Traditional Chinese medicine

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) also known simply as Chinese medicine or traditional Oriental medicine, is the name given in the West to a range of traditional medical practices originating in China.

TCM is based on the belief that the body will recover from illness when the person's Yin and Yang energies and Qi are in balance. Historically, Chinese doctors in each generation guarded their medical knowledge as family secrets, passed along to apprentices. Little of this knowledge was shared in public for peer review until the government of the People's Republic of China established modern research and education systems for the discipline of TCM.

Table of contents

1 Uses
2 TCM techniques
3 TCM theory

3.1 Five element theory
3.2 Zang-Fu Theory

4 Western views of TCM
5 See also
6 External links

Uses

TCM is usually regarded as a complementary and alternative medicine. For example, modern applications of TCM include claims of alleviating the side effects of chemotherapy when treating cancer patients, helping drug addicts get clean and treating a variety of chronic conditions that conventional medicine is ineffective against. Recent research in China and elsewhere has helped form some scientific understanding of TCM.

TCM techniques

TCM utilizes numerous techniques or healing modalities to achieve the desired balance of Yin and Yang as well as Qi, blood, bodily fluids, and spirit. These include:

Acupuncture
Herbology
Moxibustion
Nutrition or food therapy
Cupping
Qigong exercises and Medical Qi Gong
Gua Sha or coin-rubbing
Plum Blossom or seven-star
Acupressure and various styles of massage such as Tuina
Sonopuncture or phonophorese--the use of sound vibration on acupoints
Auriculotherapy
Dit Da or Tieh Ta (跌打 literally, fall and strike) - Practitioners who specialize in healing trauma due to sports injury, such as bone fractures, cuts, bruises etc. It is not strictly a branch of Chinese medicine but more a spin-off from a long history of Chinese martial arts. However, these specialists may also use more typical Chinese medical therapies if internal injury is involved.

TCM theory

The theory of how TCM works dates back to antiquity. The theory is based on the religious idea that the human body contains "energies" and "elements." The foundational principle is that if all the energies are in balance, the body heals as a natural outcome; the energy is the foundation of the body as well as the mind. All the techniques used in TCM are directed at balancing these energies.

Five element theory

The Five elements of TCM are:

Wood
Fire
Earth
Water
Metal

The five element system has been elaborated into a particular school of thought within TCM, appropriately called the Five Element School.

Zang-Fu Theory

The five elements are associated energetically with the following Zang-Fu organs in the same order as above:

Liver and gallbladder
Heart and small intestine (and secondarily, the san jiao and pericardium
Spleen and stomach
Kidneys and bladder
Lungs and large intestine

There is also a school of thought within TCM called the Zang-Fu school. This theory treats each of the Zang organs (the first in the pairs above, the more yin of the organs) as an energy center that runs an entire system. The Zang systems include organs, senses, emotions, and the musculoskeletal system--essentially, the entire person divided into five categorical systems. With a thorough understanding of either of these schools of thought, therapeutic results are achieved accordingly. The theory is always in service of practical, therapeutic application, with the goal of an "elegant" treatment. An elegant treatment uses finesse rather than force for the greatest therapeutic benefit, and requires true mastery of the art of traditional Chinese Medicine.

Western views of TCM

Viewed from the perspective of Western scientific medicine, TCM is a form of pre-modern medical practice (also described as folk medicine), based on observation and empirical evidence over a long period of time, but lacking a basis in biological science. Before their contact with the West, Chinese medical practitioners had a very different understanding of infection and malignancy and little knowledge of anaesthetics (acupuncture may provide pain relief in some circumstances, but not anaesthesia), and did not practice modern concepts of hygeine or public health.

Some Most doctors and scientists hold that people who claim to sense such energies are deceiving themselves with magical thinking. Dr. Phillips Stevens writes "Many of today's complementary or alternative systems of healing involve magical beliefs, manifesting ways of thinking based in principles of cosmology and causality that are timeless and absolutely universal. So similar are some of these principles among all human populations that some cognitive scientists have suggested that they are innate to the human species, and this suggestion is being strengthened by current scientific research....Some of the principles of magical beliefs described above are evident in currently popular belief systems. A clear example is homeopathy...The fundamental principle of its founder, Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843), similia similibus curentur ("let likes cure likes"), is an explicit expression of a magical principle."

Some Western doctors and scientists believe that the validity of the principles on which TCM is believed by its practitioners to work has not been demonstrated. The form of energy known as Qi, for example, which is central to the theory of TCM, has been detected through the use of Kirlian photography. Much validitation also exists in the concepts of quantum physics. However, some people in the field of conventional Western medicine do not consider these findings valid or applicable to medicine. Comparing Western medical thinking to Chinese medical thinking is like comparing apples to oranges. Both systems are valid on their own terms. If one system is valid it does not imply that the other is not.

Critics from conventional Western medicine do not necessarily consider TCM to be worthless. TCM has developed, through empirical data over many centuries, a range of medicines and techniques which can in some circumstances cure some illnesses. The same, however, can be said of pre-modern European medicine, and of the medical practices of India, the Islamic world, pre-Columbian America and the Australian Aboriginal people. Nevertheless, in all these cases therapies have been discovered empirically, without theoretical understanding of the principles of biomedical science. Findings are not based on the scientific method but on entirely other ways of thinking and knowing.

The worth of any system of medical knowledge can only be judged by its outcome, measured through the ability to increase life expectancy, to improve quality of life, to reduce infant and perinatal mortality, to prevent and control epidemics, and similar criteria. Studies to compare TCM to pre-modern European medicine will probably never be sufficiently funded to demonstrate anything. Pre-modern China had the same high rates of death from epidemic disease, the same relatively low life expectancies and the same high rates of perinatal mortality as did other pre-modern societies of comparable living standards.

Since China has had access to Western medicine, many Chinese have prefered Western medicine over TCM. The wealthier and more Westernized China has become, the more this has been so. While TCM is still preferred by many older Chinese, and is still widely practised in remoter areas, and while TCM is still used by most Chinese for minor or chronic ailments, Chinese turn to modern hospitals where TCM and conventional Western medicine are routinely combined and experience the benefits of both kinds of medicine, especially for serious injury and acute illness.