DAAN Chinese Herbs and Acupuncture » East and West

Integrative medicine – the best of East and West

DAAN — Thu, 20 May 2010 13:23:07 +0000

Traditional Chinese medicine does not have to be a replacement for Western medicine. Integrative medicine - blending Western and and other types of medicine – can be very effective in treating disease.

his practice combines conventional Western medicine with nontraditional practices–including acupuncture, herbal treatments, massage, mind-body approaches, nutrition, and stress management–to keep patients in good health. And though its advocates are growing (according to the 2007 National Health Interview Survey, 42.8 percent of women, 33.5 percent of men, and nearly 12 percent of children under the age of 18 had used some kind of complementary and alternative medicine), integrative medicine by no means abandons its conventional counterpart.

“Western medicine has many strengths and has made incredible advances,” says Victoria Maizes, executive director of the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine, in Tucson, and a family- and integrative-medicine specialist. “People used to die of infections, and now we have antibiotics. They used to die of heart disease, and now we have bypass surgery.”

An integrative doctor–whether a primary-care physician, an ob-gyn, or an oncologist–enlists Western approaches when appropriate and then complements them with other treatments. An I.M. doctor won’t go as far as taking a picture of your aura, but don’t be surprised if she supplements your medical prescription with one for a daily walk around the neighborhood. Similarly, a cancer patient receiving chemotherapy might also be getting acupuncture, doing yoga, and practicing meditation for stress reduction.

Studying Chinese medicine for new cancer cures

DAAN — Mon, 17 May 2010 15:57:25 +0000

Researchers are studying traditional Chinese medicine in order to develop western-style treatments for cancer patients.

TOAD venom is probably the last thing a Western researcher would think of in the past to treat an ailment. While the Chinese have been using this centuries-old treatment for deadly diseases, Westerners used to scoff at such “primitive” cures.

Not anymore. A leading cancer care hospital in the US, looking East for answers to cancer treatment, has been researching the use of natural resources to complement conventional medicine.

Researchers from the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Centre have found that Huachansu, which comes from the dried venom secreted by the skin glands of toads, may slow disease progression in some cancer patients.

The centre’s Integrative Medicine Program-me director Prof Lorenzo Cohen acknowledged that “there is much that cancer experts in China and the US can learn from one another”.

The centre treats and provides cancer care to about 70,000 patients annually. More than 11,500 patients at the centre are participating in therapeutic clinical research exploring complementary treatments, making it the largest such programme in the US.

For almost a decade, Anderson Cancer Centre’s researchers and those of the Cancer Hospital, Fudan University in Shanghai, China, have been working together to study the benefits of some traditional Chinese medicines for cancer patients at the International Centre for Traditional Chinese Medicine funded by the US National Cancer Institute.

“Studying traditional Chinese medicine such as Huachansu is new to American research institutions, which have been sceptical and slow to adopt these complementary treatments. However, it is important to understand their potential role in treating cancer,” Prof Cohen said at a briefing for the foreign media in Manhattan.

“We wanted to apply a Western medicine-based approach to explore the role of the toad venom compound in cancer patients and test if it is possible to deliver a more potent dose without raising toxicities or side effects.”

Does acupuncture work?

DAAN — Mon, 10 May 2010 19:07:29 +0000

A short, but interesting article on the whether acupuncture works.

At your first evaluation, a practitioner will examine your tongue for clues like cracks and discolorations, take your pulse and ask numerous questions to determine what might be causing your symptoms.

The practitioner will then insert fine needles at specific points to unblock the flow of qi, or energy, in your body. Sound like hocus pocus?

Many Western doctors think not.

“Acupuncture is a system of correspondences,” said Vitaly Napadow, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, who conducts research on how acupuncture affects the brain. “Different ailments or diseases can be explained through traditional Chinese medical theory or through modern biomedical physiology, with sometimes interesting correspondence between the two,” said Dr. Napadow, who has a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering and is also a licensed acupuncturist.

Insights from Chinese medicine used to develop new drugs

DAAN — Mon, 10 May 2010 14:53:32 +0000

Using insights derived from traditional Chinese medicine, researchers are developing new drugs and treatments.

