(Not a recommendation) Application of head scraping combined with five-tone therapy in CFS of liver qi stagnation, Meiling et al, 2018

From the google translation of the paper, which is in the Journal of Clinical and Pathological Research, http://lcbl.amegroups.com/article/view/25451

I presume head scraping is this procedure applied to the head:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gua_sha?wprov=sfla1

While five-tone therapy is this:

https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&s...CDCYQFggoMAE&usg=AOvVaw2eHohZnIJYBBYbzEYS4cyI

Head scraping or CBT - decisions, decisions...

 

Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!

 

Seeing this made me scratch my head. I noticed no improvement.

 

Better include that in the NICE guidelines then.

 

Shorter will write an article on Psychology Today on how this shows that real imaginary illnesses are best treated with culture matched elaborate placebos rather than the sterile CBT/GET.

 

Is Kleinman still around? This sounds like his subject area.

 

Gua sha is used in chinese and korean skincare and does seem to improve tone, and skin condition - like Perrin it focuses on lymphatic drainage when used facially.
Skin issues are one thing chinese and herbal.medicine do get results - perhaps because dermatology referrals are difficult and people seek help outwith mainstream .


I' m not one for quackery bit also try to keep an open mind. Chinese herbalism did form basis of 2015 nobel prize when artemisinin was produced from artemesia and used for malaria.

There may be some things worth testing formally.

 

I'll give it a go. I'm off to poke around on the black notes of the piano with one hand (presumably they are referring to the notes of a pentatonic scale) while scratching my scalp to bleeding point with the other. I should sleep much better

 

Words fail me sometimes.

 

...and in the Action for ME patient information

 

I'm really glad @Indigophoton, that you took the time to tag this article with "head scraping", so that members wishing to locate head scraping material can find it quickly!

 

@Woolie, yeah, it made me giggle

 

Well, if some AfME members report this as helping them then yes, it would seem so.

Ewwwww! Like dandruff and stuff??

 

It is a pentatonic scale, but the Chinese Pentatonic Scale.

Is Chinese music in equal temperament? I thought equal temperament came about through the introduction of keyboard instruments, and changed our perception of tuning in the 18th Century?

For non-musicians, our perception of things being in tune or not are conditioned by our being surrounded by equal temperament tunings, (the gaps between the notes being the same).

 

@Luther Blissett. Yes, it is the Chinese pentatonic scale corresponding to doh re mi soh la. I hadn't read the original post properly.

No, the notes of the pentatonic scale aren't equidistant. The black notes on the piano are any easy way to visualize the intervals between the notes. The black notes are an actual pentatonic scale of the type we are talking about ( doh re mi soh la - doh being F# in this case). You can see a larger gap after the two black notes and again after the three of them, corresponding to the larger intervals in the scale. In the equal tempered system all the 12 notes of the chromatic scale, from one C to the next C for example, are equidistant.

In traditional Chinese music they often used some weird sounding intervals but the pentatonic scale has become standardized to suit more modern instruments, and presumably due to the influence of western tunings.

There are many other scales used in Chinese music as well, some which sound oriental and others that don't to my ear.

The video you posted is "not available" to me but, as far as I know, Chinese scales use a mathematical method of tuning very close the pythagorean method which was one of the three tuning systems that preceded the western equal temperament system.

With most instruments you are stuck with the compromises of the modern system but advanced string players can and do adjust certain intervals when they are playing solo or with other string players. For example, in the key of C major B wants to resolve up to C and it is often played sharper than B on a piano. But if you play B to C in the key of G major you would play the B slightly flatter because sharp B in the context of G major sounds out of tune. Other intervals commonly adjusted are 3rds and 6ths.

There are many well know western songs that use the pentatonic scale, all easily played on the 5 black notes of a piano. For example:
Auld Lang Syne
Amazing Grace
Stairway to Heaven
Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
Old Macdonald had a Farm

 

I've always been fascinated by the 12 note equal tempered system. The frequencies come from

f = f0 x 2^(n/12)

Where f0 is the base frequency and n is the number of the note in the scale counting from 0. So if f0 is the frequency of a C then n=12 gives the frequency of the next C to be double the first, etc. So equal spacing means equal on a logarithmic scale.

What's interesting is that a fifth corresponding to n=7 (i.e. if C is note 0, G is note 7) should be 3/2 times the base but 2^(7/12)=1.498 and a fourth at n=5 should be 4/3 but 2^(5/12)=1.335. Both of these are pretty close and the rest aren't too far off. So it is kind of by numerical accident that the equal tempered system works. 2^(n/12) just happens to be close enough to the important ratios of small integers.

 

In equal temperament the ratio between adjacent notes of the chromatic scale (i.e. a semitone apart) is the twelfth root of 2.

Multiply the fundamental frequency of any note by that factor gives you the next note up the chromatic scale.

[EDIT: Just noticed Bruce's post. He gave the compact version: f = f0 x 2^(n/12) ]

Equal temperament tuning has been described as the compromise where each key is equally out of tune.

 

Ok, so i have a question.

I'm assuming that the theory around this treatment is based upon oscillations. (The sound waves cause cells that are vibrating to change?)

Now, I don't understand the maths behind sound waves, but, this is where my equal temperament objection comes in.

1) A note on an equal temperament tuned instrument contains the frequencies of other notes that make up the whole. Correct?

2) Because the notes are not harmonically tuned, the sound wave contains a slight irregular pulse(?)

3) In contrast, a harmonically tuned instrument would not contain this pulse. It would have a perfectly spaced waveform ?

I know what see in an oscilloscope, the waveforms stay static in one case, and move around in the other. So, if the theory was correct, a piano would not work for the therapy due to the pulses contained in different notes of the scale, unless the piano was tuned to be perfectly harmonic in just one key? Am I making sense?

 

This somehow reminds of the time that talk show host David Letterman became irate when his attempt to replicate the "Denorex Challenge" was interrupted. He loudly insisted, "This is SCIENCE, damn it!"