Hello everyone!

As some of you may or may not know, I am a student of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) here in Canada and have been for the past 2 years or so.

Over the next little while I am going to be writing up some introductory material so that you can all get an idea of what the foundational principles of TCM are. If you have any questions please post them! In the mean time, please be patient as I continue to add to this thread. Thank you!

(P.S. I wrote all of this on another site that I used to be part of, so I thought I'd just transfer the details directly. If the mods don't trust the copyright status, I can prove it to them.)

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Basic Principles
Holism: TCM is an ancient Chinese practice that focuses on holism within the body. What does this mean exactly? It means that a problem in any area of the body is interrelated to every other part.

For example, if you suffer from skin problems such as eczema, in TCM we do not simply provide a remedy for the skin. We would examine your nutrition and the state of your other organs based on our diagnosis methods to determine the root of the problem. Your skin problem could be due to a deficiency in your digestive system, resulting in not enough nutrients reaching the skin, causing a decline or dysfunction in your immune system; or maybe you have a blood circulation problem, which means that although you have good nutrition, it may not be reaching the skin level. There could be many reasons and there is no one universal cause.

And now, some badly drawn graphics! (Bear with me here!) :)

SCENARIO A



There are two island nations, A and B. B is coming under attack by a fleet of particularly powerful pirates. The pirates will destroy everything, loot the land, and take whatever they can. Since nations A and B are in alliance, nation A decides to attack the pirates in order to help its friend out. It sends its ships to B's waters even though it's not very familiar with them; it puts mines in the water, creates a blockade so that the pirates can't get through, and sends ships to attack the pirates directly. It calculates the exact trajectory of the pirate ships, infiltrates their vessels to find out who the pirates are and where they came from, what their strengths and weaknesses are, what language they speak, what they want, etc. This intelligence takes some time to gather but they do it anyway.

The pirates eventually spot the blockade as well as the mines in the water. Some of their ships get blown up and some get destroyed by the blockade, but eventually the rest break through and Island B, which is quite vulnerable, comes under attack and has to defend itself. Incidentally, the placement of Island A's weaponry was not perfect, and there was some collateral damage to Island B even before the pirates landed on shore.

SCENARIO B



The same scenario is presented but instead of attacking the pirates, Island A sends all of its aid and resources directly to Island B, who then in turns uses those resources as it sees fit. Because Island B knows its own territorial waters and land better than Island A ever could, it uses the resources more efficiently and knows exactly where it needs to fortify in order to prevent the pirates from entering and destroying its livelihood.

You may find yourself asking, "Is TheDivine really a pirate and not a TCM practitioner? What is he on about? Let me explain!

The pirates represent a foreign invader like a virus or bacterium. Island B represents your body and its immune system. Island A represents the approach of the medicine. SCENARIO A is western medicine. SCENARIO B is TCM.

Western medicine studies the virus intensely, decodes its RNA, tries to manufacture a vaccine, and needs to output new versions each year in order to keep up with viral mutations. It focuses all of its efforts on what the virus is doing and how to stop it.

The problem is that organisms like bacteria are becoming more and more resistant to our direct attacks and so we only have a few choice antibiotics left to treat the most resistant kinds. This is what happened when the SARS virus (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) entered the scene in 2004. Because it is a virus you cannot use antibiotics on it, and this particular corona virus was completely immune to typical anti-viral drugs like ribavirin. Not only that, it managed to achieve worldwide infection within only a couple of months.

Western medicine uses concentrated chemical formulas and extractions that are not natural to the body and so they do not interact with it in a way that is 100% effective. Not only that, but many of those chemicals simultaneously damage the body and weaken one's immune system further, all in the single pursuit of the invader. Just like Island A does not fully know the lay of the ocean around Island B, Western Medicine can never hope to fully mimic the body's functions when fighting disease. For this reason, it is useful in alleviating symptoms and in emergency situations that require immediate intervention, but it is not effective in addressing chronic disease or drug-resistant organisms.

When a TCM practitioner looks at a sick person, they are not looking at the source of the disease. They do not need to know what species of virus or bacteria you are infected with. They do not need lab tests in order to know if certain organs in your body are suffering from deficiency or excess. As an example: in liver enzyme testing (done by blood), you can receive a passing mark even if your liver is 70% inoperative, which means that by the time a lab test comes back showing problems your liver could already be in serious trouble. TCM can detect organ imbalances long before they are detected on the radar of lab tests, and move to correct them as prevention.

All TCM practitioners care about is balancing the body. Once the body is balanced, the illness resolves because the body now has the proper resources to restore itself to equilibrium. It is for this reason that TCM is also effective preventative medicine, as you can come in for a check up even if you feel perfectly fine.

Some people ask me, "Why is it that some people can be in a room full of people who have the common cold, but never get it, while others do everything they can do avoid getting sick (like washing their hands, covering their mouths, not sharing drinks, etc.) yet still get sick?" The answer is the balance of one's body. Viruses and bacteria are opportunistic by nature. Your body is covered in bacteria from head to toe and you routinely come into contact with them in your day to day life. They can only invade you if your immune system is weakened, and you are only weakened if you are imbalanced.

In the winter of 2008, Beijing hosted a joint Western Medicine and TCM conference in order to discuss approaches to H1N1. Western researchers came to China because TCM practitioners were demonstrating the ability to prevent H1N1 at a quarter of the cost of the tamiflu vaccine as well as increase the recovery time of those infected, and they wanted to know what the secret remedy was. They became confused when confronted with the notion of holism. There is no universal remedy for H1N1, but rather each individual's body must be balanced according to its needs. Once the body is balanced, it can fight off H1N1.

In western medicine, if you have a headache you take tylenol, or aspirin; in TCM your headache could have many different causes. Instead of treating your routine headache pain, your body imbalances are corrected and you never have headaches again.

To simplify this, I will translate a TCM proverb for you:
"Two people with two different diseases receive the same treatment;
Two people with the same disease receive two different treatments."

What this means is that two people with two different diseases may receive the same treatment because the nature of their imbalance is the same; whereas two people with the same disease (like H1N1) may receive two completely different treatments because their source imbalances are different. Just because two people have H1N1, does not mean that the imbalance that allowed an opportunistic infection to enter their body is necessarily the same.

When presented with this knowledge, it created heated arguments and the conference ultimately broke down. The western researchers argued that knowing more about H1N1 - like its viral RNA sequence, its origins, how it infects cells, and that creating a vaccine - is more important. Western medicine focuses strictly on the pathology only and so the methodologies were too incompatible.

I myself believe both approaches are useful. WM analyzes diseases while TCM brings the body itself into health, but preventative medicine is extremely important in removing the opportunity for infection in the first place, and for this TCM is more skillful.

(To be continued...)