What Is Chinese Medicine?
Chinese medicine for those in China is a complete medical system that diagnoses, treats and prevents illness. This system has been in existence for more than 23 centuries. Chinese medicine can remedy illness, alter an individual's state of mind, improve the recuperative power of the human body, boost your immunity and increase your ability to obtain balance and pleasure from your life. The western world basically sees Chinese medicine as alternative medicine. The scope of Chinese medicine involves a host of ancient and modern therapy that includes acupuncture, acupressure, heat therapy, herbal therapy, massage, healthy foods and proper exercise. It focuses on the balance of forces within the body being one with the environment.
The driving force behind Chinese medicine is to restore harmony to the human body and to the universe for every human being is seen as a mini world with his/her own unique landscape to be maintained. Metaphorically speaking, Chinese medicine is the gardener, carefully pruning and cultivating harmony by using acupuncture, herbal remedies, food and exercise to obtain optimum health of each patient. The garden contains plants, flowers, air, water, and land for the gardener to attend to; the human body has muscles, skin, organs, bones, blood and tissue to attend to. There are branches of Chinese medicine that include: acupuncture, astrology, geomancy, meditation, moxibustion herbal therapy, healthy foods, martial arts.
Statistically speaking in 2004, 1/5th of all U.S. hospitals began to offer some type of traditional Chinese medical services, usually acupuncture, tai chi chuan or meditation. The FDA also began to modify experimental guidelines regarding Chinese medicines. The relaxed guidelines make it easier for herbal practitioners because they are taken more seriously by the general public and to their fellow medical professionals.
Medical professionals who understand and have studied both Western medicine and Chinese medicine can easily see that regarding safety, effectiveness and expensive the Chinese medicine is consistently seen as being safer and less expensive than Western medicine. The effectiveness of Chinese medicine is based on the fact that it actually addresses the underlying causes of the health imbalances instead of just the disease.
Western medicine usually proves more superior regarding acute injury or symptoms of dangerous degree; the Chinese medicine is seen as being better at preventing or even reversing damage done to the body especially regarding degenerative diseases such as alzheimer's, cancer, depression, diabetes, obesity and osteoporosis.
Chinese medicine strives to "first, do no harm", when it comes to patient care; something that perhaps is forgotten when it comes to some of the treatments in the U.S. that use invasive procedures and potentially dangerous chemicals. Diagnosis and treatments in the U.S. are disease driven where Chinese medicine focuses on the entire being in order to look for clues that uncover the underlying cause(s) for the imbalance at the root of the symptoms being experienced by the individual.