Work a little magic with something called Pharmaceutical Platform Technology (PPT), and you have Pearlium, the world’s most advanced formula for bone health, according to Yun Tam, president and chief scientific officer at SinoVeda.

The key to the effectiveness of Pearlium and SinoVeda’s other natural-health products is the extraction process developed by Tam, a former University of Alberta pharmaceutical science professor, that guarantees consistent quality and superior absorption by the body.

It’s particularly important with calcium, which is not absorbed well and has to be taken in large doses to be effective, he says.

Tam’s process is so efficient that a much greater percentage of calcium reaches the bones than in current supplements, which have to be given in large doses.

Women on hormone replacement therapy (HRT) after menopause always have to take calcium supplements.

“It’s all about understanding why Chinese medicine uses groups of herbs, and how the ingredients in them interact to be effective,” says Hong Kong-born Tam, who credits Dr. Jack Tuszynski at the Cross Cancer Institute with a big assist in developing PPT.

“The Chinese paradigm is that when you are ill, many parts of the body are suffering and you need a group of ingredients to make the treatment more effective.

“What I’ve done is use pharma technology to understand eastern culture.”

Chinese herb in your cocktail

DAAN — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 15:19:10 +0000

There’s a new trend in the world of cocktail, and that new trend is to add Chinese herbs according to a bar manager in Vancouver, British Columbia.

There’s nothing like a spring tonic to get you energized. And it’s all the better when that tonic comes in the form of a cocktail based on ancient Chinese herbal medicine.

That’s just what bar manger Danielle Tatarin is shaking up at the stylish cocktail lounge and Asian tapas bar at the new chic-boutique Keefer Hotel in Chinatown, which opened just before the Olympics started.

“Chinatown has elements of rawness, realism and history all wrapped into one,” says Tatarin. “I think the Keefer Bar squeezes in quite nicely.”

The neighbourhood’s traditions were also an inspiration when it came to creating her drinks list. In her past gigs — most recently at DB Bistro Moderne — the talented Tatarin has developed an expertise in classic cocktails and played with trends like molecular mixology. But the Keefer gave her an opportunity to try something completely fresh.

“Incorporating Chinese medicine into cocktails is pretty out there and some people are, like, really?” Tatarin says. “But to me it was a no-brainer. I found that the herbs used in Chinese medicine are often incorporated into teas and tinctures and that made it easy for me to work with in my cocktail formulas.”

While it may seem unusual to mix health and alcohol, in fact, that’s exactly how the original cocktails came about.

Portrait of a Chinese doctor

DAAN — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 14:15:26 +0000

Interesting profile of Dr. Hong Hai, and the differences between Eastern and Western medicine.

Chinese medicine places emphasis on prevention of illnesses and treatment of imbalances in the body before they develop into diseases with clinical symptoms.

Do consult a TCM practitioner even if you are not clearly ill, but do not feel in the best of health and wish to improve your levels of fitness and well-being.

Western medicine has powerful tools for dealing with acute conditions that require synthetic medications like antibiotics and special procedures like surgery, and for handling life-threatening conditions like advanced
coronary heart disease, severe hypertension and cancers.

For such severe conditions, I would advise seeing a Western doctor in the first instance and using Chinese medicine only under proper medical advice.

As for common everyday conditions like coughs and colds, digestive, skin, sleep and menstrual problems, both systems of medicine have useful methods of treatment and it is up to you to find out which kinds of treatment are more suitable for you.

Acupuncture can help young patients with chronic illnesses

DAAN — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 10:42:53 +0000

Researchers at Rush University Medical Center have found acupuncture to be an effective tool in relieving pain for children who suffer from chronic illnesses.

Doctors at Rush University Medical Center are offering pediatric patients diagnosed with chronic illnesses acupuncture therapy to help ease the pain and negative side effects like nausea, fatigue, and vomiting caused by chronic health conditions and intensive treatments. The confluence of Chinese and Western medicine at Rush Children’s Hospital is part of a study to analyze and document how acupuncture might help in reducing pain in children and increase quality of life.

