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Traditional Chinese Medicine - An Introduction

© Matthew Scott

Your initial visit can last up to an hour and may include acupuncture or massage therapy depending on your complaint. You may be prescribed a relevant herbal formula and advised on appropriate dietary and lifestyle changes.

TCM is increasingly being used by people in Western countries looking for alternatives to invasive and in some cases unnecessary surgical procedures and also for alternatives to modern pharmaceuticals which often produce unwanted side effects.

It may appear that I'm advocating TCM as the "one and only" health care system. Not so. Both TCM and Western medicine have advantages and limitations and in fact, the best results are often obtained from combining the two. For example, in Chinese hospitals cancer patients are treated with chemotherapy and radiation but they are also given herbal medicine to combat the debilitating side effects of their treatment. This means that higher doses of chemotherapy and radiation can be tolerated by the patient, making the overall treatment more effective. To use another example; if I broke my leg in a car accident obviously the first place I would want to go to is a hospital. But I would make use of TCM modalities like acupuncture to reduce the pain and speed up the healing process.

TCM works by stimulating the self-healing powers of the body and eliminating the root cause of a disease or ailment. Natural methods take time though and whilst they lack the dramatic impact of modern medicines, they work in harmony with the body, therefore the benefits are long lasting and side effects are rare.

In Western countries acupuncture is probably the most widely recognized of the TCM modalities. The following is a list of conditions generally thought to respond best to acupuncture treatment: acute strains and sprains of muscles and joints; chronic neck and back pain; headache; constipation; diarrhea; indigestion; high blood pressure; menstrual irregularities; impotence; post-stroke paralysis and addictions such as overeating, smoking and drug dependence. This is by no means though a definitive list.

An increasing number of experts from different areas of health care believe the most effective medicines of the future will combine the "best of both worlds". By utilizing modern Western procedures and traditional therapies like acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine more effective results can be achieved.

Although privately run multi-modality clinics of this nature have been operating in countries like America and Australia for some time, only when we see signs like "TCM Department" in the corridors of our major hospitals will we know that true acceptance of natural therapies in the West has arrived.