Traditional Chinese Medicine has thousands of years of clinical experience in treating and preventing chronic diseases. Both Chinese Medicine and Modern Medicine are effective in their own ways for some problems and diseases, but they look at medical problems and diseases from entirely different angles.
In China, there are many Chinese Medicine hospitals, and even Western Medicine hospitals have their own Chinese Medicine department in every city.
Some of Chinese Medicine’s theories are not easily understood by medical professionals and indeed most people in society, because they are not explained using common medical terms. These theories were developed by practitioners of Chinese Medicine to try to explain certain medical conditions and phenomena that they discovered from clinical practice. These theories may have some limitations based on history and individual knowledge, yet the treatments based on these theories are effective because they come from clinical experience accumulated over many thousands of years and have been proven.
Logical Medicine can using general knowledge and common sense to explain some of the theory and medical terms of Chinese Medicine and Western Medicine both are unable to explain. It can go to the roots and real cause of the disease and explain why and how the symptoms happen.
Logical Medicine considers that Chinese Medicine originally arose from the accumulation of knowledge from live experience, surveys and thousands of years of herbal medicine practice and clinical experience and researches.
For example, many thousands of years ago, people ate apples, bananas, and rock melons because they were hungry. Through experience, they found that eating a few apples a day could heal the symptoms of mild diarrhea. This tells us that apple is a mild herbal tonic and good medicine for most patients. Similarly, because constipation usually disappears after eating ripe bananas or rock melon, people have discovered that banana and rock melon are good herbal medicine for diarrhea.
“The good Chinese Medicine practitioner should taste hundreds of herbs”. This maxim is commonly taught in Chinese Medicine education.
Chinese Medicine is effective in curing or improving many chronic diseases, but some of its theories, therapies and proverbs do not make sense to medical scientists, professionals and many other people in society. The theories, therapies and proverbs can not explain, with common sense, the real causes of disease and their relationship to the symptoms. As Chinese medicine is not clearly explained, many medical scientists and the majority of Western society do not consider Chinese Medicine to be a medical science. Some Western doctors do not believe in the ‘meridians’ described in Chinese Medicine because they cannot be seen as part of the physical anatomy of the human body.
Logical Medicine observes that many people misunderstand Chinese medicine. Some of Chinese Medicine’s theories use names for organs and systems that have a different meaning to the names used in mainstream Modern medicine, because they have used these names for three to four thousand years.
For example, when Chinese Medicine refers to the ‘heart’, it means the brain or the central nervous system. Even in English, when people say ‘it is deep in my heart’ or ‘it comes from my heart’, they are using ‘heart’ in the sense of the mind or mental spirit, which is completely different to the clinical term for ‘heart’, which refers to the organ in the cardiovascular system that pumps blood through the body.
When Chinese Medicine refers to the ‘kidney’, it means the human endocrine system, which includes all glands (such as the thyroid, adrenals, pituitary and prostate) and most internal organs (such as the liver, pancreas, stomach and kidneys). In women, the ‘kidney’ also includes the ovaries and the uterus.
When Chinese Medicine says ‘stomach’, it means the digestive system and all the digestive organs, including the stomach, liver, gall bladder, pancreas, spleen, intestines, esophagus, tongue and salivary glands.
When Chinese Medicine says ‘Yin’, it means ‘cold system’, which means part of the function of endocrine system and to balance metabolism. . ‘Yang’ means ‘hot system’, and is the opposite of Yin. Yin and Yang always work together to provide balance to keep the person in a healthy condition. Yin and Yang are not visible: they are forms of energy. Yin and Yang work together to balance the function of the entire system.
If Yin and Yang are in good balance, it means the person is in good health. It is very hard to translate the words Yin and Yang into common Western medical terms because Chinese Medicine looks at diseases and medical problems from a completely different angle to Western Medicine, even if they are looking at the same disease or same problem in the same patient.
Logical Medicine believes the word ‘meridian’ is the general term for all the passages within the human body, including the blood vessels (arteries and veins), lymphatic vessels, nerves (motor nerves, sensory nerves and vagues nerve), all the human liquid passages and even the communication passages between cells. There must be a passage between cells because nutrients and oxygen are able to pass through cell membranes by osmosis.
