Feb 02

Natural ways to fight off the cold and the flu

Disease, Traditional Chinese Medicine No Comments »


Traditional Chinese medicine offer a variety of ways to keep you healthy and strong as well as to fight off the cold and the flu.

It’s February and we are still seeing patients come in for the common cold and the flu. Besides the respiratory viruses that were prevalent earlier in the winter season our healthcare team at the Tao of Wellness has seen more stomach virus cases since the beginning of the year. This has been true with other healthcare groups I’ve spoken to around the country. These viruses are highly contagious often affecting every member of a family and cause stomach pain, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, weakness, and with or without fever.

Each year, one in three Americans suffers from the common cold or the flu. In past blogs I have suggested natural ways to support the healthy functions of your immune system in raising your resistance against the common cold. Common sense practices include washing your hands frequently with soap, and wash your face at least twice a day. Refrain from touching your nose and face with your hands except with tissues. Also, protect your upper back and neck area when it’s cold or windy by using a scarf, because this is where most of the colds will attack the body leading to stiff and achy neck and head. Here are six more natural strategies to avoid the common cold and the flu.

1. Rest up to restore your immunity. Studies show that your immune system function drops by an average of 60% after just three nights of poor sleep, so be sure you are getting plenty of quality rest, at least eight hours each night. Can’t fall asleep or stay asleep? Try taking a hot bath at night before bedtime or soak your feet in Epsom salt bath for 15 minutes. It will help relax your mind and body in preparation for your sleep.

2. Eat sweet potatoes and mushrooms. These foods help optimize your body’s immunity function. Sweet potatoes contain higher amounts of vitamin C and beta-carotene than carrots, as well as being rich in plant source DHEA, a potent immunity booster. Certain types of mushrooms, like shitake, maitake and reishi, contain polysaccharides, sterols, coumarin, vitamins, minerals, and amino acids that have been found to increase immune functions and activities.

3. Garlic keeps more than vampires away. Throughout human history garlic has been loved as well as loathed. Loved by those who enjoy its intense aroma and pungent flavors and loathed by those who are repelled by its odor. The strong odor of garlic actually comes from a sulfur-compound called allicin that studies have found to be a powerful antibacterial and antiviral agent. Not only has it been shown to be effective against colds, flu, stomach virus and candida yeast, it has also been shown to be effective against antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria such as MRSA. Besides repelling microbes, apparently even vampires don’t like it either.

4. Vitamin C to your rescue. The late Nobel laureate Linus Pauling did pioneering research on the benefits of vitamin C. It is regarded as the safest and most effective nutrient. A recent look at over 100 studies on vitamin C in the last 10 years revealed many conclusive benefits of vitamin. Not the least is its well-known property of supporting immune functions especially when the immune system is suppressed by stress. It may not prevent the common cold or the flu but it can reduce the risk of complications like pneumonia and lung infections. One can safely take up to 2,000 mg of vitamin C daily.

Feb 01

Get more sleep

Acupuncture, Alternative therapies, Traditional Chinese Medicine No Comments »

Many of us are suffering from lack of sleep, this article explains how traditional Chinese medicine can help have a more restful evening.

This month HuffPost Living has featured an abundance of great articles on the importance of sleep, with excellent tips on how to enhance your slumber from experts in a variety of fields.

An approach that can also aid in the quest for a good night’s sleep is that of Chinese Medicine. This ancient healing system has offered relief to the sleep challenged for thousands of years. While new to many, Chinese Medicine is mainstream in China, and it is used today for a wide range of conditions by an estimated one-fourth of the world’s population.

The Roots of Traditional Chinese Medicine

Chinese Medicine is considered the oldest, most continuously practiced, professional, literate medicine in the world. Written records date back over 2000 years, although the medicine is believed to go back even further. Some experts believe Chinese Medicine is at least 5000 years old.

Chinese Medicine employs acupuncture, herbal medicine, nutritional therapy, tuina (pronounced “twee nah”) massage, acupressure, and qigong.

The Huangdi Neijing (The Yellow Emperor’s Inner Canon) is considered the Bible of Chinese Medicine, emphasizing medical theory and acupuncture. Some scholars estimate that it dates back to the first century B.C. In addition, The Shen Nong Ben Cao Jing (The Divine Farmer’s Materia Medica Classic) details the medicinal uses of 365 herbs and is believed to have been compiled around 200 A.D. Many of the protocols mentioned in these ancient texts are still used today.

