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A week filled with stories...

Two things have been coming to my mind so far after having read all of the articles for this week:

For one, all the stories that talked about health tradition and believes in other cultures reminded me of something we do in Germany when someone suffers from diarrhea. We are told to eat brezels and drink coca cola. I have not once in my life wondered if these two medical advices had a deeper biological meaning, with that said, you can tell I am already trying to relate to Westernized medicine because that's what I was brought up with. I came to thinking, the salt on the brezels might help the loss of water in the body, maybe the sugar in the coke is supposed to bring you easy energy? Or are those two medical advices supposed to even be closely related to anything physical, but are rather a tradition that has survived for many many years because people believed in their powers? Therefore, relating to the readings which I found very interesting, I learned many new things when it comes to healing and people's believes in different ways of healing. For someone growing up with Westernized medicine never knowing anything quite like that, reading about how people believe in different colors and shapes of bills or the power of a grain of rice was quite fascinating. Understandable that these people are probably as fascinated as me when hearing about Westernized approaches.

For tow, I realized that some of the readings made me mad. Although we have talked for quite q while now how medical treatments that are forced upon people always serve a higher goal, and are not supposed to help only. But let's assume for one quick second people have never sat in a class quite like ours and haven't done enough reading about that traditional and cultural believes of a certain population, they just saw there is need for quick vaccinations as many people are dying from a certain virus...isn't it understandable that these people come and bring the things that they know for sure worked where they are from and all they wanted is to pass that knowledge on to help. As much as I see how many things have a deeper political meaning, I sometimes wonder if there is also just some good hearted people out there who really just wanted to help - without seeing a deeper and more financial reason behind their act.

One last things that just popped up, and there might be more after sleeping over this, one article talked about the heaven and the earth and how the body and mind are a reflection of the first two. I believe I have read before that if a woman is not on any sort of hormone treatment to regulate her period or for contraceptive matters, her menses will adapt the cycle of the moon.

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