I still remember when I studied Chinese Medicine at university: one professor said he had studied both Western Medicine and Chinese Medicine and that we should study both types of medicine to help us understand disease better. But even if you have studied both, you may still be unable to understand the real cause of some diseases and the real meaning of some common sayings from ancient Chinese Medicine unless you can use your own logical thinking.
The professor tried to explain one common saying from clinical experience in Chinese Medicine: ‘Fire moves to the intestines from the heart, and there is some blood urine’. ‘Fire’ means the stress that can affect people’s digestion and absorption (‘intestines’ means the digestive system). The first phrase is easily understood, but the second phrase, ‘there is some blood urine’, is difficult to understand. Even the professor who had a background in both Western Medicine and Traditional Chinese Medicine was unable to explain the meaning of the second phrase. He said ‘there is some blood urine’ did not make any sense, because ‘blood urine’ is usually seen in cases of infection or injury to the urinary system (kidneys, urinary tract, or bladder).
I was unable to understand the meaning of the phrase until I started my own practice using logical thinking. My explanation is that when stress affects people’s digestion and absorption, the undigested foods can become toxins (acid and blood urea nitrogen) that are absorbed into the blood and filtered out of the body through the kidneys. This turns the urine a brown or dark brown color, with an appearance similar to the color of damaged red blood cells. For thousands of years, ancient Chinese Medicine practitioners may have used the word ‘blood’ to describe this brown color in urine, but it is only a name to describe the color — it does not mean ‘blood’ in the sense of a fluid that carries oxygen and energy.
When I look at the full picture of the case and the individual patient's health condition, I will understand the the real cause and the conseqence of the problem, this is why I can explain why and how the disease happens with common sense.
Logical Medicine observes that some of the theory of Chinese Medicine has probably been lost in the last few thousand years, and that is why we are unable to understand some parts of it.
Some theories may have been created by certain Chinese Medicine practitioners who did not really understand the real cause of the chronic disease but created names to pin on the problem.
Some Chinese Medicine practitioners who do not understand a disease may invent strange names to give the impression that they understand it, to hide their lack of knowledge from the patient or others. After many thousands of years, we still can not understand some of the theories of Chinese Medicine.
Logical Medicine believes that the names and theories of Traditional Chinese Medicine that cannot be understood by the majority of doctors and other people are blocking the further development of Traditional Chinese Medicine. The misunderstanding of these names and theories is the main reason why Chinese medicine is not considered a ‘medical science’ by medical scientists and society in general.
Chinese Medicine often confuses medical scientists, doctors and even some Chinese people in China who only trust Western medical authorities. They believe Chinese Medicine is not a science. This is a big mistake, as it could stop the development of Chinese Medicine and we could lose thousands of years of accumulated medical experience and knowledge.
We should look at all these problems with a scientific eye, not simply trust medical authority or superstition. We should implement the more usefuland effectivetheories that make sense to us from Traditional Chinese Medicine.
Some theories of Traditional Chinese Medicine may not make sense to us or we may not be able to understand them at the present time. But we should not say they are ‘unscientific’, as we may come to understand them in the future. So, the best option is to preserve the writings on these theories that we do not understand in libraries, so that they can be studied in the future. For now, we should use only the theories that make sense to us and the herbal medicine and therapies that have been proven effective in curing or improving chronic disease.
About 18 years ago, a Western doctor from Western Australia who had studied acupuncture and Chinese Medicine in China tried to use acupuncture to treat asthma, but found acupuncture was not effective in treating asthma. Someone asked me, ‘Why?’. I said, firstly, that I greatly respected this doctor’s professional morality and personal integrity because he admitted the truth.
Logical Medicine views acupuncture simply as a tool to stimulate the nerves and improve local blood circulation, in order to relieve some muscular pain and tension in the muscles and tendons. This is why so many doctors use acupuncture to relieve pain for their patients.
Logical Medicine does not see acupuncture as a magic stick that can cure any problem or disease. If you do not know what is wrong with your car, will hitting the car with a tool fix the problem? Certainly not!
We should use the scientific eye to look at the traditional medicine or Traditional Chinese medicine, we should use the good and effective therapies and herbal medicine to cure the chronic diseases, but the most important thing is to understand the real cause and how the causes can cause the symptoms and the consequence of the disease.
Only when we are able to understand the real causes of the disease, we can do the right treatment and avoid the mistakes, this will bring us to a higher level to understand and cure the "incurable" diseases.