“Treating children with acupuncture is a new frontier,” said Dr. Paul Kent, pediatric hematology and oncology expert, Rush Children’s Hospital. “We are looking to see if there is an effective pain management therapy we can offer that does not have the serious side effects that can be caused by narcotics and other serious pain medications.”

The lack of options for pain management in children has been reported as one of the most difficult aspects of providing care to pediatric patients. Research indicates that up to 70 percent of pediatric patients experience pain and those with chronic illnesses often do not have adequate relief or prevention of pain.

“Acupuncture could be a potential solution to this dilemma of controlling pain in pediatric patients,” said Angela Johnson, Chinese medicine practitioner at Rush.

Acupuncture is the use of tiny, hair-thin needles which are gently inserted along various parts of the body. The therapy is based on the premise that patterns of energy flowing through the body are essential for health. This energy, called Qi, flows along certain pathways. It is believed that placing the tiny needles at points along the pathways reduce pain and improve the healing process.

The National Institute of Health (NIH) has published a statement concluding that acupuncture is effective for treating adults for nausea following chemotherapy and for pain after dental surgery. The agency also said that the therapy might be useful in treating other health issues such as addiction, migraines, headaches, menstrual cramps, abdominal pain, tennis elbow, fibromyalgia, arthritis, low-back pain, carpal tunnel syndrome and asthma. In some pediatric studies, both patients and parents have stated that acupuncture treatments were both helpful and relaxing.

Eastern vs. Western philosophies of medicine

DAAN — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 05:30:19 +0000

An interesting discussion of the differences between Eastern and Western medical systems:

“To Westerners, scientific method consists of the collection of data through observation and experimentation, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses,” says Chuang Shih-ming (莊世鳴), a Chinese medicine doctor based in Taipei City.

“Chinese medicine also takes the same approach,” he argues. “The only difference lies in the fact that Western medicine uses about 200 years of such ’scientific’ methods of observation and testing of hypotheses to prove its effectiveness, while the Chinese version uses several thousands of years.”

Methodologically, Chinese medicine is also at odds with Western medicine.

Western medicine is analytically based on anatomy of the human body by focusing on medical test results and in particular on numbers, while Chinese medicine is holistic, regarding the human body as an inseparable whole, Chuang says.

Looked at this way, Western medicine and Chinese medicine should thus be referred to as micro- and macro-medical medicine respectively, he notes.

“Unlike the Western belief that says that bacteria and viruses cause disease, Chinese medicine only sees the different symptoms, and we tend to believe in the ability of a human to heal him or herself.”?

So Chinese medical treatments are aimed at elevating one’s ability to fight all the syndromes and to help people to regain and maintain balance in their body, he adds.

Clinical diagnosis and treatment

Sitting in the office of his Chinese Medicine Clinic in Taipei’s Tianmu area, Chuang discloses that he was originally a computer programming language major in college, but because of his family background, he later transferred to the study of Chinese medicine.

Chuang goes on to say that clinical diagnosis and treatment in traditional Chinese medicine are mainly based on the yin-yang and the five-element theory involving wood, fire, earth, metal and water.

These theories apply the phenomena and laws of nature to study of the physiological activities and pathological changes in the human body, he notes.

Electro-acupuncture for arthritis of the knee

DAAN — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 08:36:43 +0000

A recent study shows that some patients with arthritis may benefit from electo-acupuncture, a procedure where electric impulses are delivered by the acupuncture needles to provide more stimulation of the acupuncture pints:

he study, published in the journal Pain, looked at the effects of electro-acupuncture among 40 adults with knee osteoarthritis — the common “wear-and-tear” form of arthritis in which the cartilage cushioning the joints breaks down.

Electro-acupuncture is similar to traditional acupuncture, where fine needles are inserted into specific points in the skin. What’s different is that the practitioner fits the needles with clips that are attached to a small device that delivers a continuous electrical impulse to stimulate the acupuncture point.

Among the patients in the current study, those who had a daily electro-acupuncture session for 10 consecutive days reported greater improvement in their pain compared with patients who received a “sham” version of the therapy.

Patients in that latter group received acupuncture, but the needles were inserted at random points on the skin rather than traditional acupuncture sites. And while the needles were attached to the electrical device, it was not actually turned on.