Chinese Medicine and the West

The development of East-West relations has promoted the use and interest of Chinese Medicine in the United States. During the past 30 years, the practice of Chinese Medicine has dramatically increased here. The National Institutes of Health (N.I.H.) has reported that visits to Chinese Medicine practitioners in the U.S. tripled from 1997 to 2007.

At the same time, the United States is seeing an increase in the practice of integrative medicine. University centers and hospitals are offering Chinese Medicine. Integration has been common in China, where Chinese Medicine is often practiced side-by-side with Western Medicine.

The Chinese Medicine Approach to Sleep

Insomnia comes in various forms, such as trouble falling sleep, difficulty staying asleep, and having dream-disturbed sleep. When a Chinese Medicine practitioner is gathering information to put together a treatment plan, the pattern of the sleep disturbance as well as health and lifestyle issues will be taken into consideration.

A Chinese Medicine practitioner might use the term “calm the shen” when describing a treatment principle. “Shen” is best translated as the spirit of the person in a nonreligious sense. When evaluating Shen, the Chinese Medicine practitioner is looking for the emotional state and presence (or lack) of radiance, calm, and balance. Often with sleep disturbances, the patient will be experiencing patterns of stress, anxiety, or agitation. Chinese Medicine would call this “disturbed shen.”

Treatment for insomnia from a Chinese Medicine practitioner could include one or more of the following therapies: acupuncture, herbal medicine, nutritional counseling, Chinese massage (acupressure/tuina), and qigong.

Acupuncture

Acupuncture is the insertion of needles into specific points of the body to reduce pain, to promote relaxation, and to treat various health concerns. Insomnia and sleep disorders are common reasons why people visit an acupuncturist.

The World Health Organization (W.H.O.) lists insomnia as a condition for which the therapeutic effect of acupuncture has been shown. Continuous research is underway to evaluate the effectiveness of acupuncture for sleep issues. The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine published a review of randomized controlled trials of acupuncture treatment for insomnia. After looking at 46 randomized trials, the conclusion was that acupuncture appears to be effective in the treatment of insomnia, and larger, rigorously designed trials are warranted.

Tagged with:
Jan 31

TCM can help keep you healthy

Disease, Traditional Chinese Medicine No Comments »

How traditional Chinese medicine could prevent you from becoming ill.

EVEN though traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is gradually catching on, especially among younger people, there are still cynics out there who question the effectiveness of its methods in preventing and treating illnesses. But physician Zhou Yan from the Eu Yan Sang Specialist TCM Centre says there are no doubts about its efficacy.

TCM – a science that was developed centuries ago through constant experimentation and real-life experiences – is the real deal, she said. “The successes are accumulated, researched upon and passed down from generation to generation.

The fact that TCM is still surviving and has not been extinguished by medical advances is because it has proven to be useful,” said the 45-year-old in Mandarin.

The TCM physician and acupuncturist with about 20 years of clinical experience has seen more than 160,000 patients in her career.

She said TCM can be extremely effective – with almost a 100 per cent success rate – in treating illnesses, provided the physician makes an accurate diagnosis.

Treatments – such as acupuncture, herbal medicine, therapeutic massage (or tui na) and cupping – can be very complex and vary substantially depending on the illness and a client’s constitution, as well as factors such as the climate, the client’s physical environment and whether he or she cooperates, she said.

“A physician needs to look at all these things holistically and consider each individual’s situation before deciding on treatment,” she added.

In a talk on Saturday, Ms Zhou will be focusing on issues surrounding “sub-health”, a state between wellness and illness where there are frequent onsets of unhealthy symptoms but where no definite disease or illness can be diagnosed.

According to a global survey by the World Health Organization, only 5 per cent of the world population enjoy good health; 20 per cent are diagnosed as being ill and up to 75 per cent are in the sub-health category.

Using TCM methods is best for people who are at the sub-health stage, because the treatment does not produce any side effects and can bring balance to your body and prevent illnesses before they strike, said Ms Zhou.

my paper posed the physician some burning questions from readers.

Jan 29

Traditional Chinese medicine changes with the times

Traditional Chinese Medicine No Comments »

Although the art and science of TCM has been around for thousands of years, it’s not necessarily stuck in the past. Ways of treating patients and manufacturing medicines are always evolving.

TCM has its own history which can be traced back 3,000 years. It is the second most ancient medicine, while ayurvedic is the oldest with 5,000 years of history.

In the past, when people thought about TCM, they imagined a long-bearded doctor doing pulse diagnosis and prescribing foul tasting concoctions. It was difficult for a modern person to take the image seriously

But today, Chinese herbs can be administered in far more palatable ways – in powders, medicated liquors, teas, granules, tablets, syrups, crystallised herbal extracts or even injected.

