I never understood the Japanese methods for nasal treatment, sticking in long sticks or flushing and almost throwing up in the process. There are light-weight friendly consumer drugs available on the market which clears the nose during cold/flu. Rest is just dealing with it and sitting it out.
Of course for the hay fever people it is more tricky, but even that has available tablets/sprays to make it more comfortable.
I never understood the Japanese methods for nasal treatment, sticking in long sticks or flushing and almost throwing up in the process. There are light-weight friendly consumer drugs available on the market which clears the nose during cold/flu. Rest is just dealing with it and sitting it out.
Of course for the hay fever people it is more tricky, but even that has available tablets/sprays to make it more comfortable.
I think Sakuya is just doing a nasopharyngeal swab, which is a procedure needed for making a nasopharyngeal culture and diagnosing nose/throat infections or use a rapid influenza disease test. For the culture you just have to swab gently inside the nasopharynx and then transfer it to a Petri dish, incubate it and wait 1-2 days for something to grow. Culturing is both useful for the diagnosis (e.g. is it a bacterial infection, a viral one, one etc) and make it possible to make sensibility tests (antibiogram). It's not really a treatment per-se, it just something used as a support for the medic to decide how to treat the patient. BTW Viral culture is still the best method to diagnose influenza, other methods like the rapid test are both less specific and less sensitive (in layman's terms, they give more false positives and more false negatives); it's main disadvantage is that it's considerably slower (at least a few days)
I think Sakuya is just doing a nasopharyngeal swab, which is a procedure needed for making a nasopharyngeal culture and diagnosing nose/throat infections or use a rapid influenza disease test. For the culture you just have to swab gently inside the nasopharynx and then transfer it to a Petri dish, incubate it and wait 1-2 days for something to grow. Culturing is both useful for the diagnosis (e.g. is it a bacterial infection, a viral one, one etc) and make it possible to make sensibility tests (antibiogram). It's not really a treatment per-se, it just something used as a support for the medic to decide how to treat the patient. BTW Viral culture is still the best method to diagnose influenza, other methods like the rapid test are both less specific and less sensitive (in layman's terms, they give more false positives and more false negatives); it's main disadvantage is that it's considerably slower (at least a few days)
Honestly, living in a country where both the flu and hay fever are yearly common thing (especially flu), in my 29 years on this planet I never had to undergo the displayed methods. And I've had quite the number of throat / nose infections due to common cold/flu during my childhood.
There is absolutely no requirement to undergo such tests and it is only heavy stress for the patient and judging from these examples people only get an unjustified fear for the doctor. In NL, people sit it out for 10 days or so when they cough / cold / flu. People forget that the flu/common cold cannot be cured faster. People who claim or offer all kind of drugs/herbs are false lies. You need to sit it out, regardless. Fever or muscle/joint pain is usually suppressed with paracetamol or suppository (the only iffy treatement :V). Clogged nose can be treated with a simple spray. Further you just rest, sleep, eat healthy and drink plenty.
After those 10 days people usually visit the general practitioner to check whether there is an infection or their fever didn't pass (fever being present is often result of an infection), and that is usually by listening to the lungs and orally check the throat. They hold back on prescribing any strong medication because NL has an anti-antibiotics stance.
Something just tells me the medical treatment / knowledge for simple things in Japan is highly outdated.
Honestly, living in a country where both the flu and hay fever are yearly common thing (especially flu), in my 29 years on this planet I never had to undergo the displayed methods. And I've had quite the number of throat / nose infections due to common cold/flu during my childhood.
There is absolutely no requirement to undergo such tests and it is only heavy stress for the patient and judging from these examples people only get an unjustified fear for the doctor. In NL, people sit it out for 10 days or so when they cough / cold / flu. People forget that the flu/common cold cannot be cured faster. People who claim or offer all kind of drugs/herbs are false lies. You need to sit it out, regardless. Fever or muscle/joint pain is usually suppressed with paracetamol or suppository (the only iffy treatement :V). Clogged nose can be treated with a simple spray. Further you just rest, sleep, eat healthy and drink plenty.
After those 10 days people usually visit the general practitioner to check whether there is an infection or their fever didn't pass (fever being present is often result of an infection), and that is usually by listening to the lungs and orally check the throat. They hold back on prescribing any strong medication because NL has an anti-antibiotics stance.
Something just tells me the medical treatment / knowledge for simple things in Japan is highly outdated.
Well, Anti-Antibiotics stance has nothing to do with flu (unless you have a superinfection) since flu is a viral disease and antibiotics are used to treat bacterial diseases. There are some kinds of drugs used to treat flu (even if the NA inhibitors are controversial and the viruses are becoming incresingly resistant to M2 Inhibitors) but usually the best treatment is vaccination before the peak (if you are an at risk individual), and just sit it out if a healthy individual catches it. IMHO the nasopharyngeal swab is not totally useless (even if it's not commonly used), sure having a influenza or a cold diagnosis might not be really useful but there are some illnesses which can be more severe and can mimic their symptoms (e.g. Whooping Cough in the catarrhal stage). You also have to consider that influenza can be really severe: the spanish flu pandemic (1918) killed more people in 2 years than AIDS did in 25 year and the Whole pandemic probably killed more people than WWI. When you have a really severe, possibly life-threatening infection you have to take symptomatic care, but you have to prepare for antiviral/antimicrobic/antimycotic therapy and you can't do that without knowing the infectious agent and the possible complications. Last, I don't think that medical knowledge in Japan should be considered outdated; I don't really like Japan but it is the country with the highest life expectancy in the world (more than 86 years) and with one of the lowest child mortality: even Accounting for difference in lifestyle and genetics, that indicates that japanese healthcare is in fact really good .