A Look at Traditional Chinese Medicine, Part 2

In the last article, A Look at Traditional Chinese Medicine, Part 1, I gave a brief overview of Chinese Medicine and then discussed its Taoist roots.

Today I will continue with the discussion.

I finished the last article by saying that all aspects of Chinese culture, and especially the arts and sciences, are meant to be reflections of the Tao. In other words, all aspects of Chinese culture have a chief aim: to cultivate and produce harmony with the Universe.

And from this aim does Chinese Medicine arise.

The goal in Chinese Medicine is to help a person become healthier by being in harmony with the Universe. This is achieved by helping the person achieve a flow within their body, and have that flow resonate with the flow of nature and the Universe: in other words, it is the chief desire to have a person be in synch with the pulse of the Universe.

In Chinese Medicine, it’s all about chi – or more correctly spelled these days, qi – flow.

The beginnings of Chinese Medicine, many millennia ago, was rooted in observations of nature. The wise sages who originally formulated this medicine believed that as long as a person was like water, and like trees that could bend but not break in the wind, that they followed the same path as the Tao, and in that way, they could then be healthy.

From there came the earliest ideas, that health was about maintaining good flow, and that disease set into the body when there were problems with the flow.

From this basic concept did this system of medicine develop. One of the first textbooks in the pantheon of Chinese Medicine was written 2,000 years ago, and is still revered today. Called The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine, it is a dialogue between the Yellow Emperor and his physician, Qi Bo.

From there, over the eons many other books that are still revered in Chinese Medicine were written – some on herbal medicine, some on acupuncture, and some that are on theories of illness.

All these books, and the thinking behind it, allowed for the flowering of Chinese Medicine and for it to become a very sophisticated and profound form of medicine. And over time, different theories were developed, including Yin-yang, the Five Phases, the human body Meridian/Channel system, Zang Fu organ theory, six confirmations, four levels, deficiency/excess, emptiness/fullness, hot/cold, wind, dampness, pathogens, internal/external, qi (several different types), essences, body fluids, vessels, and more.

The first step in being treated by a Chinese Medicine doctor is for the doctor to make a diagnosis. To do that, the doctor uses the diagnostic tools inherent within Chinese Medicine.

These tools can be classified as touching, seeing, smelling, hearing and questioning. The most well-known touching diagnostic tool is pulse diagnosis, whereby the doctor palpates the pulse in six different positions to feel for pulse quality.

The most well-known of the seeing diagnostic tools is tongue diagnosis, in which the doctor looks at the tongue and observes the color of the tongue, the color of the coat, and various other markers that appear on the tongue.

Using pulse and tongue diagnosis, along with other diagnostic approaches, the Chinese Medicine doctor can then make a Chinese Medical diagnosis, which allows for treatment to take place, whether with acupuncture, Chinese herbs, dietary therapy, qi gong, tui na, or some combination, to take place.

Most doctors of Chinese Medicine will usually specialize in one of the main treatment modalities, as opposed to being proficient in all. Each of the main treatment modalities – acupuncture, Chinese Herbal Medicine, dietary therapy, qi gong, and tui na (think osteopathy) – takes years of training to become a master.

In the West, schools of Chinese Medicine train students to be able to do most of the modalities, but in reality, each of the modalities is a discipline of and by itself, and takes many years to master. That is not to say a practitioner can’t successfully do a number of the modalities, but to do so takes a commitment to really learn the skills.

As a Western student and now practitioner of Chinese Medicine, I learned all the modalities, and the ones I primarily use are acupuncture, Chinese Medicine and dietary therapy. If push comes to shove though, and someone told me I could only practice just one modality, I would choose Chinese Herbal Medicine.

I keep a pharmacy of about 200 raw herbs, and I create herbal formulas in the same traditional/classical way as the ancient sage doctors of Chinese Medicine. I love getting my hands on the herbs, as it connects me to an ancient and sacred past.

But just the same, I know most of my patients think of acupuncture as the main modality of Chinese Medicine, and so that is my primary practice.

