Chinese Medicine Made Easy

This page is your portal to tons of information about Chinese medicine. Directly below is the full table of contents, where you can skip to any topic and read about it in detail. If you're a Chinese medicine newbie, we recommend reading down this page first to get yourself oriented.

I. Background & Theory                               II. Treatment Methods

Introduction

Before we start, you’re going to need some Chinese medicine goggles. This system of medicine views the human body differently than Western (also referred to as conventional or allopathic) medicine. Try to remove the Western lenses and see things with fresh eyes and an open mind. It may even be helpful to imagine that you have no prior knowledge about the human body. This way, you can just absorb all the ideas, and things will start to make sense more quickly.

Sections:
-The Long, Glorious History
-Definition, Qi and Meridians
-Five Elements
-Yin and Yang
-About Balance in Chinese Medicine
-The Term "TCM"
-Chinese vs Western Med
-A Shanghai Story

As with many articles on Chinese medicine (and perhaps most things China-related), I’m going to start with the long, glorious history. They say the proof is in the pudding, which, when you stop and think about it, makes no sense. What they really mean is that the proof of the pudding is in the eating, which means you won’t know whether it’s any good until you try it.

Chinese medicine is a system that has been documented for at least 2,000 years and has been around for even more. That’s some old pudding. Thousands of years is also a long clinical testing period during which hundreds of generations of humans received treatment. There are herbal formulas and acupuncture point combinations that have been passed down and are still used today because they work. You can even find words from the earliest tortoise shell etchings used in today’s on-line articles and journals. Click to learn more about how ancient wars, culture and society shaped the medicine that survives today.

Definition, Qi and Meridians

Chinese medicine encompasses many different healing tools and techniques, including acupuncture, herbs, tuina, cupping and moxibustion.

Each person responds differently to each treatment method, so it may take a few tries or even a few different doctors before finding what’s best for you.

All these methods are just different ways of accessing and manipulating the system of meridians that runs throughout your body. Meridians are like invisible highways that link your organs to one another and also connect the different layers of your body, from the skin down to the bone. Qi, the life-sustaining energy in Chinese medicine, flows along these highways, helping each organ function properly and pushing blood and bodily fluids along.

Acupuncture, tuina, cupping and moxibustion stimulate the meridians from the outside in, while herbs that are taken internally enter meridian channels from the inside. The goal of all of these methods is to keep traffic on the meridians flowing smoothly, so that qi can easily circulate through all the nooks and crannies of your body. “Road blocks” cause pain and disease. When everything is open and flowing, all of your organs and the different layers of your body communicate properly with one another. Good health depends on the overall balance of the system. Click to find out more about how meridians and qi balance your body.

You may also have heard of yin and yang and the five elements. How do these factor into the meridian and organ systems?

Five Elements

Well, the five elements (wood, fire, earth, metal, water) each correspond to a different organ in the body, and each of these relate to your other organs in specific ways. When an organ is out of balance, you can use the treatment methods mentioned above to help bring the organ back into its natural, healthy state. Since everything in the body is linked to everything else through the five elements relationships as well as the meridian system, treating one organ affects the entire body. You can even use the five elements theory to predict which organ will be affected next to prevent the illness from progressing or spreading. Click to find out why your lungs and large intestine are more closely linked than you think.

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Yin and Yang

As for yin and yang, your body needs a balance, both in quantity and distribution, in order to function properly.

Yin generally describes things that are relatively cold, dark, feminine, heavy, and damp. By contrast, yang generally refers to things that are relatively hot, bright, masculine, lightweight, and dry. Everything in your body can be categorized relatively as yin and yang, from body regions to organs.

Qi can also have yin or yang characteristics. Yang qi is generally classified as warming, and yin qi is cooling. If, for instance, there’s a road block in your meridians, the yang qi could get trapped in your torso. As a result, you may experience cold hands and feet, because the yang qi can’t get out there to warm your limbs. Click to learn more about how the right yin and yang balance keeps you healthy.

A Balanced Medicine

One of the most important ideas in Chinese medicine is balance--in yin and yang, in the five elements, and overall in your body, mind and spirit. Imbalance leads to illness and disease. This idea is as old as the medicine itself, and the name proves it.

In Chinese characters, the term for Chinese medicine is 中医 (zhong1 yi1). This is the same 中 character used in 中国 (zhong1 guo2), which means China. Literally translated, these characters mean “middle kingdom”, because the ancient Chinese believed themselves to be at the center of civilization. Similarly, the 中 in 中医 can also be interpreted to mean middle. Put in a medicinal context, it means that this “middle medicine” strives to strike the central balance, in body, mind and spirit.

The Term “TCM”

These days you’ll often hear Chinese medicine referred to as Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). This term was established to describe Chinese medicine as it began to be taught in China in the 1950’s and 60’s. It’s the result of an effort made by the Chinese government to standardize the information and make it easier to teach in a modern university setting.

Some people argue that TCM as a standardized system has strayed from other, more “traditional” schools of Chinese medicine thought. This situation is actually not new to the Chinese medicine world. There are many different, sometimes even conflicting, schools of thought that are all considered Chinese medicine. In this site we try to present as wide an information base as possible.

