Asparagus is good, as long as it is green and not that disgusting white, fat kind that Germans and Dutch eat. But curing cancer? All it does is make your urine stink (within 20 minutes of eating, too!).
There's a lot of medicinal quackery among Mormons, to be sure.
Lets set the record straight. Mormons do NOT believe in quack or even naturpathic or alternative medicine at any increased rate of the general population. They do believe in eating healthy, not smoking, drinking, or using illecit drugs.
I have been a mormon since I wat 19 yrs old. I am 64 yrs old now. I am very active and I have never heard of a single case of a member rejecting conventional treatment. I personally have had cancer surgery and radiation treatment and no one has ever suggested that I should add or substitute any alternative treatment.
As far as asperagus is conserned, I get chain emails (not from Mormons) sometimes suggesting it is a cure-all. No food cures cancer! Good nutrition is however a factor in preventing and recovering from many health issues.
Barry, I'm assuming you're gone now, but in case you didn't notice the Title of the page, or the name on the link you clicked on this is an "ex-mormon" website dealing specifically with helping people who have been harmed by the church and/or are trying to recover from it's harmful teachings.
In other words, we are well aware of what mormons 'believe'... And while a good portion of mormons are happy to go to conventional doctors and be treated with modern medicine, there are a large number of them that supplement or replace science with wishes and dreams and empty bottle of snake oil. I'm sure that you yourself probably got some type of blessing to "help" deal with your cancer.
Perhaps because mormons are so ingrained to believe that feelings can help discover truth, they are more susceptible to multi-marketing schemes. In my time as a mormon, people have tried to sell me magnets, herbs, quasi fad diets and even essential oil ("You'll never need a vaccination or antibiotic again! Just rub this on your feet!") All as cures for everything from headaches to cancer.
And really, is this surprising? Mormons believe that a drop of olive oil on the head with some people pressing down your spine while muttering some heartfelt but worthless words can cure everything from headaches to cancer...
The funny thing is, prayer, by it's own rules is worthless. I read just this morning something to the effect of, "If it's God's plan he's going to do it anyway, if it's against God's plan he wouldn't do it anyway, so why bother him about it?"
Anyway, this was a fairly long rant, I have some strong feelings about it as I've seen people not get the help they need in favor of alternative treatment.
My TBM ex wife was an herbal medicine fanatic. She had read some of their literature and attended some lectures and had quickly become an "expert." She saw herbal medicine as God's higher medicine. She subscribed to all kinds of strange notions that all the top 15 used herbal medicine rather than consult those evil doctors. She also had heard that all the top 15 were vegetarians. I had that in mind as I went through the Cougareat once behind Ezra Taft Benson and his wife Flora. He had the fish sandwich and she had a cheeseburger.
Anyway she had a friend with "female troubles." She knew what to do--exactly which herbs to prescribe and set into action to help her friend. This went on for a few months without the friend getting any better. Finally the friend went to a doctor only to find she had cervical cancer. She had a hysterectomy and chemotherapy and came out alive, but my ex's faith almost killed her.
Another friend of mine was Ernest Strack. He was well known as an affable, great guy Mormon fundamentalist. He had three wives when I knew him and operated a used book store in Provo. I moved out of town but came to visit him whenever I was in Provo.
One time, after not having seen him for a long time I dropped by. He was his smiling, affable self and we had a nice chat. I browsed around his store and then noticed, as he was chatting with a customer, that, behind his beard was a large, and I mean LARGE lump on his neck.
I later asked a mutual friend about it. It turns out he had a small lump and treated it with herbs and prayer. This went on for a long time until it was clear that it wasn't working. So then he went to a doctor only to be told that it was cancer and it was too late to do anything.
After he died his friends (not all fundys) held a picnic in celebration of him each year on his birthday. Had he had less faith he'd be alive today to go on the picnics.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/19/2012 09:48PM by baura.
First of all, I don't care what asparagus cures or doesn't cure. It's one of the best foods ever and if it were as bad for you as Twinkies, I'd still eat it.
Second, as far as herbs go my SIL is a pharmacist and maintains that most medicines start from herbs so she gets fed up with people who don't take the effects of herbal remedies seriously. She thinks that no one should self-prescribe anything and everyone should be totally up front with their doctors about everything they are taking. A lot of times she sees people come in for their scripts and buying (or admit to having at home) an herbal remedy that is contraindicated for that prescription. It may not necessarily overdose the person, but it reduces the effects or can overstimulate a medicine. And since the people think it's just an over-the-counter herbal remedy, it can't hurt anything and forget to tell their doctors. So people who pooh-pooh herbal remedies don't realize how effective they can be. However, this causes as many problems as it solves, since most people don't know how to use them properly.
Oh, you don't have to be mormon, or even otherwise religious, to have odd, unsupportable, beliefs.
My non-religious brother is a walking collection of quackery: if it's flakey, 'out there' and available with three easy payments, he's right into it. Right now he's into arranging crystals on his patio 'just so' so that he can sit within their 'healing energy fields'. heehee.
This is relatively harmless and if it's placebo effect works for him, good. But he's been taken to the cleaners many, many times and he never learns. How he and I are related is beyond me; we're polar opposites. Families, eh?
When I was growing up in the 70s and 80s the big health fad among the mormons was aloe vera. I can remember people standing up in fast and testimony meeting bearing witness to the wonders of aloe vera. There was an older couple in the ward who swore by colloidal silver as well.
And a friend of my Mom's in the ward claimed that magnets cured her hemmorhoids after all the doctors had failed. She's always talking about the latest quack remedy and how the experts don't know what they're talking about. My Dad (stake patriarch, sealer in the temple) can only take so much, then he asks her, "Tell me again where you got your medical degree?"
A lot of people tout the benfits of either drinking urine or cleansing the face with it. Hell, I remember on a morning show some years ago a urine reccommender told people to wrap a warp urine soaked towel around the neck to cure laryngitis. Not my thing, but if I was desperate enough and something worked....Elvis is said to have washed his face every morning with his urine to keep a clear complexion.
As far as asparagus goes, it's a great flower to eat, I love it, but anyone who thinks it alone prevents cancer is only fooling themselves.
There is a difference between a veggie that contains antioxidants, minerals and vitamins and which contributes to good health, and a quick cure for cancer.
Sorry but the word of wisdom's "hidden secrets" are BS. Eating asparagus to cure cancer (as well as all these other quack treatments) is not only stupid, unfounded, and unscientific, but dangerous - avoiding or delaying needed medical treatment. Quackwatch.com is a good source for finding out if any of these holistic treatments are of any value. Most are not.
This includes MLMs, medical quackery, and even plastic surgery. Stuff on the outside will magically fix everything on the inside, provided the magic outside stuff is done just so.
And if it doesn't work, it is your fault, for not doing it right.
At least asparagus has things that are good for your body when you eat it. I doubt you can get too very many good things from a drop of olive oil pressed into your scalp by hands that no one knows what dirt and germs may be on them.