Most people in the U.S. don’t realize how much research goes on in China into the use of Chinese herbs for many chronic ailments. Cancer is a big specialty in Chinese Medicine, and in China herbal medicine is an important tool in fighting cancer. Much of the research into using Chinese herbs in the treatment of cancer goes into Chinese medical journals, but sadly, not much of that research gets translated and published in Western medical journals.

A Look at Traditional Tibetan Medicine: Part 1

We are back from our two-week hiatus to continue this series on the Roots of Medicine. The last article before the break was a two-part look at Ayurvedic Medicine.

I continue today with a look at another traditional system of medicine, Traditional Tibetan Medicine.

I had my first in-depth look at traditional Tibetan Medicine a number of years ago, when I was living in San Diego and went to a presentation given by Dr. Yeshi Dhonden at the VA hospital in town.

Dr. Dhonden is a practitioner of Tibetan Medicine and the former personal physician to the Dalai Lama.

Dr. Dhonden was invited by the VA hospital to present and to do grand rounds. The grand rounds at the hospital that day took place in the auditorium, to a very large audience of health providers. The grand rounds consisted of doctors at the VA bringing some of their most difficult cases to the auditorium and having Dr. Dhonden give his professional opinion about their health status.

One of the primary tools in Tibetan Medicine is urine analysis, though not in the standard way as known in Western Medicine, as a UA. In Dr. Dhonden’s approach to urine analysis, the patient would pee into a cup, and Dr. Dhonden would then make his diagnosis by observing the urine.

I can’t remember what he diagnosed for the patients based on his urine analysis, but I recall the treating doctors, and the audience as a whole, sitting in awe of this man of such deep wisdom.

Besides his urine analysis, he also used pulse diagnosis, which is a form of diagnosis also used in Chinese Medicine. Once he formed his diagnosis, Dr. Dhonden then was able to make a prognosis and make recommendations as to what the patient could do to improve their health.

So what is Tradititonal Tibetan Medicine?

It is a centuries-old traditional medical system that employs a complex approach to diagnosis, incorporating techniques such as pulse analysis and urinalysis, and utilizes behavior and dietary modification, medicines composed of natural materials (e.g., herbs and minerals) and physical therapies (e.g. Tibetan acupuncture, moxabustion, etc.) to treat illness.

The Tibetan medical system is based upon a synthesis of the Indian (Ayurveda), Persian (Unani), Greek, indigenous Tibetan, and Chinese medical systems, and it continues to be practiced in Tibet, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Ladakh, Siberia, China and Mongolia, as well as more recently in parts of Europe and North America. It embraces the traditional Buddhist belief that all illness ultimately results from the “three poisons” of the mind: ignorance, attachment and aversion.

Traditional Tibetan Medicine addresses the well being of the whole individual in the observation, healing and prevention of physical, mental, and energetic imbalances.

By synthesizing knowledge from various medical systems, Tibetans created a approach to medical science drawn from thousands of years of accumulated empirical knowledge and intuition about the nature of health and illness.

Centuries ago, before Buddhism entered Tibet, Tibetans like all ancient people had a significant degree of medical knowledge. According to traditional sources, in the beginning of the 4th century many new ideas regarding medicine began to enter the country. At first influences came from India in the form of what is now called Ayurvedic medicine, as well as more spiritual and psychologically based systems from Buddhist and other sources.

Around the 7th-8th centuries the Tibetan government began sponsoring conferences where doctors skilled in the medical systems of China, Persia, India and Greece presented and debated their ideas regarding health and the treatment of illness. Those with superior abilities in the diagnosis, treatment and understanding of illness were invited to stay and contribute to the country’s medical knowledge base.

In the 11th century, this knowledge was codified into a unique system containing a synthesis of the principals of physical and psychological medicine imbued with a Buddhist spiritual understanding. This understanding formed a foundation for Tibetan medicine and benefited patients and doctors alike. It acknowledged how health and illness resulted both from the relationship between the mind and the body and people’s connectedness to the natural world and sense of spirituality.

Next time: A Look at how Traditional Tibetan Medicine works.