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Chinese vs Western Med

Because I use and practice Chinese medicine, a lot of people ask me whether I believe in Western medicine. I believe that everything has its place. We have to decide what methods and tools best fit each situation. Both Western and Chinese medicine can claim incredible accomplishments, and there is a variety of situations where one may be more fitting than the other. That said, I do think that the full power and applicability of Chinese medicine often go unrecognized.

Let’s look at bacterial infection as an example. Western medicine identifies the offending bacteria and launches specific antibiotics at it, killing everything in its path and eliminating the germ. If the bacteria cannot be identified or if the antibiotic does not cover that specific bacteria, the antibacterial “weapons” used to fight the disease are pretty worthless. Broad-spectrum antibiotics help cover some bases. Real results, however, require a positive identification of the bacteria. And, in the case of a virus, Western medicine is pretty much out of ideas.

Chinese medicine not only analyzes the thing that causes the disease but also considers the individual state of your body. Based on whether your body tends to be “cool” or “warm”, the kinds of pathogens (“bad stuff”) your body is more susceptible to, etc., an herbal or acupuncture point formula is prescribed for your specific case. Two people who have a lung infection caused by the same bacteria will not necessarily need the same prescription. Click to learn more about Chinese diagnostics.

After proper diagnosis, Chinese medicine also launches “soldiers” in the form of medicine or acupuncture to fight the illness. Instead of having a shoot-out with the bacteria, however, Chinese medicine can usher the bacteria out of the body (through urine, for example) with minimal harm to the rest of your cells and tissues. This strategy also works with viruses, which is why Chinese medicine is great at curing colds and flu.

The diversion strategy pops up in many instances in Chinese history and culture. It echoes the ancient Chinese solution to controlling the waters of a mighty river. Instead of building a massive dam that must be strong enough to stop all water flow, you build a mound of earth in the middle that divides the water into two paths. It takes less effort and resources yet harnesses the natural energy of the crashing water so that it can be re-directed somewhere else.

The same theory is applied in the practice of Taiji (tai chi), a Chinese martial art. Instead of trying to block and absorb all the force of your opponent’s strike, you simply redirect the momentum to the side. Less trouble for you, and sends your opponent flying. Alternately, you can lead the momentum in a circle and re-direct the energy back at your opponent.

Lastly, yes, there are herbs that have antibacterial properties, but killing the bacteria is not the objective. Isolating and using the antibacterial herb as you would an antibiotic pill is a perfect example of viewing Chinese medicine with Western medicine goggles. It doesn’t count as Chinese medicine because it lacks the theory. Instead, it is just using a Chinese herb in place of a pharmaceutical.

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A Shanghai Story

Here’s a real-life example of the theories discussed above, straight from Shanghai. It was relayed to me by a professor at the Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine (SHUTCM) who was on duty during the Shanghai 1988 hepatitis outbreak. Hepatitis A is a viral infection of the liver, often attributed to poor sanitation. Common symptoms include abnormally yellow skin and eyes. The 1988 outbreak is documented to have affected more than 300,000 people in Shanghai.

All hospitals, Western and Chinese med alike, were operating at full capacity, including the hospitals associated with SHUTCM. Overflow patients at the university hospital were brought into classrooms and treated on desks. Pharmaceutical supplies were expensive and hard to get. The almost 2,000-yr-old Chinese medicine text Shang Han Lun (伤寒论）documents specific herbs (yin1 chen2 茵陈，qing1 hao1 青蒿）that are effective in treating hepatitis, but even these herbs were all used up! No pharmaceuticals, no specific hepatitis herbs, and classrooms full of ailing patients lying on desks. What to do?

This is where Chinese medicine’s star player, differential diagnosis, takes action. For all you House, M.D. fans, it doesn’t always happen on a white board in a glass conference room, but it does involve closely analyzing symptoms and body type to better understand what’s happening in the body.

Even though everyone had Hepatitis A, each patient got an individualized treatment plan based on their body type and symptoms. But, you say, doesn’t everyone have the same symptoms because it’s the same virus? No. Though there are some universally recognizable symptoms, the quantity and intensity of the symptoms will vary.

By carefully analyzing each person’s distinct condition, doctors were able to make patients healthy with cheap, readily available herbs. In the end, their success rate was higher than some of the Western med hospitals, and patients’ hospital stays were significantly shorter to boot.

Baffled, a Western medical doctor asked the SHUTCM hospital how they did it. The Western medical hospital also resorted to using Chinese herbs, the doctor said, because pharmaceuticals were in short supply. They boiled herbs daily and made sure every patient at their hospital received a dose. Why didn’t their herbs work as well as those dispensed at the Chinese medicine hospital?

You know where this is headed... Yep, differential diagnosis. The patients at the Western medical hospital were all receiving the same formula, cooked up in a big vat and doled out to the masses. Same virus, same formula right? Evidently not. The medicine is only as effective as the practitioner. In this case, Western medicine doctors were using Chinese herbs in a Western medicine context, without applying Chinese medicine theory or diagnosis.

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Learn more about how this ancient medicine can work for you:

I. Background & Theory                               II. Treatment Methods