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What is Chinese medicine?
Chinese medicine includes acupuncture, moxibustion, herbal formulas, cupping, manual therapies (gua sha, tui na), nutritional strategies, exercise, lifestyle modifications and many others. What they all have in common is a core framework based on the theory of yin and yang.
Yin and yang are the two fundamental categories in Chinese medicine through which everything in the universe can be understood.
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Yang Yin
Light Dark
Upward Downward
Movement Stillness
Hot Cold
Dry Wet
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For a Chinese medicine practitioner, health in the human body is simply yin and yang in a state of dynamic balance. Illness occurs when this balance is disturbed. The goal of Chinese medicine, regardless of the modality, is to restore this equilibrium.
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How does Chinese medicine diagnose an illness?
A Chinese medicine diagnosis is formed from the medical interview, observation, and palpation. In early 200 BCE, when Chinese medicine was being developed, there were no blood tests, MRIs, or PET scans. Practitioners relied not only on asking questions, but also on observation and palpation of the surface of the body to determine the pathology underneath. The most common diagnostic systems in Chinese medicine include assessing the patient’s tongue, pulse, and abdomen.
Twin Stars Acupuncture patients can expect an oral interview regarding their current signs and symptoms, an observation of their tongue, and palpation of the radial arteries on both wrists. The information gathered in the interview and from observation and palpation will then be formulated into a diagnosis whereby the practitioner will frame a treatment plan to harmonize the relationship of yin and yang within the patient’s body.
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Is Chinese medicine an alternative medicine?
Is Chinese food an alternative food? Is the Chinese language an alternative language? Chinese medicine is simply the collection of successful healing strategies gathered as Chinese civilization endured over the last two millennia. Because it developed in China, it has its language and innate cultural ideas based in that of yin and yang—not much different than that of ‘cell theory’ in biomedicine or the ‘doshas and prana’ paradigm of traditional Indian medicine. Any medical system should be judged not on how closely it reflects our familiar cultural references, but solely on its clinical effectiveness and safety.
No matter which medical system is used to observe it, the human body is the same. Although Chinese medicine may not be the optimal choice for every ailment, it occupies a uniquely safe and effective niche in the medical systems currently available to patients.
Preventing Disease and Nourishing Health
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The sages did not treat those already ill, but treated those not yet ill, they did not put in order what was already in disorder but put in order what was not yet in disorder. When attempts at restoring order are initiated only after disorder has fully developed, this is as if a well were dug when one is thirsty, and as if weapons were cast when the fight is on. Would this not be too late? –Huang Di Nei Jing Su Wen
The strategy and focus on preventative medicine and early intervention is much safer and more successful than waiting to treat a disease that has grown in strength, thus requiring more intense and riskier methods of treatment. Chinese medicine has developed a wide range of behaviors and practices to promote longevity, enhanced quality of life, and disease prevention. Strategies such as regulating mental and emotional states, ethical behavior, dietary habits (including when and how we eat), exercise, sleep, healthy sexual practices, and living in harmony with the changing seasonal environment, are some areas that Twin Stars Acupuncture may discuss with a patient when creating a plan to achieve overall wellness. In addition to acupuncture, moxibustion, Chinese herbal medicine and therapeutic body work techniques, dietary recommendations, and meditative practices may be prescribed.
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Diet in preventing and treating disease
In Chinese medical nutrition, every person and each individual food is understood to have a unique combination of yin and yang qualities. A person with a complaint of thirst, restlessness, dry skin, and scant urination (excess yang pathology) would be recommended to emphasize more yin-natured foods such as apples, broccoli, cabbage, peppermint, spinach, strawberry, and zucchini.
While the focus of Chinese medical dietary strategies is uniquely tailored to the individual to restore yin-yang balance, there are some near-universal recommendations that are helpful to everyone:
- Only eat until your stomach is 75 percent full; this allows rooms for digestion.
- Your biggest meal of the day should be at breakfast.
- Minimize eating uncooked or cold food, especially in the winter.
- Vegetables are more beneficial than fruit.
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He who takes medicine and neglects to diet wastes the skill of his doctors. -Chinese Proverb
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Qi gong and tai ji quan
Qi gong is considered an umbrella term for the meditative exercises that have been used to cultivate health and well-being in China for the last couple of millennia. Tai ji quan is the most well known qi gong practice, and is a martial art - and a form of stylized meditative exercise - that is commonly practiced outdoors. Qi gong methods are often used to supplement the yin and/or yang in a patient’s treatment regimen (like that of a physical therapist instructing an individual to perform a personalized exercise routine at home). Qi gong practices are often recommended to patients suffering from anxiety and stress, especially if these are due to a serious illness like cancer. Tai ji quan is also beneficial for older patients who have difficulty with their balance.