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How to explain Chinese medicine to your patients

Most new patients at the hospital, regularly ask for an explanation of Chinese medicine, so that they understand how the treatment works. In the United States, the religious, or those with a background in science are often very suspicious of a system that is being frequently advertised as the product of vague eastern practices, or is surrounded by mystery and/or encompassing near occult methods.

 

Many of my acupuncture students, sometimes also find it difficult to come up with a clear definition that doesn’t include the keywords: qi, energies, yin and yang, five elements, and 5000 years of TCM history. An attempt to explain it as a method of using needles to stimulate “channels and meridians”, or using herbs to access the internal organs according to ancient experiences of the Chinese people, again doesn’t sound scientifically convincing. 

 

From my experiences in a hospital setting, when the religious or the scientifically knowledgeable patients hears such explanations, they will think twice before succumbing to a medical tradition that somewhat insults their intelligence and/or theological views. 

 

To start from the beginning, the Chinese textbooks describe TCM as the medical system defined by two principles:

1.    The holistic principle and

2.    Syndrome differentiation

 

In this entry, I will try to explain what is syndrome differentiation for the non-acupuncturists, in the hope that my students and others will find these explanations useful in their practice. 

 

Chinese medicine believes that illness can arise from an infinite number of causes (viruses, bacteria, chemical/biological agents, emotions, diet, lifestyle, trauma etc.). Yet, the number of symptoms that a human can develop as the result of any disease, is quite finite.    

 

At a time when science and technology was still at infancy, and lab tests and imaging did not yet exist, the Chinese believed that the best way to identify any health disorder was by studying how the disease manifests on a patient. 

 

Through extensive clinical experimentation and refinement of the classical diagnostic methods, the pre-modern doctors learned how to standardize exact group of symptoms that the various diseases instigate, and place them into categories/syndromes which they called “patterns”. 

The traditional treatment therefore concentrates on formulating a personalized strategy, that will effectively counteract the pattern, eliminate the symptoms and thus resolve the disease. 

 

Hence, Chinese medicine is a medical system that categorizes and organizes diseases according to how they manifest on the person. Regardless of causative agents, Chinese medicine does not necessarily need to know what elicits the affliction in allopathic terms, but instead it focuses on identifying and treating the traditional pattern. 


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Another issue stemming from people’s inability to define Chinese medicine, is the use of the term “Integrative Medicine”. In recent years, many acupuncturists with merely a plain acupuncture degree, or sometimes with the US patented DACM or DAOM add-ons, also started advertising themselves as ...Integrative Medicine "specialists". As a result, Integrative Medicine gradually became yet another misinterpreted term that has suffered tremendous abuse and exploitation by acupuncturists.


From the TCM standpoint, Chinese Integrative Medicine is a medical specialty originally developed during the 20th century. Its basic premise is to bridge the pre-modern Chinese approaches with the current bio-medical understanding of allopathic medicine, in order to better enhance clinical effectiveness and precision in treatment. Its practice requires specialist training, and a relevant professional qualification or certified specialization. 


I will return to this topic another time, for a more detailed discussion, since the allopathic definition of Integrative Medicine is a little different. 

 

Note: Dr. Solos holds a Medical Doctorate (PhD) in Integrative Medicine from the Jinan University in Guangzhou, China. 

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