I have no reason to not believe you, and I'm very glad that it sounds like you've found something that is working for you. I wrote my original message at about 2 a.m., and re-reading it in the light of day I realize I missed a few qualifiers. Namely, that "western" medicine doesn't have all the answers and that voodoo medicine can work. We trust "western" medicine more, however, because effort has been put into at least trying to understand the underlying mechanisms of both the disease and the treatment. That doesn't mean it always gets it right, but it's better than trying to explain that your CF symptoms are caused by your chi being out of whack.

That's not to say that they are not, in fact, caused by your chi being out of whack. We just really have no real evidence that that is the case, whereas we do have a scientific basis for the present "western" explanation for CF and its' treatments. Anyway, you sound reasonable and I imagine most of what I just wrote is essentially preaching to the choir.

"Modern medicine has it's good points. But a lot of other traditions also have value. I think it is unproductive and a straw-man argument to pit them against each other. I don't see why we can't take from both and build something better than either."

I agree with this. There's a lot of value in traditions and common sense. In reality, medicinal treatments arrived at through modern, scientific processes, and treatments arrived at through tradition are somewhat similar, process-wise. Both are evolutionary processes in which superior treatments are selected over time and inferior treatments fall out of use. I don't want to equivocate, however. In western medicine, the ways in which new treatments are proposed is more evidence-based, and the feedback loop for determining the efficacy of a treatment is much faster.

Anyway, like I said at the beginning, I have no real reason to believe that you're not telling the truth, and as such, I would really encourage you to try to get your message out to the medical community. You may be dismissed by many as "one lone nutcase", but if diet and lifestyle can better treat CF for the population at large it's important that that message get out.