Having had clinical experience on the benefits of providing young children with daily fish oil tablets, I decided that this was the appropriate course for our son when he was about 3 years old.
What I did not factor in was the enormous resistance from my wife, Ms B.
According to Ms B, fish oil tablets were artificial and could damage our child's health.
Well, I went to the trouble of providing Ms B with relevant clinical studies to get her to understand the neurological benefits to a growing child of supplementation with fish oil tablets, but to no avail.
As it turned out a week or so later, Ms B was talking to one of her Chinese friends, and mentioned our disagreement over fish oil tablets. This friend has a child in school in year 6, who had apparently just topped the year academically. This friend commented that she had been supplementing her child with fish oil since the child was two.
Well, not long after I get a frantic call from Ms B while I was at work in my clinic, asking me to purchase fish oil tablets for our son that evening.
I did so and when I got home, the first thing Ms B did was check that I had purchased the tablets. When she looked at what I had purchased, she lamented that I had purchased the WRONG brand!
Her friend apparently buys label A, whereas I purchased label B. They are both however identical in terms of quantity and quality, but this was not good enough for Ms B.
She said: "My friend told me that label A has the best fish oil tablets. They won many awards around the world. I only want my son to take the best fish oil tablets."
I responded by saying:
"Which awards did they win? Please let me"
Ms B couldn't answer me but was insisting that label A were award winning tablets.
I proceeded by saying:
"Both labels are effecetivelly identical. There is NO difference amongst these two labels."
But this meant very little to Ms B. She was told by an authority, being her friend, that label A was the best fish oil in the world, and that was that.
I had to go back to the pharmacy and replace my purchase with the other label.
Well, I thought that at least our son would now be getting fish oil supplementation in his diet, which at the end of the day is all that mattered.
Showing posts with label Chinese medicine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chinese medicine. Show all posts
Monday, November 23, 2009
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Chinese medicine
One area that has often created tension between us has been the issue of chinese medicine.
Now I am a medical practitioner, a doctor, in fact a specialist in my field, and yet I seem to be outranked at home on all medical issues by my mother-in-law, who seems to believe that all ailments can be treated by prescribing a weed, root, or some other dried out plant substance.
Now it wouldn't bother me so much if this was how NaiNai, as I call her (means grandmother in Chinese), simply used Chinese medicine on herself, but this is in fact all about our son, and how he gets treated.
When my son gets a fever for instance, I see it as a fever, however NaiNai and my wife (whom I will call Ms B), see it as the child not having drunk enough water, or the child being upset by something and thus having too much fire in his system.
Even worse they visit these unregulated dispensers of these weeds whom I call witch doctors, who seem to re-inforce this bizarre notion that any ailment can be treated with a mixture of a few dry plants.
Unfortunately, being in the medical field, I know only too well how risky Chinese medicine is. In fact I know of patients in the hospital I attend who have developed cirrhosis of the liver or end stage kidney disease because they have consumed these weeds. And they have died as a result!
But does Ms B listen to me? No.
This is an odd response from an otherwise intelligent woman who is highly educated and highly advanced in her field. And yet she believes in something that in her eyes, can never be disproved, even with hard science.
Remarkably, this is a woman who refuses to believe in religion, because as she says, there is absolutely no proof that God exists. Yet she believes in so many other things with no proof, including superstitions, which I will touch on later.
Now I am a medical practitioner, a doctor, in fact a specialist in my field, and yet I seem to be outranked at home on all medical issues by my mother-in-law, who seems to believe that all ailments can be treated by prescribing a weed, root, or some other dried out plant substance.
Now it wouldn't bother me so much if this was how NaiNai, as I call her (means grandmother in Chinese), simply used Chinese medicine on herself, but this is in fact all about our son, and how he gets treated.
When my son gets a fever for instance, I see it as a fever, however NaiNai and my wife (whom I will call Ms B), see it as the child not having drunk enough water, or the child being upset by something and thus having too much fire in his system.
Even worse they visit these unregulated dispensers of these weeds whom I call witch doctors, who seem to re-inforce this bizarre notion that any ailment can be treated with a mixture of a few dry plants.
Unfortunately, being in the medical field, I know only too well how risky Chinese medicine is. In fact I know of patients in the hospital I attend who have developed cirrhosis of the liver or end stage kidney disease because they have consumed these weeds. And they have died as a result!
But does Ms B listen to me? No.
This is an odd response from an otherwise intelligent woman who is highly educated and highly advanced in her field. And yet she believes in something that in her eyes, can never be disproved, even with hard science.
Remarkably, this is a woman who refuses to believe in religion, because as she says, there is absolutely no proof that God exists. Yet she believes in so many other things with no proof, including superstitions, which I will touch on later.
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