Chinese medicine and research

Over the last twenty five years there has been a lot of research on the effects of Acupuncture, Chinese herbs and even disciplines like ¨Qi Gong¨. Some of the research tells us the things that we in the Chinese Medicine community want to hear, that it works for a given condition.

Other times, the research does not support the time tested approaches that have arrived here from the East.

It should be noted however that research has also been going on in the East over the past 2.000 years in the form of time testing and the wisdom of the marketplace. There are many therapeutic approaches that have fallen out of favour over the past 2.000 years because they simply did not produce the intended results. In some ways, this long-term approach is actually more scientific than the unnatural short-term placebo-controlled research made famous by the pharmaceutical companies.

This kind of research of long-term research is really closer to economics or Darwinian evolution than biomedicine.  Essentially, over the past 2.000 years, the therapies that worked withstood the test of time. If they did not work, we wouldn’t get any patients, colleges would have no students and the therapy would simply disappear.

When we give an Acupuncture treatment that is designed only to stimulate the movement of Qi (energy) in the body, many aches and pains will be ameliorated. When modern Western medicine attempts to determine when to take away the pain they’ll look towards the brain’s release of endorphins, the body’s own painkillers. They’ll take pictures of more active areas of the brain during an Acupuncture treatment, they’ll chemically block certain pain relieving tracts in the spinal cord or on a cell’s surface to see if that effects the Acupuncture treatment. What is really strange for them is that wherever they look, they find something! There is seemingly no end to the scientific mechanism of Acupuncture.

I believe that this is consistent with the holistic idea that maintains the coherence of Chinese Medicine. Acupuncture’s effect is not limited to any given system, whether we are talking about the nervous system, cardiovascular, hormonal or any other. Acupuncture affects them all at the same time! Again, that is because Chinese Medicine doesn’t act exclusively on the tiniest of human structures, but the larger whole person.

Chinese Medicine also has a great deal to offer the Western discipline of internal medicine. In fact, a whole lot more than the ¨pain control¨ applications that have been accepted over the last 25 years or so in the Western Medical community. Bearing in mind that 32 years ago when I started practicing that was even looked at as silly. Hopefully, in another 10 years we will see greater acceptance of Chinese Medicine’s true genius, and that is in the area of internal medicine.

Within both Chinese Medicine and Western Medicine there is an enormous amount of time tested information that has its own logic and usefulness. Both Western and Chinese Medicine have their place. Some believe that the greatest strength of Western Medicine is in it’s trauma care and treating acute conditions, where as Chinese Medicine excels in the area of chronic conditions and preventative medicine.

Using both Western and Chinese Medicine complimentary provides for better clinical outcomes then using either of them separately.