Traditional Chinese Medicine – Restoring Health

Here is how I developed an interest in bridging Eastern and Western medicine. Remember:

•            Eastern medicine’s goal is to restore balance

•            Western medicine’s goal is to destroy disease

Here in America, Western medicine is familiar to us. But Eastern medicine, specifically Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is less well-known, and honestly, can seem a bit mystical. I want to share with you the fascinating tenets of TCM so you can understand the value it offers, and how its beauty has shaped my life and my efforts with patients.

Ancient Knowledge

TCM, has a time-honored history of over 5,000 years. It is holistic in nature, meaning it addresses the entire person – body, mind and spirit. Balance is attained by harmonizing the yin and the yang, two complementary, polar opposites that are interdependent. The original mystical concept of yin and yang was derived from observing nature. For example, night and day form a yin and yang pair just like sky and earth, hot and cold and interior and exterior. Without one, we would not have the other. The small circles of black and white within the oppositely colored larger shape symbolizes that there is always some yin within yang and vice versa.

The principles of yin and yang were later applied to health and healing; in TCM wellbeing is achieved when the yin and yang are balanced and in harmony. From the symbol, you can see the two opposing energies blend into one seamless whole and symbolizes their dynamic equilibrium. We use these concepts to understand homeostasis, describe imbalances, formulate diagnoses and create treatments. Herbal medicine and acupuncture are two mainstays of TCM that restore the balance of yin and yang.

For example, when a woman transitions through menopause, she typically displays a deficiency of yin (the cold in the body). In turn, the yang (heat in the body) overwhelms the woman transitioning through menopause with hot flashes, night sweats, insomnia and flares of irritability, rage or sadness. We use herbs that boost yin, bringing about not only thermoregulatory homeostasis but also a holistic well-being.

My first AHA! moment…

 A Story

I traveled to Thailand in my 20s. As a young acupuncture student, I took my acupuncture book with me, eager to help anyone who was willing to be my guinea pig. Luckily, I ran into someone who requested my help, even if he should have known better.

I met an Israeli man who had a terrible, sharp pain in his upper arm.  The relevant acupuncture point was on the Large Intestine Channel, so I applied acupressure to all of the points on the affected meridian.  The next day the young man came to visit me to say that his arm pain had dramatically subsided, and curiously, that his mouth pain had also resolved. 

A few days prior, he had been sailing, with the sail held by a rope in his mouth.  A gust of wind caught the sail and the rope ripped through his mouth.  He hadn’t told me about this mouth injury.

The Large Intestine Channel goes up the arm, across the shoulder, and passes through the mouth. I inadvertently helped him with both his arm and mouth pain because of the body’s inter-connectedness of the body’s meridians and the flow of qi.

Years later, I was happy to see that our National Institutes of Health, through meticulously reviewing data from clinical trials, had finally caught up with the rest of the world and deemed acupuncture useful in the treatment of various types of pain. This has led several insurance companies to cover acupuncture as a form of medical treatment.

Yin and Yang

 My life’s work is to create a powerful Yin and Yang relationship between Eastern and Western medicine. The benefit we gain from integrating these two traditions is tremendous. In Aristotle’s words:

“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”