probably made me quite 'the sick kid' back then. Now I'd dare to say that I have all balance well, although sometimes it's not perfect but it is better now.

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My mother likes cooking with her spices and herbs because she said they have a lot of benefits, but despite that I never really know much about them sans the few simple ones that I'm going to talk about in this entry.

Last semester, I contacted the Covid-19 virus a day prior to my first final paper, Ethnobotany. I came down with a fever, nausea and sore throats along with runny nose. My mum made me drink warm water with cloves to help me curb these symptoms. Cloves have an anti-inflammatory features that can help soothe the nasal cavity and throats, and just a couple days later, my sore throats and runny nose almost went away completely.

My mother's favourite herbs to use in cooking is the curry leaves, one of the plants she nurtures is the curry tree. Although I started eating them curry leaves due to my mum's advised, I realized that my friends don't really consume the curry leaves in their food, even my siblings will set them aside in their plates. Curry leaves are actually really beneficial to our health, some of them are helping to reduce cholesterol level in the body, especially suitable for my father who's suffering from high blood pressure and high cholesterol. As for me, I am anaemic which is why taking curry leaves will be beneficial for me due to presence of folic acid and iron to help maintain the red blood cell count in the body. Last but not least, it also contains antioxidant properties that can help remove  harmful toxins from our body.

The last health beneficial herb is the coriander, both its seed and leaf contribute to our health. They contain a lot of vitamins and minerals, the most abundant vitamin and mineral is vitamin A and K, and potassium respectively, other elements such as vitamin B, C, E, magnesium, phosphorus and calcium are also present in the coriander. As for health effect, they can help lower blood sugar, protect brain health, heart health and improve the digestive system.

I don't really know much about herbs and its benefits despite my mum always lecturing me about them, she often gets these information from the cooking shows she watches on tv, but I only started paying more attention to these herbs health benefits after taking this course and Ethnobotany from last semester.

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Diagnosis, what diagnosis? (Conventional Medicine & Alternative Medicine)

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Diagnosis, what diagnosis? (Conventional Medicine & Alternative Medicine)

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I am not an alternative medicine enthusiast but I have nothing against them either, in fact I  might have practiced some of them without realizing. On the other hand, for conventional medicine, I did have some unpleasant experience with it. Once during my matriculation, after just recently coming back to the college after a mid semester break, I got sick. Initially, I thought it was just some fever so I merely take some Panadols and called it a day, but after a couple days and I'm still not well, so I went to the clinic.

The clinic gave me some Paracetamol and cough syrup then ask me to come again incase I'm still not well after 3 days, but instead of 3, I came back to the clinics after 2 days because my condition is actually deteriorating. I actually asked for my blood to be tested but they said I came in too late (because I decided to take the van in the afternoon due to not wanting to miss my morning classes.) and the lab had closed.  So instead, they just gave me yet again some Paracetamol and cough syrup.

I'm still not well a couple days later, so I went to the hospital instead and they prescript me some antibiotics (still did not have my blood tested) which I ended up getting side effects from (nausea and diarrhea), by this time it's been almost a week and my parents are worried about me hence they bought me a plane ticket home, but not before I went to the hospital again for the last time and this time I manage to get my blood tested and there's nothing in the result that suggested I have something else but fever, but in my desperation I actually pushed for an X-ray test, and lo and behold, I actually had pneumonia.

Later on I found out that, all of the symptoms I have experienced, the rise and fall of my fever without really going away, coughing and all the phlegm actually point to pneumonia, but it actually took me insisting for the X-ray for it to be detected, I was frustrated then because I missed a lot of my classes along with my futsal and netball tournament. My older brother also got misdiagnosed once by a private clinic, so this to show that conventional medicine is not necessarily flawless and sometimes maybe practicing alternative medicine might nurse you back to health better.

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Last semester for both the mid semester break and the semester break, I fell ill, coming down with a fever and cold both times. According to mind body medicine, our illness is a message instead of a threat, so I believe this is some sort of way my body is telling me to rest while my mind is also agreeing to it, because the hectic times had passed and its time to take a break for a little bit.

Mind body medicine also talks about the importance of getting control of one's emotions and mental well-being in order to achieve better health. I find this incredibly true because some time when my favourite sports teams suffer a lost, I will feel slightly out of the weather and the feeling of fatigue consuming my body.

When I was younger I used to cry every time Dato' Lee Chong Wei lost in a tournament, as I grew older I am able to control my emotions better although sometimes I still fell into my old habits of grieving over sports team and it manages to affect my whole body system. For example, at the last Olympics I cried so hard over a team's lost and it gave me migraine, not to mention my eyes were all puffy the next day.

So, I think for me, it's important to have better control of my emotions when it comes to sports, while I manage to handle my stress better these days than I was in high school, sometimes being a sports fan that is the baggage to be carried, the emotional turmoil.