Introduction to Chinese Medicine

Chinese medicine dates back several thousand years, to a time when no cultures had any definitive knowledge of the inner workings of the body. Despite this, by as early as 2,500 AD, the ancient Chinese had already published a textbook of internal medicine that was prescient in its understanding of:

• The role of blood flow in health and disease
• The impact of salt intake on blood pressure
• The role of over-eating and excessive carbohydrate intake in causing diabetes
• The role of diet in inflammation
• The recognition that many diseases were caused by invading pathogens
• The development of treatments to deal with these infections
• The use of forensic pathology to solve crimes and distinguish between accidental death and murder

 

These are just a few of the accomplishments ancient Chinese achieved in medicine, and are made even more miraculous by the fact that they understood the body only in metaphoric terms. The simplest of these metaphors, Yin and Yang, is embodied in the Tai Ji symbol, famous for its association with Chinese medicine. 

In health, every living thing is considered to be an integrated and balanced combination of energy and matter, form and function, Yin and Yang. When the patient is healthy, neither one is dominant or that prominent, but in sickness, the patient comes to be dominated by Yin symptoms (e.g. weight gain, chills, weakness, mucous production) or Yang symptoms (e.g. fever, inflammation, hot flashes). To achieve balance, excess of Yin or Yang must be removed with acupuncture and herbs, or deficiencies replaced.

In addition to the common sense notion that the body can be understood in terms of matter and energy - physical changes and physiological ones – the symbol also embodies the notion of cyclicity. Fluctuations in Yin and Yang occur over the course of a day or a year, with changes in one being followed by changes in the other, so that over the course of time, Yin and Yang balance each other out. The notion of cyclicity and balance is also embraced by modern medicine in its understanding of the circadian rhythm, the autonomic nervous system, and the endocrine system.

While surprisingly consistent with modern medical principles, Chinese medicine also offers insights that science is only just beginning to uncover. For example, Yin and Yang characterize everything, including a disease process. Since Yin and Yang interact and fluctuate according to rules, this means that disease processes are not chaotic broken-down states, but are in fact highly organized. This observation is one that science has only made itself in the past few years, and is still too new to have been incorporated into daily medical practice. Neurology, heart disease, and immune disorders are just a few of the fields where the new science of Complexity is corroborating the dictum of the ancient Chinese that chronic diseases are self-propagating dynamics. Rarely do we encounter the words ‘chronic disease’ in ancient Chinese writings. They did not make the distinction, as we do, between transient short-lived illnesses and ones that last for years. This may well be because Chinese medicine was better equipped to deal with and prevent them, by viewing them as merely vicious cycles, or self-perpetuating pathological relationships between various organs. By providing dietary, acupuncture and herbal interventions that address each of these stepping stones, the ancient Chinese were able to fracture these relationships, restoring the patient’s ability to adapt to its environment by invoking a wide range of physiological states.

Chinese medicine goes much deeper into its analysis than simply describing patients in terms of Yin and Yang. There are many different schools and more detailed schools of thought that have evolved through the centuries, including the Spleen school, the Kidney school, Five Element analysis, approaches based on Zang-Fu physiology, and strategies based on the Six Heavenly Influences. As exotic as these names sound, they all share at their root a common acceptance of fluctuations in bodily Yin and Yang as the fundamental driving principles of health and disease.