I'm glad it did. I've seen so much crap from moderators from claiming absolutes to being plain rude to members. It seems like that if moderator slightly disagrees with a topic it gives them a right to be rude and insulting to a member. Certainly does not represent of what it is being like an example of a representative.

My original question from my first post in the topic still stands though. "what about non-FDA approved drugs to cure certain conditions that are off-label but have quite a bit of research behind them ? Would I banned for suggesting a "woo" because FDA did not approve a certain drug yet, but maybe numerous European countries did beforehand ? There a certain amount of grayzone that is hard to distinguish IMO."

Maybe I'm jaded, but when I see insurance companies cut patients coverage and make record profits on the backs of sick patients, yeah I get irked. I did not mean to offend you, personally I think insurance companies hinder healthcare in many many way, I can cite thousands of examples. I've seen children denied coverage for things that doctors feel is 100% needed, and suffer ill consequences. Im not judging the field of mathematics, I'm judging how insurance companies operate. Though I understand why you would get offended if you work in that field.

Likewise, yes i feel that insurance is a scam it always has been. People should be responsible for their healthcare and there are many models that could allow this. So honestly it doesn't matter how much time they dedicate, I think that if they work in the insurance field they are working for a company that is scamming people.

How do employees get paid for insurance companies? They have to take money from the people paying into the system. That's an elementary concept. It's not more complicated than that. A percentage of the people paying into the system goes to employees of the system. That's on the most basic level. Its the foundation of that system. It doesn't matter what the higher math says, the foundation of how those companies operate is very simple. I think there are far superior models out there than the insurance model for managing healthcare.

I honestly would like to see people educated in mathematics working as educators or in the scientific field. Either way if you don't understand the basic concept of how money gets taken from clients, then you are just putting up a mental block for yourself as a defense mechanism. That math is very simple.

Im sorry if I offended you, that wasn't my intention. it was just to point out a flaw in how insurance companies operate.

Discussion of any medical treatment has a place here, provided all the facts are presented.

The main concern here is that members do not discourage people from following well-documented proven treatments in favor of alternatives with less prospect of success. This idea is at the core of our harm reduction principle, and I do apologize if any of our crew has showed impatience on the subject. This situation comes up regularly, and we feel that any bad or unconstructive advise posted in these forums is on some level all of our responsibility.

As far as new or cutting-edge treatments go, please share! But do it right: post links to peer reviewed studies or articles in respected journals or well established medical websites. We want to get the facts straight without giving the wrong impressions about these lesser known treatments.

Well this is basically what i was thinking about cannabis (sorry if this has been brought up before in this thread).

A lot of people in this thread have said that once an alternative approach has generated enough solid research it is accepted with open arms by the medical community. This is simply not always the case with things like cannabis, and IMO ibogaine and ayahuasca as well. There has been a lot of solid research into the beneficial affects of cannabis in so many areas, especially within the last year, and things such as phoenix tears/cannabis leaf juicing are showing a LOT of promise..yet its still not accepted by most of the united states and the world.

So in these medical emergency threads would it be ok to mention these things as long as its mentioned in an appropriate context? i.e. its not touted as an end-all solution but a complimentary approach, they still advise them to go to a hospital and seek medical advice, etc

EDIT: never mind, guyo just anwsered my question

Well again I hate to deviate from the topic here but I could easily replace actuarial with medical here. I didn't mean to offend you either here, I think this is just key difference here as they they'e being attached to the hundreds of hours being educatated and invested in a certain philosophy of sorts. Like I said before replace actuarial with medical in your post and does sound very similar to a counterargument that you would make. Ie medical professionals get paid a shitload just as much actuarial professionals do. And it's both correlated to the amount of studying they have to do from what it seems.

Both of us have experience some sort of injustice from the opposite field but to claim one is more injust than another ? Like I said unless you're a high level boss it would be hard to claim absolutes. I've seen some examples from medical field too. Like doctors charging insurance companies extraoridnary fees for simple procedures.

Your "counter argument" doesn't hold weight. Actuaries don't deliver healthcare, they're intermediaries, middle men to payment systems within insurance companies. Physicians deliver healthcare. Nurses deliver healthcare. People in medicine deliver healthcare. Insurance is just a middle man way for making a healthcare payment. And ive already told you that i think there are better models than insurance. Also I need to move to your country, because medical professionals where I live don't make a shitload. I certainly don't. They also work a shitload of hours. Have malpractice insurance and huge loans which drives up the cost of healthcare. Yes people get paid based on their level of education. I would just like to see math/stat/demographic geniuses working in fields that are more useful than insurance companies. Because I have stated why i feel that insurance isn't the best model. And as much as I'd like to discuss alternative models I don't think this forum is for that.

Actuaries contribute to paychecks so that the medical doctorate field is being in high demand(which only accepts highest percentile of kids interested in high educ).Unless you wanna argue that medical field would be as much of a demand if it paid minimal wage, because people are inherently good and want to help other people. Ofcourse actuaries don't deliver healthcare why would they, it's not their job. They study thousands of hours mathematics to figure out how much it costs. Doctors certainly make shitloads compared to most other professions. Perhaps only financial & political field(due to lobbies) delivers more with less education but that's a side effect of their profession too I guess.


^ I also think this topic is quite important and I won't derail it further because I think we could argue for many pages more. You invested ton of hours in your side, so I did in mine. Just to make it clear I'm not defending actuarial field as being a saint - I think there's a huge gray-zone of an interaction between medical&acturial field that contributes to problems that exists. I don't have possible knowledge to say for certain who is evil as who is not.

Businessmen, baseball players, entertainers make a shitload. Surgeons do make good though. But many pediatricians and other types of docs really dont make that great money.

