Fw: qi and molecules

June 8, 2003

Dear kindred members of the list,

I'm forwarding a conversation between Malino and I as wanted to include some of the dear friends I've come to know through CHA. So please view this as a new thread with harmonics of many old threads that I've promised (threatened) in the past to amplify.

Malino asks that I give some context to this though it's challenging without adding lengthy and personal exchanges we've had. Malino in brief has a wonderfully iconoclastic view that is willing to engage elements of classical Chinese medicine and Taoist philosophy as well as classical views of Western science. He manages to blow my mind below with quickly coming up with quotes from classical physiology literature that he's studied to annotate my commentary from a previous letter. My response to his presentation follows at the bottom.

I look forward to commentary by Z'ev, Ken, Jim, Bob Felt and many others too numerous to mention. As always, catcalls are both welcome and expected.

-

Saturday, June 07, 2003 7:21 PM

qi and molecules

>Hi Malino,

Emmanuel writes: >I like your example, but I would take it much further if you would bear with me. Let me know if this brief thread may be posted to list so that we can share our dialogue.

Malino writes: Sure you can post this dialogue. But I feel you have to give context to the emails we have sent. Otherwise readers would feel like they jumped into the middle of a conversation.

Emmanuel writes:> I, for one, am trained to see pharmacological contents of a medicine and the body's energy dynamics as different and apart. I really did enjoy your example, and it really got my wheels spinning. I was a chef for seven years before returning to school to study sciences.

Malino writes: Cool. I am a fan of food and the Food Network on cable TV. You'll have have to cook me something if I ever get out to the Bay area.

E: > Did you know that a good béchamel (white sauce) often contains nutmeg and cayenne?

E:>They are added in such small amounts that you can not really detect them in the sauce based on their own flavor. Instead they kind of shift the overall sensation of the sauce to make the flavor fuller and more complex. Hard to describe.

M: No. Make me wonder how somebody thought of putting nutmeg and cayenne in the first place. Especially in dishes where it would not be detected!

M: But I do know that when the French first encountered asian cuisine (I guess many centuries ago), they imported certain ingredients back to France. Interestingly, soy sauce was supposedly the secret ingredient in the dish of some French chefs, way back then.

E: >In a living system it is at least a million times more subtle and complex. The interaction of enzyme-operated biosynthetic pathways are driven by steady state levels of ATP from glucose and fatty acid oxidation. It takes work to maintain the temperature and the pH at the right levels. The substrate in the pathway has to be present along with all of the coenzymes. Most people are not able to grasp the dynamic state. Instead they see the test tube situation which is an equilibrium state .... in physiological terms this is death. People look at one reaction at a time instead of the thousands or millions of reactions that constitute a single second in time. The steady state homeostasis is the definition of life which is in counterpoint to the equilibrium state of death. In the steady state homeostasis there are a thousand balance points, and all of them are knife edges. Yet they all hold each other together as well as interact with each other. So, like good architecture, they are held themselves and each other over their balance points. Yet unlike a dead building, a living system is a constantly moving architecture from the molecular/cellular level to the tissue/organ/system levels. In relation to the balance point they are hardly moving, yet in relation to everything else each of a thousand homeostasis are carrying out 10-15,000 reactions per second. To access what is the "pharmacological" action of a biochemical you look for a clear sign of action. It must "unbalance" something in order to be "seen". The same chemical in the physiological system carrying out "physiological" actions can not be "seen". So if you can "see" what a biochemical or a pharmacological agent does, then you know this chemical in this amount is not what the physiological system wants in order to be in balance. More subtle yet more efficacious is a good night's sleep, a bowl of soup for lunch or possibly a dose of Xiao Yao Wan when you've been stressed and irritable. These actions are efficacious in ways too numerous and too subtle to easily measure. Yet the sense of wellness is quite profound. Chinese medicine has found some ways to measure on an organismic level. You look at the pulse, the tongue, the presentation of emotions and countenance.

E: >So it's the same as the béchamel sauce. If you can taste the nutmeg and the cayenne, it's no longer a béchamel sauce. Can you follow any of this? If you apply a pharmaceutical molecule and can "see" the effect, chances are you may have not balanced the homeostasis. What has been done can be referred to as a pharmacological effect. This is in counterpoint to applying an herb formula or acupuncture to restore balance. In this case you discover a "lack of effects". Which is to say that the signs of imbalance or illness go away. In this case you may have balanced the homeostasis and brought about a physiological action. I believe this is where the ideas of zheng qi versus xie qi come in. >

M: In the book "the Wisdom of the Body" by Sherwin Nuland. The author says something similar.

M: page xvii- "The essence of success is the dynamism that allows each cell to respond instantaneously to even the most minor threat to its integrity and therefore the integrity of the entire organism. There can be no chemical complacency. A high degree of readiness-to the point of instability, in fact- is required to allow the immediate change calling forth of compensatory mechanisms to neutralize it. Our steadiness is a dynamic equilibrium."

M: page xix-"In the introduction to his book , Cannon quoted the French physiologist Charles Richer, who in 1900 had stated that "instability is the necessary condition for the stability of the organism." A stable system is not a system that never changes. It is a system that constantly and instantly adjusts and readjusts in order to maintain such a state of being that all necessary functions are permitted to operate at maximum efficiency. Stability demands change to compensate for changing circumstances. Ultimately, then, stability depends on instability."

M: The ideas expressed by these passages have always stuck with me, and have left me wondering what specific bodily phenomenons were responsible for the stability.

