Introduction of Traditional Chinese Medicine

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is a medical system in China. It has been used by Chinese for more than five thousands of years.

Traditional Chinese Medicine uses herbs, acupuncture, massage, scraping, moxibustion, bleeding, and emotion therapies for the treatment. The aim of the treatment is to re-balance the body function, not to “kill” something from the body.

The Traditional Chinese Medicine explains the function of the body by the natural phenomenon in the nature, using the terms such as Fire, Cold, Wetness, Wind, Hot, Water, Dryness, etc. It also tries to maintain the health and treat the illness according to the phenomenon in the nature. For example, if the body shows like in winter (poor metabolic condition, such as in hypothyroidism), the illness is solved by creating “summer” in the body. This is the famous concept in Chinese medicine, as well as in its philosophy, called the “harmony of the nature and the human being.”

Traditional Chinese Medicine looks at the body in a different way from the conventional medicine. It agrees that the body is consisted of the heart, liver, kidney, spleen, lung, and the muscle, nerve, bone, etc., but also knows that the body has other systems that has not been noticed, and cannot be understand by the conventional medicine, for instance, the meridian system. The meridian system is the pathway of energy flow. The energy in Chinese means the vital energy. It is the vital energy that leads the flow of blood. The meridian is like a net in the body. It consists of twenty main pathways with more sub-pathways, just like our highway and secondary and third highway.  The primary highway connects each other on the surface of the body, and also connects to inside organs. Each major meridian has a name and its name means the organ it connects. For example, Liver meridian connects to the liver and Urine Bladder meridian connects to urine bladder.

Traditional Chinese Medicine applies to the “simple first” and “no harm first” principle in the treatment. Therefore its therapy is simple and easy to apply. By this way, herbal therapy, acupuncture and massage therapy are more popularly used in clinic and much more advanced. This is based on one of the major concept in the Traditional Chinese Medicine: treat the disease before it comes (e.g. the true meaning of the prevention of a disease). For this and other reasons, the Traditional Chinese Medicine is much advanced in the internal medicine practice, not on surgery technique in later century. In another words, it is already able to prevent many diseases coming into its later stage, so no need for the dialysis (for later stage of kidney diseases), for bi-pass surgery (for late stage of heart disease), or for transplantations (late stage of many disease) in the Traditional Chinese Medicine.

At this movement of human history, we may say that, the contribution of the TCM to human health is its internal medicine (immune disorder, emotional disorders, infectious diseases, metabolic disorders, etc.), while that of the conventional medicine, the surgery (such as organ transplantation and gene therapy).