In China today there are hundreds of patented ready-to-use drugs which can be bought over the counter under supervision of pharmacists. And it is fascinating to realise these drugs were described in TCM text books 2,000 years ago.

TCM has its own theory very different from Western medicine. While Western medicine focuses on physical and chemical bases, TCM is philosophical.

Man and Cosmos are unified, is the basic philosophy of TCM. Whenever we and nature are in balance, we are healthy. Being unbalanced leads to disease.

Our body has yin and yang compositions. It is also vitalised by the movement of qi and blood. Yin and yang should be balanced. Yang excess or yin deficiency may cause a hot feeling.

On the other hand, yin excess or yang deficiency may cause a cold feeling.

Deficiency of qi and blood may also cause some specific symptoms.

Chinese doctors usually observe the patient’s five senses, along with a pulse and tongue diagnosis.

They will then differentiate illnesses into two groups. One is a deficiency of qi, yin, yang and blood. The second is an excess syndrome which comprises blood congestion, qi congestion and accumulation of heat and dampness.

Each syndrome has its own character. They are not so difficult to differentiate if a health-oriented person pays close attention to self-observation. He could do the diagnosis himself.

Qi deficiency leads to sweating, catching colds or developing allergies, a lack of energy, heaviness of the body and limbs, a low appetite, swollen extremities and loose stools. The tongue will be quite pale with tooth marks on the side.

Yang deficiency leads to a cold sensation, cold extremities, frequent urination, loose stools, a pale face, an urge to take hot drinks and infertility. The tongue is very pale or even light purple with more tooth marks.

People who suffer a prolonged illness usually pass from the stage of qi deficiency into a stage of yang deficiency.

A large number of people who are diagnosed as having so-called chronic fatigue or “syndrome X” in the West show these types of symptoms.

Tagged with:
Jan 29

Take time this winter to boost your energy

Food, Immune system, Traditional Chinese Medicine No Comments »

The cold, dark winter months may make us feel like hibernating. Take this time to build up and replenish your energy using some principles of Chinese medicine:

Feeling tired and drained? You’re not alone.

“Lack of energy” is one of the top five complaints doctors hear.

According to Oriental medicine, the cold months are the perfect time to recharge and generate vital energy – Qi – in order to live, look and feel better.

The ancient Chinese believed human should live in harmony with the natural cycles of their environment. The cold and darkness of winter urge us to slow down. This is the time of year to reflect on health, replenish energy and conserve strength.

Winter is ruled by the water element, which is associated with the kidneys, bladder and adrenal glands. The kidneys are considered the source of all energy or “Qi” within the body. They store all of the reserve Qi in the body so that it can be used in ties of stress and change, or to heal, prevent illness, and age gracefully. During the winter months it is important to nurture and nourish the kidney Qi. It is the time where this energy can be most easily depleted.

The Nei Ching, an ancient Chinese classic, advises people to go to sleep early and rise late, after the sun’s rays have warmed the atmosphere a bit.

Eating warm hearty soups, whole grains, and roasted nuts help to warm the body’s core and to keep it nourished. Sleep early, rest well, stay warm and expend a minimum quantity of energy.

Seasonal acupuncture treatments in winter serve to nurture and nourish kidney Qi which can greatly enhance the body’s ability to thrive in times of stress, aid in healing, prevent illness and increase vitality.

Here are some dietary suggestions that can lead to an increase in vitality and radiant health.

Drink ample water. Eat kidney-shaped foods such as black beans and kidney beans. Eat blue and black foods, blueberries, blackberries, mulberry and black beans. Eat seeds. flax, pumpkin, sunflower and black sesame along with nuts, especially walnuts and chestnuts which have been found especially effective for increasing kidney Qi. Eat dark, leafy green vegetables along with asparagus, cucumbers and celery.

Tagged with: • •
Jan 26

Chinese medical doctor in Taiwan was a pioneer

Culture, Traditional Chinese Medicine No Comments »

The story of Chuang Shu-chi, the first female traditional Chinese medical doctor in Taiwan:

The name Chuang Shu-chi might not ring a bell for people in Western countries, but she is a household name in Japan and Taiwan. Without the benefit of a formal medical education, Taipei-born Chuang became the first accredited female doctor in traditional Chinese medicine in Taiwan.

