Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is a personalized, natural system of medicine dating back over 3000 years ago. The primary basis of disease in TCM is imbalances in the body’s organ systems, external pathogenic factors and impediments to the channels running along the entire body. To treat these, TCM has developed three major branches: herbal medicine, tuina (medical massage) and acupuncture. These therapies are designed to adjust organ function, expel pathogenic factors and restore proper flow to the channels.
To learn more about these specific therapies, click below.
To learn more about Chinese medicine in general, continue reading below:
Chinese medicine inherently addresses some of the major concerns many people have about the current state of healthcare in this country:
“Medicine is disease-focused, not patient-focused.”
- TCM is rooted in the idea that the same disease can have different underlying syndromes or types. Just like how type I and type II diabetes are both types of diabetes, but they have different causes, mechanisms and most importantly different treatment methods. Similarly TCM separates almost all conditions into different types, ranging from the common cold and flu to irregular menstruation to headaches to digestive problems. Furthermore, TCM emphasizes that based on an individual’s own body type or constitution, the type of disease they are suffering from is often also different. You could liken this concept to genetically personalized medicine, which is making large strides in cancer treatment by basing treatments on an individual’s genetic make-up. Similarly we use symptoms to identify what a patient’s constitution is to make personalized treatments that fit that patient. The end result is that TCM treatments are highly personalized to the individual, which enhances the efficacy.
“Most doctors don’t value and acknowledge the patient’s experience.”
- A trend in modern medicine over the last century is that the more advanced objective diagnostic tools become, the less many doctors value the subjective symptoms of patients. A patient may do a blood test showing they have anemia, but yet have none of the symptoms of anemic patients. Oppositely, a patient may have regular muscular pain but not fit a diagnosis for fibromyalgia or any other disease, and therefore is often sent home without an effective solution. Either of these cases minimizes the value of the patient’s subjective symptoms and the result is usually unsatisfactory treatments or diagnoses. TCM from its inception through the most important classics has consistently emphasized and valued the subjective symptoms of patients, and used that information to guide and enhance treatments, leading to a system of medicine that values the patient and works with them instead of on them.
“Often only limited options: surgery or not.”
-Many people have conditions or symptoms that don’t fit the mold for western medicine. For instance, a common issue many people have is neck pain that radiates down the arm (primarily caused by cervical spondylosis). Most of these patients have the complaint that they were told that they either needed surgery or that their condition wasn’t severe enough to warrant surgery yet, so to wait until the condition worsened and then do surgery. And many of the patients that undergo anatomically successful surgeries still have pain, which is usually the chief complaint that led them to surgery in the first place. After treating hundreds of cervical spondylosis patients with acupuncture and tuina (medical massage), we have helped over 90% of them treat their pain successfully and avoid surgery. This isn’t to say that surgery is bad or that it isn’t necessary for some very severe patients, but for the vast majority of patients, they can relieve the problem without surgery and get back to their normal lives.
“Being sent home for not having a clearly diagnosable disease, but still not feeling good.”
-The lack of a clearly diagnosable disease certainly cannot be equated to feeling good. Innumerable people suffer digestive discomfort, muscular pain, headaches, etc and despite seeking medical help and advice, are left with nowhere to turn to and no effective solution. Modern medicine has built a large repertoire of weapons to fight disease-causing agents, but has vastly fewer tools to improve a patient’s wellness. The most important classic of TCM called Huang Di Nei Jing written around 2,000 years ago details that highest attainment one can achieve is a heightened state of wellness and balance. TCM understood long ago that improving health and wellness is just as important as eliminating disease, and has striven for thousands of years to refine the techniques and treatment methods to enhance performance and achieve a heightened state of wellness.
“My medicine makes me feel worse than the original condition did.”
-Every kind of medicine is still a work in progress, and doctors have to make due with the options they have available to them. That being said, many patients are unsatisfied with their medication, because it makes them feel worse than before. A good example is Meniere’s disease, which is one of the diseases leading to tinnitus. This rare ear condition has very limited treatment option, usually relying on either a sodium-restricted diet, diuretics or steroids. The effect of the medicine often leaves patients feeling wired, unable to sleep and in more discomfort than their original symptoms. While tinnitus of any variety is a challenging symptom to treat, a combination of acupuncture and herbs is an excellent choice to mitigate symptoms, minimize acute flare-ups, decrease the duration of flare-ups and has little to no side effects.
“Not understanding the link between the mind, emotions and how it affects the body.”
-Only recently have some doctors started paying attention to the importance of simultaneously treating the mind and body on a more macro scale. For many years, doctors have known that emotions have some effect on physiology, like how anger can raise blood pressure or irritate ulcers, but a more comprehensive approach to understanding and treating mental and emotional issues and how they affect the physical body is still lacking. Rather than disjoining the mind, emotions and body, and then trying to re-integrate an understanding of how emotions affect the physical body, TCM never separated them. Symptoms of restlessness, irritability, depression, anxiety, heightened fear, and so forth are all relevant clinical symptoms in TCM that help inform and guide diagnosis and treatment. These symptoms are often found alongside physiological symptoms, such as fatigue, headache, chest distension, dizziness, irregular menstruation, etc. And treatments are designed to simultaneously deal with physical, emotional and mental symptoms, as they are all part of the condition.
“I have so many competing medications that I don’t know what’s helping and what’s harming.”
-Western medicine is rooted in separation and compartmentalization. Sometimes that proves useful, as in the study of anatomy where the body is broken down into individual muscles, tissues, etc. On a macro scale, however, this perspective can have great limitations, for instance how different physiological systems interact with one another. For example, liver and gallbladder issues often have a strong effect on the digestive system. So to treat a patient only for digestive issues without treating the underlying issues in the liver and gallbladder would limit the efficacy of the treatment. TCM seeks to find the root causes of disease, rather than treating its various manifestations, and in doing so, can effectively and efficiently treat conditions that affect or are caused by various systems.