Also Im not saying that all actuaries are not needed. Please don't miss my point. All I'm saying is that the insurance model for delivering healthcare is not the best model. Yes calculating the cost of healthcare is needed, absolutely. All I was talking about was with the insurance system. And mostly that's in reference to private insurance and even government insurance. I'm sure you see my point by now. At least I hope. It's not about who is "evil", most individuals are good, it's the models and systems that tend to be corrupt. When you deny coverage based on cost but have already taken a patients money to give to employees and then force those individuals to pay out of pocket, that is a corrupt system. I think I've done my best to articulate why, and I don't care to beat a dead horse. And trust me I do see your point. The issue I take is not with actuaries themselves but how they are utilized within the insurance model.

As I explained earlier: people should not give ANY medical advice for a serious illness.



I think the main problem with Iboga and aya are the side effects. They are severe, both mentally and physically, and I doubt any medicine with such severe side effects will ever reach the legal market.

Also the problem with Ibogane is that yes, it works wonders for addiction treatment, but what I understood from people working in addiction treatment is that getting the people of the drugs is not the problem but keeping them of the drugs is. There are many successful treatments to get people of drugs but only few to keep them on the right path. Factors like availability, circumstances, social setting and peer pressure play a big role in the relapse of patients and they are hard to control.

And with cannabis, currently the biggest problem I see is prohibition. From my understanding medical MJ doctor recipes are given where it is allowed, if your doctor does not cooperate then you go to another one who will.


Kind regards,

The Traveler

I'm gonna have to agree with Traveler here.


Also...

Just because he is advising us NOT to give medical advice when somebody is faced with a SERIOUS ILLNESS does not mean he is bashing alternative medicine.

I think this message got a little bit misconstrued.

Bump!

With the emergence of two topics where mentally unstable people are given advice to take entheogens: DON'T!

Read the first post of this topic VERY well please.


Kind regards,

The Traveler

apologies Traveler

i'll refrain from giving advice on serious medical issues

in retrospect asking the person to smoke DMT , was childish , irresponsible and ego stroking behaviour on my part

shoot, I'm hardly comfortable telling healthy, sane people to take entheogens.

Apologies accepted, thank you for understanding.


Kind regards,

The Traveler

I agree with trav's and the mods decisions here. And can say advice i have given recently was not looked into deeply enough, and i ended up retracting my statements after finding out about recent controversies regarding the recommendation made.

I see no reason why a restriction on providing medical advice for a SERIOUS medical condition is wrong here, since we are not trained MD's (most of us at least).

And i think its a fair middle ground to allow talk of less serious nature regarding advice on medical issues.

Though i don't agree with the western traditional medicine practices in regards to some areas of treatment, when its a serious issue, and you are not qualified to give advice on the issue, its best to just not recommend any thing at all. That doesn't mean you can't provide support and comfort for individuals who reach out about their problems here.

With that said, perhaps a disclaimer that you are not in any way qualified to recommend anything, here's an alternative treatment you may wish to discuss with a medical doctor and see what their opinion is on the matter. That way, nobody is being censored, and the OP can discuss whatever was recommended with a qualified MD. But never recommend alternative treatments without the disclaimer that they should only consider this as an option after consultation with a qualified MD.

Given the situation the admins are in though, i understand why this new rule is necessary, i'm only offering possible options that would make everyone happy, and ensure that advice given is in the right context, and merely a reccomendation to consult your doctor about this treatment.

But i stand by and understand why serious medical advice should only be given by doctors. That doesn't mean (imho) you shouldn't be able to tell someone to ask their doctor about a particular treatment, but not do so without their council on the decision to undertake the alternative treatment.

This is very beneficial just like the no-synthesis rules.

well written , all i can wonder is where is corpus callosum in all this discussion? He/She is pretty much the only member i have seen with an MD badge, yet it seems he's staying away from this well oiled "fire"

Good policy, i had actually thought something like it was already in place haha

This is an old thread and the MD badge was bestowed after I was permitted to moderate by Traveler.

My training is in conventional medicine and I have been given a degree of licence by Traveler to offer some medical advice which reflects conventional thinking in the field ie what I have been trained to do. The Internet is a limited medium for exchanging information and clearly doesn't permit the physical exam which is as crucial as the history. I recognise conventional medicine has its failings and changes in time but I ask myself, before proferring advice, what would I say to someone I value ie family, nearest, members here; more often than not it involves the caveat that seeing ones conventional doctor in person first would be best.

Traveler,

Thank you for the post, extremely helpful and necessary.

My mother recently suffered a stroke while smoking DMT, I was there and administering. You can read the full post here:

https://www.dmt-nexus.me...spx?g=posts&t=62514

I am by no means offering medical advice here but I feel very strongly that Nexus users should be made aware of potential consequences of entheogens (DMT in particular) used by older people and those that may have heart/BP issues. My mother may have been an exception but none the less she had a stroke induced by smoking DMT coinciding with an extreme spike in blood pressure (most likely due to high anxiety). Prior to my mother smoking DMT we did a lot research (my friends and myself are reasonably well versed in entheogens) and nowhere on the Nexus or elsewhere were there reports of a stroke in an otherwise healthy older person.

It would be great if a link to this thread and an acknowledgment of the potential danger smoking DMT (and perhaps other means of ingestion) might have on older people and/or people with blood pressure issues. The thing is that my mom had extremely good BP for her age as well as great over all general health. Users should be aware when administering to those that might be susceptible to a hypertensive event (even if only because of age and anxiety) that they must use extreme caution, small doses or perhaps abstain from DMT all together.

love and peace,

J

Link to stroke post:

https://www.dmt-nexus.me...aspx?g=posts&t=62514