Recently, Shen Weidong, chief physician and acupuncturist of Shuguang Hospital affiliated with Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, delivered a speech. In his speech, he analyzed the different characteristics of Chinese and Western medicine: Western medicine uses standardized medicine and takes the average value of the human body as a reference; Chinese medicine focuses on holistic treatment and values the changing trends and individual differences of the body.
He believes that the future is not the battle between Chinese and Western medicine, but the integration of these two concepts.
To see Chinese medicine, or to see Western medicine?
I would like to ask you a question first: If you suddenly get sick, would you choose to go to a Chinese doctor or a Western doctor?
I believe that all the young people here would probably answer in this way: I would go to a Western doctor. Why? People think that Western medicine is more accurate and can catch the key to see the problem.
Generally speaking, if you have a fever, a Western doctor will order a blood test to see if you have a viral or bacterial infection based on the total number of white blood cells, or perhaps a chest X-ray to see if there are any problems with your lungs. There is no denying that modern medicine, or Western medicine, does diagnose diseases more accurately.
But in reality, both Chinese medicine and Western medicine are a way for humans to cure diseases. Only the methods of Chinese medicine and Western medicine to treat diseases are different. The same treatment for fever, Chinese medicine does not look at these quantitative indicators alone, such as a simple white blood cell count, Chinese medicine looks at the disease and focuses on the overall treatment.
Chinese medicine has its own characteristics, and this is what I want to share with you today.
Chinese medicine focuses on the “three causes of disease”
Chinese medicine is different from Western medicine in that it focuses on the “three causes and the appropriate”.
In Chinese medicine, the first step is to consider and assess the specific environment, time and conditions of the disease through the overall judgment of “looking, smelling, asking and feeling”. We call this “the time, place and person”, which is classified as the “three causes theory” in Chinese medicine.
Why does the same causative factor behave differently in different people? In the same environment, why do some people catch a cold and others do not? This is because everyone’s constitution is different, living environment, living habits, living area is also different, resulting in even the same kind of disease, it is not the same state of onset. Therefore, Chinese medicine is concerned with the “three causes and the appropriate”.
Secondly, Chinese medicine is concerned with the “holistic concept”. This is one of the most important features of TCM, which is to look at a person as a whole, not just one part.
Chinese medicine never focuses on a single point. For example, a person has some heart problems and goes to see a doctor. When he goes to a Western doctor, what does he see? He will definitely look for cardiovascular medicine, or cardiac medicine and surgery, and will not find other departments. But what happens if he goes to a TCM doctor? TCM doctors will look at the person as a whole, as a system. TCM doctors believe that the heart and the small intestine are on top of each other, so looking at heart disease may well appear to be treating the small intestine.
In addition, TCM practitioners will treat the patient from different angles according to different manifestations, different symptoms, and different physical characteristics. Such treatment may achieve twice the result with half the effort. Therefore, TCM is a holistic concept, treating people as a system, rather than treating the headache and the foot.
It’s not funny to treat the head when the foot hurts
There is a very important cornerstone in Chinese medicine, which is also the foundation of Chinese medicine, and that is the meridians. Some people may think that the cornerstone of Chinese medicine theory is the five elements of yin and yang, but I think the “meridian theory” is more important. Why do you say so? Our internal organs, skin, muscles, bones, including our five senses, are all strung together by these meridians.
Many people would think that the Chinese medicine saying “treat the head when the head aches” is ridiculous, but it is not. Because there are many meridians in our body that go from head to foot, from internal organs to external, so when you understand this, you will not be surprised by the treatment methods of Chinese medicine.
Chinese medicine says that the human body has 12 main meridians, that is, 12 internal organs, and they each have a meridian, and these meridians travel internally to the internal organs and externally to the limbs and joints, all the way to the base surface of the body. What is flowing in the meridians? Chinese medicine believes that it is qi and blood. In fact, it also has some relevance to the nervous and circulatory systems of modern medicine.
For example, the Hand Tai Yin Lung meridian. The Hand Taiyin Lung meridian arises from the middle jiao (the middle of the body, which starts in the stomach) and travels further down to the large intestine; then up to the lungs; then through the pharynx to the hands and forward through the arms all the way to the thumbs. From the course of this meridian, we can see that the treatment of diseases of the large intestine can be done through the lung meridian points. Therefore, we say that the inside and outside of the human body can be communicated, and the channel of this communication is the meridians.
There are also seven meridians and eight channels in the human body, the two most famous of which are the Ren and Du channels, which form a ring in the front and back of the body, or the “Small Circumference”, and the 12 main meridians, which form the “Large Circumference”. The two channels are closely related to our internal organs. The easiest way to cure many diseases in the human body is to open up the Ren and Du channels.
Chinese and Western medicine should not be absolutely separated
Chinese traditional medicine is a medical discipline with Chinese culture and Chinese philosophy, based on the framework of the five elements of yin and yang and the concept of the whole. Modern medicine is guided by modern chemistry, physics and anatomy.
The precision of Western medicine and the holistic treatment of Chinese medicine can be completely combined with each other. For example, a person’s usual blood pressure is 95mmHg systolic and 65mmHg diastolic, which is completely normal. From a standardized point of view, this figure is completely normal, but for an individual, the blood pressure has increased by more than 30%, and the person already feels very uncomfortable. TCM believes that elevated blood pressure is caused by many reasons and perhaps leads to other pathological changes, so the patient should be referred for further medical examination.
In general, Chinese and Western medicine present different characteristics: Western medicine uses standardized medication and uses the average value of the human body as a reference; Chinese medicine focuses on holistic treatment and values the body’s changing trends and individual differences. But in any case, the future is not a battle between Chinese and Western medicine, but a fusion of these two philosophies.
In fact, TCM has been advancing along with medical technology. Many people think that TCM is only about taking a pulse and looking at the tongue. Chinese medicine has not only grown along with technological advances, but has also been improving and breaking through itself.
TCM does not reject modern technology, TCM needs to be modernized; there are actually many ways to modernize TCM. For example, many people are afraid of doing acupuncture, thinking it is painful; but we have improved it a bit, making acupuncture painless, or using the stimulation of acupuncture points instead of acupuncture.
In addition, Chinese herbal medicine is also being improved, hoping to change the impression of people’s minds that Chinese medicine is dark, bitter and hard to drink. Many of the Chinese medicines nowadays have been made into no-decoction, which allows you to carry and drink them more easily. Many of our diagnostic methods in TCM have also kept up with the times, including the fact that we can combine Western medicine to make diagnosis and treatment more accurate and rapid through X-rays, MRI, and ultrasound.
Of course, we also need to improve the depth and breadth of research on holistic TCM theory, using the holistic concept of TCM and the theory of systematics, combined with many new achievements of modern medicine, so that more people can stay away from diseases and make everyone’s life better.