I hope you all can join in to the really cool teleseminar tonight! Dr Zhang will be talking about western medicine and chinese medicine.
Here is all the pertinent information you will need:
TIME: 5:00 p.m. PST
6:00 p.m. MST
7:00 p.m. CST
8:00 p.m. EST
CALL IN PHONE NUMBER: (218) 895-0748
PASS CODE: 9110 followed by the #
SPECIAL NOTE: It appears that there is some complication with some cell phones and with all internet based long distance interfacing with the conferencing platform. It is BEST if you call in on a LAND LINE. You can try your cell phone, if it doesn't work, have a land line available.
To Your Health and Healing,
Cheryl Young
www.LymeHope.com
OUTLINE:
TCM uses the inductive and synthetic method; WM uses the reductive and analytical method.
TCM is individualized; WM is standardized.
TCM is experience based; WM is evidence based.
TCM is a healing art; WM is strictly a science.
TCM emphasizes the role of the body in healing; WM mainly relies on medication and procedures.
TCM looks at the behavior of the system as a whole; WM looks at the structure and function of the parts.
TCM works to maintain health; WM manages disease.
Philosophical Differences Between Western and Chinese Medicine
(Part 1-- Western Medicine)
Western medicine is based on modern biomedical science and is an evidence-based medicine. Its methodology is fundamentally analytical and reductive. This method is very powerful in understanding the structure and function of the human body and disease-causing agents such as bacteria, fungi, protozoa, virus, etc. Anatomy, histology, cytology, ultra-structure, molecular biology, and sub-molecular biology have given us a clear and detailed view of the physical and chemical structure of the body. The recently disclosed gene-map has even revealed our fundamental genetic make-up. These advances in health care have improved the quality of human life tremendously and because of this success, modern western medicine has become the predominant medical system in the world. However, no system is flawless and able to solve every problem. In the case of chronic diseases, the methodology of Western medicine is not always accommodating.
First, because no two individuals are the same, ideal medication has to be individualized. Unified therapeutic strategy (one disease one treatment, such as IFN-based treatment for Hepatitis C) used in western medicine cannot meet this requirement.
Because of the great variability that exists among individual patients, properly prescribed treatment is still a mixed bag of science and art. Recently developed pharmacogenetics is trying to deal with this problem, but this branch of modern western medicine is still in its infancy and the present "one size fits all" method will only yield partial efficacy.
Second, although the analytical approach is powerful, being linear is also the weakness of modern western medicine.
Because the human body is an open, large, and complex system, it is impossible to understand it by analyzing its subsystems alone. The sum of the parts will not add up to the whole because of the complex interdependencies that exist. The linear analytical approach of modern western medicine is accustomed to using the reduction method to simplify complicated clinical situations.
Philosophical Differences Between Western and Chinese Medicine
(Part 2-Traditional Chinese Medicine)
Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is an empirical medicine and was developed in the old days in the absence of systemic scientific knowledge. Thus, it is a product of the accumulated clinical observations gathered over centuries of practice.
Its development was inductive and looks at the human body's behavior as a whole during the course of a disease. TCM defines a normal functioning person as having balance within him or herself and with the natural environment outside the body. In contrast, a diseased condition is a deviation from this balance and the role of medical treatment, according to TCM, is to restore the balanced state. Due to the subjective nature of TCM, it is a system that needs modernization before it can be applied effectively in modern healthcare.
From a systematic point of view, the TCM model is very much like a black box.
The outputs (physical symptoms and signs) and inputs (pathogenic factors, herbs, diet, treatment) are observed without the details of what is happening inside the body system. Although the exact mechanisms are not presented, the black box method can be suitable for open, large, and complex systems like the human body. The inputs can be adjusted while the changes in the output can be observed with reliable results over time. These observations can then develop treatment inputs that bring the body back into balance. However, because TCM lacks detailed and concrete mechanisms, it is difficult to conduct meaningful scientific experimentation in the modern age. During diagnosis and treatment, decisions are completely individualized for each patient and the same protocol might not be repeatable for other patients. Thus, the effectiveness of TCM can heavily depend on the skill and experience of the practitioner and is not well suited for a generalized class of disease.
The Western standard of double blind, placebo controlled and randomized trials are not suited for the study of TCM. In TCM, the diagnosis of the status of health or disease in a patient is described by what is traditionally called Zhen (symptom-patterns.) The nature of Zhen is a summary of the pathogenesis of a particular person at a particular stage of a disease course. Zhen describes whether the symptoms are hot or cold, internal or external, excessive or deficient and summarizes them into patterns of Yin and Yang. Thus, Zhen is a summary of the functional status of the patient and not a description of anatomy and pathology. TCM treatment is based on using particular herbs to restore the lost balance diagnosed by the Zhen, an example being using a "cold" herb to balance a "hot" condition in the body. The vague and mystical nature of TCM makes formal experimentation and study difficult. From the modern microbiological point of view, Zhen does not differentiate between the et
iological factor (the cause of the disease), which can make for inaccurate diagnosis since different diseases may show the similar types of Zhen or symptoms. Without a reliable way to determine the etiological factor, TCM treatment might not work well for the infectious diseases unless it is properly diagnosed.
The herbal formulas used in TCM treatment are also individualized and usually contain eight to twelve combinations of herbs. Each herb within the combinations can also have dozens of different active ingredients that may vary depending on the season, place of production and other factors. This makes it very hard to standardize the results of each batch and is another area that TCM needs modernization.
Despite its seemingly out-dated methods, the vast amount of accumulated information stored in TCM can provide useful applications for treating modern diseases such as Hepatitis C. The integration of TCM with modern methods is a key step towards better healthcare. The next article will discuss Modern Chinese Medicine and it's development. (Part 3)
In the modern era of science and technique, it is not surprising that WM has become the main system of medicine while TCM became so called alternative or complementary medicine.
The open, large, and complex human body system consists of reducible and non-reducible, linear and non-linear, definite and random, sequential and non-sequential parts. Thus, it is nearly impossible to understand the mechanisms of body by using a purely reductive method. The reductionism of WM distorts the true nature of a complex system, the human body and this is where the behavioral and experience-based method of TCM can provide the means to see the body as a whole system. TCM was developed through thousands of years of "trial and error", and is a result-based black box model. TCM analyzes multiple variables of output from the body (the black box) to define the status of the system (diagnosis). Then, using corrective inputs (treatment herbs) as intervention, the system is brought back into balance based on trial and error. The lack of understanding of the detailed internal mechanisms of the human black box is the shortcoming of the TCM. Thus, it is unable to study the deta
iled mechanisms of treatments that are effective.
For the past forty years, researchers and doctors in China have been developing an integrative medical system that uses the diagnostic tools of WM to identify the mechanisms of TCM. The chemical make-up and active ingredients of thousands of TCM herbal medications have been clearly identified and studied. In practice, we can now use the anatomical and microbiological knowledge of WM to explain the concepts of TCM. Combined with the diagnostic powers of WM and the phyto-pharmacology of TCM, treatment for infectious diseases such as Hepatitis C can be more individualized and comprehensive. While treating a WM diagnosed infectious disease, the integrative treatment not only deals with the etiological factor to eradicate the pathogenic microbial (WM approach) but also supports the body's immune function (TCM approach). This integrative approach to medical care will be very beneficial to the patients it serves.
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