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.

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Jan 24

Electro-acupuncture for arthritis of the knee

Acupuncture, East and West No Comments »

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.

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