When she made the decision to study medicine in Japan in 1954, Chuang could not speak or read Japanese at all. Seven years later, however, she received a Ph.D. degree in medicine from Keio University, Tokyo, eventually becoming a special medical advisor to Empress Michiko of Japan in 1978.

Chuang’s patients have included people from all walks of life at home and abroad. One of her most famous patients was Wang Yung-ching, the late Taiwanese business tycoon and founder of Formosa Plastics Group.

After a long and distinguished career in medicine, the 90-year-old doctor announced her retirement from medical practice on May 8, 2009, in order to enjoy time with her family in her later years.

…

In 1938, the 18-year-old Chuang married Chen You-le through an arranged marriage, but unfortunately her father died of colon cancer in the same year. And misfortunes never come one at a time: her husband died of lung cancer in 1945 while she was carrying a child, and she also contracted malaria, all at the age of 26. Without the head of the household, she had to raise four children, take care of her sick mother and scratch out a living.

The blows of her loved ones’ deaths drove Chuang to study the causes of cancer and devote her life to relieving cancer patients’ pain. In 1950, the Kuomintang government held the first national medical licensing examination for traditional Chinese medicine in Taiwan. She received full marks in four subjects and failed only the last – the Constitution of the Republic of China. The review committee decided to make an exception, allowing her to take an oral exam. As a result she became the first accredited female doctor for traditional Chinese medicine in Taiwan in 1951

Tagged with: •
Jan 26

The healing power of soup

Herbs, Traditional Chinese Medicine No Comments »

Soup, especially ones that are made with traditional Chinese medicine, is good for your health as well as your soul.

From helping you lose weight to warming you up from the inside out to boosting your immunity, soup is a winter staple that you shouldn’t be without. Maybe that is one reason that it is celebrated this month with its very own National Soup Month. Here’s a closer look at what you can do to benefit from soup’s amazing healing powers.

The healing power of soup
An ancient Chinese proverb states that a good doctor uses food first, then resorts to medicine. A healing soup can be your first step in maintaining your health and preventing illness. The therapeutic value of soup comes from the ease with which your body can assimilate the nutrients from the ingredients, which have been broken down by simmering.

Here are some healing soup tips that will preserve your wellness and longevity:
1. Lose weight with soup
Obesity is on the rise throughout the industrialized world, resulting in a startling increase in the rates of heart disease, stroke, cancer, and diabetes. You can count yourself out of the statistics if you eat a bowl of soup at least once a day. Nutritious low-salt soups will nourish you as they flush excess wastes from your body. It has been found that people who eat one serving of soup per day lose more weight than those who eat the same amount of calories, but don’t eat soup. Homemade soup is your best bet, because canned soups tend to be loaded with salt and chemicals. My advice is to use organic vegetables whenever possible. The herbicides and pesticides that can be present in conventional produce can assault the immune system and overload it with toxins.

2. Build your immunity
Your immune system needs a lot of minerals to function properly and the typical Western diet does not always hit the mark. When you slowly simmer foods over low heat, you gently leach out the energetic and therapeutic properties of the foods, preserving the nutritional value of the foods. Keep in mind that boiling can destroy half of the vitamins found in vegetables, so cook soup over a low heat.

Immune-Boosting Soup
Simmer these ingredients for 30 minutes: cabbage, carrots, fresh ginger, onion, oregano, shiitake mushrooms (if dried, they must be soaked first), the seaweed of your choice, and any type of squash in chicken or vegetable stock. Cabbage can increase your body’s ability to fight infection, ginger supports healthy digestion, and seaweed cleanses the body. Shiitake mushrooms contain coumarin, polysaccharides, and sterols, as well as vitamins and minerals that increase your immune function, and the remaining ingredients promote general health and well-being. Eat this soup every other day to build a strong and healthy immune system.

3. Detoxify your body
As a liquid, soup is already helping you flush waste from your body. When you choose detoxifying ingredients, such as the ones featured in the recipe below, you are really treating your body to an internal cleanse. The broth below boasts many benefits: it supports the liver in detoxification, increases circulation, reduces inflammation, and replenishes your body with essential minerals.

Super Detoxifying Broth
Simmer the following for 1–2 hours over a low flame: anise, brussels sprouts, cabbage, Swiss chard, cilantro, collards, dandelion, fennel, garlic, ginger, kale, leeks, shiitake mushrooms, mustard greens, daikon radish, seaweed, turmeric, and watercress. Drink 8 to 12 ounces twice a day. You can keep this broth in your fridge for up to one week; however, it is always best to serve soups when fresh because each day, the therapeutic value decreases.