Thanks to you, I have part of that question answered. The rest is a mystery that is the human body.

I didn't realize that "physiological" actions can not be "seen" and biochemical or a pharmacological actions or agents are things that can be seen. Is this a personal definition? Professional definition?

I always assume biochemical, physiological, or a pharmacological are anything that dealt with molecules, especially if it is overt or can be measure by an agreed standard.

Everything else that is the "occult" or hidden aspects of biochemistry, physiological, or a pharmacological (its flipside), tends to be electromagnetic, invisible and innately intelligent.

Qi the totality of all of the above, and the specific manifestation of Qi (ex. food qi, electricity, and others to numerous to mention). Is is broad and narrow at the same time. Also, there are other things we haven't realize yet about qi and other unseen forces. These are the thing you and I are made of, but only understand such a small fraction. Such is the mystery Qi, that which is both seen and unseen.

>In gratitude for your patient reading of all this,

As always, same here.

Malino

- Saturday, June 07, 2003 11:34 PM

Re: qi and molecules

Wow, Malino.

Great stuff in your response. I can't believe you actually went to the classical literature to find the origins of my thoughts. You're too much!

Yes and no is the answer to whether my presentation is personal or a rendering of the professional wisdom at the current time. Any physiology professor might read my words and find them fundamental to their own understanding, but the political nature of any academic practice would kick in. They would have to assess whether I was a cell and molecular type or if I was an oranismic type. That's the breakdown these days. Of course, I view myself as both. So basically yes, I've presented a pretty classical professional view, except I've done in an iconoclastic way. I've pretty much merged the current views to my own sense of synthesis. Naturally, I started out life as a performing poet, so my rendering is somewhat of an artistic presentation that might make some professorial types roll their eyes. But the presentation from classical physiology literature that you've presented is really an act of poetry. So I feel pretty happy to be in good company.

Physiological "dosaging" is so tiny and in such submicroscopic locales, that it could only be seen on a molecular level. Also enzymatic reactions occur a few times per second when nothing much is happening up to 15,000 reactions per second with near perfect fidelity when the enzyme is seeing it's substrate and the conditions are good. So in fact we know of these reactions, we've documented them, and we're learning more by the minute. But a human body with a billion cells each with thousands of reactions (both catabolic and synthetic) can in no way be measured. Except in my opinion by CM diagnosis. Each individual reaction is too small and too tightly regulated in situ. It's also not just "chemical". Action potentials along nerves and muscle cell membranes are both electric and magnetic. These are measured all the time on a gross organismic level via EKG and EEG, but not at subtle levels at a billion locales. Also enzymes change their reaction rates when the temperature, pH or salinity of the solution changes, and also when their substrates or coenzymes are also present. Any of these things can be measured and are, of course, measured, but only by holding everything else constant. As the body moves with it's billions of cells, the subtle chemical and electrical changes are far beyond anything that Western science can really measure or "see". Jim Ramholz makes reference to this all of the time when he talks about complexity theory. I like that realm of science but would still be an iconoclast until I saw true synthesis and pattern development in the manner of CM diagnosis.

I honestly feel that CM is perhaps a millenium or more ahead of WM for this very reason regarding what can be theorized and what can be "seen". I'm in good company there. Dr. Chiang a pharmacologist and owner of Min Tong shares with me that he thinks it's more like 3 millennia. Not that everyone who studies CM can find their way. But the advantages of CM are so enormous that even an average practitioner can do virtual magic in the realm of improving normal athletic performance as well as dealing with adjustments to many chronic diseases. Tui na masters will also tell you that they can set bones a lot better than orthopedists. I know one such gentleman personally and have heard of several others. So I find this to be fascinating territory since I'm an anatomist and worked and taught anatomy under a connective tissue research scientist at Univ. of Texas. I found his research quite fascinating. I'd had my share of sprained ankles and have even come back into athletics after a fractured thoracic vertebra. The one tai na master that I do know fixed that problem for me ... about 99% or maybe 100%. I'd had a lot of arthritic development, bone spurring and disc degeneration. That was 14 years ago, and now it's all gone. I ran a nine mile course today and felt great. I do at least one or two ten mile runs per week with many shorter daily runs.

Sorry to carry on. I just really loved your response and have more to say when time permits. Much as I hate to see our words picked apart on CHA, I'm posting to list only because there are so many kindred souls as well. Let the dogs chew on their bones if they will.

Emmanuel Segmen

MSN 8 helps ELIMINATE E-MAIL VIRUSES. Get 2 months FREE*.

June 8, 2003

Dear kindred members of the list,

I'm forwarding a conversation between Malino Kahn and I as wanted to include some of the dear friends I've come to know through this list. So please view this as a new thread with harmonics of many old threads that I've promised (threatened) in the past to amplify. I would offer to those bored by these topics that we are called here to not just to attend a lecture but in fact to participate and bring about the evolution of the list by presenting an agenda. I then follow in the example of the good Dr. K Hamill.

Malino asks that I give some context to this on behalf of the list though it's challenging without adding lengthy and personal exchanges we've had. Malino in brief has a wonderfully iconoclastic view that is willing to engage elements of classical Chinese medicine and Taoist philosophy as well as classical views of Western science. He manages to blow my mind below with quickly coming up with quotes from classical physiology literature that he's studied to annotate my commentary from a previous letter. My response to his presentation follows at the bottom.

I look forward to commentary by many too numerous to mention personally. As always, as my friend Ken Rose likes to say, catcalls are both welcome and expected. ;-)

Emmanuel Segmen

Merritt College, Asia Natural