Traditional Chinese Medicine

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is a holistic approach to healing that has a history spanning more than 5000 years. It has accumulated and is still accumulating a large body of clinical and empirical experience in the treatment of illness and the management through maintenance of good health.

Many current researches and experiments in China and increasingly around the world have begun to explain treatment effects in scientific language that is more readily accepted by our modern world. This research has affirmed the old principles and given additional contribution of new applications and directions of the classical acupuncture and herbal formulas.

TCM, above all else, is a clinical system of ancient origin with relevance to modern health care. Ancient clinical treatments have brought to bear on the new diseases and health situations of today’s world in ways that were not envisioned centuries ago. This is a result of the continuing clinical practice enlightened by research, and the inherent flexibility of a holistic approach. TCM is a living changing system with great relevance to modern times.

In Canada, TCM and especially acupuncture has been used both experimentally and as a complementary form of treatment in hospitals and research clinics, and is most often used in private practice.

The vocabulary of TCM centers around the concept of illness as imbalance. Words such as Qi, Blood, Yin and Yang, Deficiency and Excess, Harmony and Disharmony, and Obstruction all help to explain the clinical picture. In the simplest way Qi is considered to be the energy that flows smoothly in deep and shallow patterns throughout the body. When the Qi is vital and balanced we have health, energy and peace of mind. When it becomes unregulated, blocked or perverse this may lead to disharmony which will then manifest as illness. Treating illness is a matter of harmonizing the Qi by returning it to its regular pattern of balance and flow. TCM’s several treatment strategies invite each person’s Qi back to harmony, that is, to good health in body, mind, spirit and lifestyle.

This compex idea is usually explained by the TCM practitioner in a metaphorical language. The practitioner will look for signs and symptoms that can be categorized asHot, Cold, Damp, Dry, in terms of sympotmatic and clinical presentation based on classical and standard TCM methods of assessment. While assessment according to TCM principles requires a highly trained and experienced practitioner, the treatment strategies that are employed aim to help redress the balance in the body.

In order to determine the pattern of disharmony, the TCM practitioner inquires into lifestyle, work, diet, history and nature of the presentin\g complaint, emotional states, etc. Assessmewnt includes questioning, observation, palpation, observation and examination of pulse and tongue. Symptoms are not treated in isolation, but perceived as a pattern into which the total clinical picture is recognized. Tongue and pulse assessment are highly refined skills in TCM. The pulse is felt on the wrists at the radial artery and the strength, rythm, depth and quality indicate the balance and flow of energy and the state of the pattern of illness or disharmony percieved.

TCM has several different modalities with which to help re-establish health and harmony in the body, mind and spirit of those seeking treatment. Acupuncture, herbal medicine, massage, moxibustion, cupping, exercise and diet are among the modalities most often emplyed within the repertoire of a TCM practitioner.

Traditional Chinese Medicine is Holistic

Traditional Chinese Medicine treats the whole person. Taking into account age, sex, individual constitution, multiple signs and symptoms, diet, lifestyle, working and living environments, etc., treatment according to TCM principles requires and necessitates individual treatments for each person. For example, the same illness in different people may be treated by similar methods. Treatment is largely, though not always heteropathic, seeking to balance the clinical picture by suppplementing areas of deficiency and strengthening or tonifying areas of deficiency by using their complementary opposites. Ann example of this could be a Cold- Deficiency type of illness treated with warming and supplementing methods, whereas a Hot - Excess type of illness is treated with cooling and dispersing methods. TCM seeks through accurate perception to understand the nature of each individual condition and therby use treatment methods appropriate to restore the harmony of the body we describe as health.

Usually, if both perception and treatment methods employed are correct, some effect may be noticed at once. TCM has been called the “middle medicine”, and works best with a moderate rate of improvement, inviting the body back to health rather than forcefully enforcing change. This rate of improvement allows the persons own healing capacity to participate in the return to harmony and health. TCM necessitates both careful and skillful management to treat alterations in the condition as they occur. The client seeking TCM can and needs to be an active participant in their treatment.

Traditional Chinese Medicine is Safe, Sensible and Complimentary

TCM is not an exclusive or ideal medical system, but having thousands of years of recorded and clinical experience can safely and systematically treat many patterns of disharmony. Limitation in treatment is mainly in acute illness or at times when a more interventional approach may be necessary. TCM can have an excellent effect in the treatment of chronic illness, as a preventative form of therapy, as well as in treating syndromes and symptoms difficult to label in Western terms, but easily recognezed as a TCM pattern of disharmony.

TCM may be employed adjunctively with other forms of treatment and therapy, being one aspect and approach to the restoration and maintenance of health.

In addition to the aforementioned partial list, a variety of other illnesses are responsive to acupuncture and TCM. It is advisable to consult with the practitioner beforehand.