The findings suggest that true electro-acupuncture may offer at least short-term pain relief to knee arthritis sufferers, according to the researchers, led by Dr. Sadia Ahsin of the Army Medical College Rawalpindi in Pakistan.

Acupuncture has been used for more than 2,000 years in Chinese medicine to treat a wide variety of ailments. According to traditional medicine, specific acupuncture points on the skin are connected to internal pathways that conduct energy, or qi (“chee”), and stimulating these points with a fine needle promotes the healthy flow of qi.

Modern research has suggested that acupuncture may help ease pain by altering signals among nerve cells or affecting the release of various chemicals of the central nervous system, such as pain-killing endorphins.

In their study, Ahsin and colleagues found that electro-acupuncture appeared to raise patients’ blood levels of endorphins and lower their levels of the hormone cortisol, which tends to rise during physical or mental stress. So it’s possible that these changes explain the greater pain relief, according to the researchers.

Larger, longer-term studies are still needed to see whether electro-acupuncture can have lasting benefits — and to find out how often patients would need treatment to gain those benefits.

Chinese medicine – tradition and innovation?

DAAN — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 01:12:50 +0000

Although traditional Chinese medicine has a history stretching back thousands of years, there’s room for innovation and adaption:

What is wrong with our medical science, the science of Western medicine as well as traditional Chinese medicine (TCM)? Why are doctors at a loss to find cure for more and more diseases and often divided, if not opposed, on their causes? Has modern man reached the limits of his quest for good health and a longer life, or has he reached a new frontier from where science will progress further?

Dr Liu Hequn, an astronomer-turned-registered TCM practitioner (he also holds a degree in modern medicine and a physician’s license), believes in progress, and is probably half a step ahead of others in unraveling some of the above riddles. It would take nothing short of a paradigm shift to reach that new frontier: a return to the practice of classical medicine as well as a “cognitive revolution”, Liu tells China Daily, sitting in his apartment near Beijing’s Olympic Village.

“There is nothing mystic about it, although what my teacher taught may make it appear so.” The teacher he is talking about happened to be an illiterate Taoist master, who in the early 1960s taught him the skills to diagnose a medical condition. The Taoist master, in turn, had learned the skills at Baiyun Guan, or the White Clouds Temple, Beijing’s most famous Taoist facility till the early days of People’s Republic.

The Taoist master must have belonged to the last generation of TCM practitioners, trained in the secret tradition: handing down of knowledge orally. TCM began to be incorporated into the national medical education system in the 1950s. Today, all TCM practitioners have to graduate from medical colleges, where they are also taught the theories of modern medicine.

In 1960, as an eight-year-old. Liu had to undergo some specialist treatment for the injuries he sustained in his arms and legs while learning kungfu. That was how he was taken to his Taoist teacher, who inspired him to become the first person educated in modern science to practice the traditional method of medicine.

This method is different both from modern medicine’s standard diagnosis and that of TCM taught in medical colleges, which to a large extent is based on feeling a patient’s pulse and is seen by Liu as inadequate. In contrast, Liu says, his method is closer to being holistic and true to the philosophy of TCM. It requires a doctor to feel the patient’s body (usually without taking off clothes) to identify not just one or two troubled spots, but, more often than not, also a troubled sub-system connected to a series of related and seemingly unrelated conditions.

“All medical researchers know about some interrelated conditions and symptoms. Only in my research, some connections may at first defy imagination,” Liu says.

Liu can detect a medical condition by feeling a patient’s body with his hands, the unique method of diagnosis his teacher taught him. He started learning and practicing the skill while he was still in primary school, and tried to treat the injuries of his classmates and school friends, who like millions of other urban students, were sent to re-education farms in the early 1970s.

But how can he be so confident about his “hand diagnosis”? Liu says with a smile: “They haven’t created a better substitute yet.” No matter how advanced and precise a medical scanner may be, it can help a doctor perform only one set of scanning operations on a patient. But in his diagnosis, symptoms that doctors give different names to are sometimes related to each other in ways that neither modern medicine nor TCM talks about.