“Capitalism charging a fortune to cure you? With stuff that has scary side effects?”
“Have no fear! Now you can buy a bunch of shit that doesn’t work, from us! We’re also unregulated as fuck so who knows if this stuff messes up your kidneys.”
The worst thing, and anyone who had parents who fell for these scams growing up will know this, is parents who will try to ‘cure’ their neurodivergent kids with rat butt herb or whatever. Have fun spending your formative years incorrectly medicated!
Sure, yes I know there are natural medicines that work for certain things. But the industry as a whole is so gross and predatory. Every so often they’ll ‘discover’ some ancient remedy so they have something new to market. Selling crystals and sage to very ill people who need real treatment. Exploiting sick people who are desperate for a cure is low as hell and I’m surprised (but not surprised) that they can just sell things that do not do the thing they say they do.
Getting south american jungle snuff called hapeh forcefully blown through a pipe into my sinuses has given me relief I’ve never had in 25 years of major sinus problems
On the other hand every functional medicine doctor I’ve interacted with felt like a scam
I’m fairly confident that you experienced relief due to vasocontriction and nothing fancy or mysterious. There are vasocontricting drugs but they are not prescribed for chronic issues because they cause tissue to atrophy eventually and that is bad :(
Nasal decongestants are just topical vasocontrictors. I don’t know how much more effective tobacco would be than pseudoephedrine
Most are, some I think reduce mucus formation through paths other than “no blood for you”. Idk there are a lot of drugs out there and I am merely 3 rats in a trench coat with an interest in harm reduction.
Nicotine is a pretty powerful vasocontrictor and topically applied to a mucus membrane would be a very potent dose. I suspect that like using cocaine or speed for the purpose though you’d cause enough damage to make the issue worse long-term.
Nicotine is only one component of hapeh. Depending on the blend it’s also made with special types of ground up flowers, barks, herbs. Different blends for different purposes and stages of the process
I don’t know any non vasoconstrictor nasal decongestant. Except like saline.
steroids?
Fair point. Tobacco likely isnt gonna work through those pathways though.
Not the full story though. Ever since COVID I was leaking slime out of my nose so bad I would need to carry a bath towel with me every where everyday to lap it all up. After hapeh no more slime, even when I don’t do hapeh.
A problem when determining cause is many things get better on their own and so sometimes it looks like something cured a thing when it just relieved symptoms while the body did the rest.
It could also have broken some sort of inflammatory feedback loop by making everything settle down long enough to reset, or damaged mucus producing organs enough to just stop the problem longer term.
I was ruthlessly sick for the better part of seven years and then when I got abruptly well after doing hapeh everyday for a couple of weeks I’m sure it was just my body naturally healing at the same time for some other unrelated reason /s
This is literally what “cure” meant in the context of my comment. Almost verbatim what my medicine woman told me before we started
“Functional medicine” is just natural medicine woo repackaged to doctors.