In addition to using cleansing herbs in soups, you can take cleansing herbs in supplements. For a gentle but powerful cleanse using Chinese herbs, Internal Cleanse increases the ability of the liver to cleanse the body of internal and environmental toxins.

4. Warm up with a hearty soup
You always want to eat for the season. Soups provide something the body craves in cold weather. When you cook foods into a soup, you are adding a lot of what Chinese nutrition would call “warming energy” into the food. Warming foods to feature in your soups include: leeks, onions, turnips, spinach, kale, broccoli, quinoa, yams, squash, garlic, scallions, and parsley. As a spice, turmeric aids with circulation, a great boost against the cold weather.

5. Get well faster
As you mother may have instinctively known, when you are sick, there is no better healing food than soup. The reason for this is that soups and stews don’t require as much energy to digest, freeing your body up to fight the infection.

It would be impossible to talk about soup’s healing abilities without putting the spotlight on homemade chicken noodle soup. Studies have found that chicken noodle soup does seem to relieve the common cold by inhibiting inflammation — helping to break up congestion and ease the flow of nasal secretions.

While chicken soup may not cure a cold outright, it does help alleviate some of the symptoms and can help as a preventative measure. Many of my patient’s keep the herbal formula Cold & Flu in their medicine cabinets so its there to support recovery when a cold strikes.

Jan 25

Eastern vs. Western philosophies of medicine

East and West, Traditional Chinese Medicine No Comments »

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.

Tagged with: •
Jan 22

Chinese medicine – tradition and innovation?

Alternative therapies, Culture, East and West, Traditional Chinese Medicine No Comments »

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.

Tagged with: •
Jan 21

Chinese vs. Western medicine

Traditional Chinese Medicine No Comments »

Chinese medicine is based on thousands of years of research and experiments.

Do you believe that a person’s disease can be diagnosed simply by feeling the wrist pulse? That puncturing specific sites on the body with needles could possibly cure your chronic backache? Or that mushroom-like herbal medicine can serve as an energy booster or even enhance your immune system?

If you don’t, you’re probably not one of those hundreds of millions of followers of traditional Chinese medicine, an ancient healing system based on nearly five thousand years of research and experiments.

There have been disputes, however, on the worthiness of traditional Chinese medicine and its methods of curing illness as compared to Western medicine.

But in recent years, the effectiveness of Chinese medicine, which covers a wide range of practices including such treatments as herbal medicine, acupuncture, and Tui na massage, has come to be recognized increasingly throughout the world.

In 2003, the World Health Organization published a landmark study entitled “Acupuncture: Review and Analysis of Reports on Controlled Clinical Trials,” in which scientific evidence is cited to support the claim that ancient Chinese medication has proven to be scientifically effective for a total of 28 conditions.

200 years versus 5000

“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.

He shows me how a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner diagnoses a certain disease.

Traditional Chinese diagnostics are based on overall observation of human symptoms. A typical Chinese doctor’s diagnostic methods begin by observing (望wang), then hearing and smelling (聞wen) a patient. He then asks about his or her background (問wen) before feeling (切qie) the person’s wrist pulse.

The pulse-reading component of the touching examination is one of the most important parts of diagnosis, Chuang says.

After taking a patient’s pulse, the doctor will do tongue examination.

The Chinese believe that by reading the condition of one’s tongue, including its color, texture, shape, size, and coating, a practitioner can determine one’s health.

Following all of the above examinations, the doctor will write a prescription which is taken to the front to be filled.

Herbs used in Chinese medicine are derived from plant, animal and mineral substances. Most herbal medicines are plant-derived, such as ginseng and ginger; however, some minerals and animal parts may also be prescribed for use in medication.

In Taiwan and many other parts of the world, herbs often come in formulas that call for a mixture of all kinds of herbal medicines.

In the past these prescriptions were steeped in boiled water to drink, but now they are also made into powder forms which are more convenient for patients to take.

Sometimes the patient may need other treatments for a condition, includine acupuncture, Tui na and cupping massage.

Tons of treatments

If you are not afraid of needle and are looking for a faster approach to solve your problem, you can try acupuncture, a technique in which the practitioner inserts fine needles into specific points on the patient’s body.

The intended effect is to increase circulation and balance energy (qi) within the body.

But if you would prefer something less intrusive for your backache or shoulder pain, Tui na is something you should try.

The practitioner may brush, knead, roll and rub the patient’s body, usually on his back and shoulder, to open up the body’s qi and get the energy both along the meridians and in the muscles.

Previous Entries
 
preload preload preload