“Hospitals practicing TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) treat more than 200 million outpatients and almost 3 million inpatients annually. About 95% of general hospitals in China have traditional medicine departments” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1297513/
This is an older stat that has stayed essentially true. When you enter a hospital in China, unless you are an emergency case, you have the option of using traditional or modern Medicine. IMO, this should be reason enough for anyone with a digestive disorder, who is unhappy with modern Medicine, to take a look at chinese Medicine. There’s much to be found in the difference, and I don’t mean just swapping herbs for drugs. Just because people are using chinese herbs doesn’t make the treatment chinese Medicine.
Comparison between these two systems is important because they are both whole systems of medicine. We don’t recognize this in the West, and I think it is because we are rather ethnocentric. In China and Taiwan, for example, they have an excellent understanding of our medicine and practice it daily, in parallel or in combination with their traditional medicine. We know almost nothing about this approach, however, and it is to our detriment.
The focus in the chart below is on treating through prescription drugs (Modern Medicine) and traditional medicinals (Chinese Medicine) and not acupuncture. This is how it is in China, too.
| — | modern Medicine | chinese Medicine |
|---|---|---|
| Method | Mostly based on the perspective of reductionism | Mostly based on the perspective of holism |
| Focus | Mostly seeks internal causes | Mostly organizes external presentations |
| Assessment | Diagnoses diseases and syndromes | Identifies patterns of disharmony |
| Approach | Treats according to “standard of care” | Treats according to individual symptoms and signs |
| Knowledge Base | Tries to base treatment on modern research (often not possible) | Bases treatment on millennia of development and incorporates modern research when possible. |
| Ideal | Seeks the best treatment for every diagnosis | Patients with the same diagnosis receive different treatments; patients receiving the same treatment, have different diagnoses |
| Flexibility | Usually has only a small number of available treatments for each condition | Has many available treatments for each condition |
| Levels of Organization | Prioritizes the information in tests and imaging at lower levels of organization | Prioritizes the doctor’s skill in collecting information at higher levels of organization – symptoms, signs, pulse and tongue assessment |
| Pharmacy | Treats with isolated chemicals (drugs) | Mostly treats with processed, whole plants (traditional medicinals), containing hundreds or thousands of chemicals |
| Complexity | The effects of drugs are seen as separate from each other; no methods for combining drugs logically (other than common use); | Medicinals are used to enhance each other’s properties, eliminate each other’s side effects, and more. Medicinals and drugs are also used together |
| Speed | Drug effects are between very fast and somewhat slow | Medicinal effects are between somewhat fast and very slow |
| Side Effects | Sees side effects as an inconvenience | Sees side effects as a sign that treatment is wrong |
| Medicine and Therapy | Changes in prescriptions are infrequent, once an effective drug is found | Changes in prescriptions are frequent and adjustments are according to changes in the patient. |
| Specialization | Focused on the need for specialists, with patients sometimes seeing more than one specialist simultaneously | Focused on one doctor handling everything wrong with an individual patient |
| Patient Encounters | Doctors mostly spend short amounts of time with each patient and see each patient less often | Doctors mostly spend longer amounts of time with each patient and see each patient more often |
| Placebos | Utilizes placebo effects consciously and unconsciously | Utilizes placebo effect unconsciously |
| Advantage | Overall better at treating emergency, “acute,” and straightforward conditions | Overall better at treating chronic and complex conditions |
| Prognosis | Identifies risk factors, based on general research | Identifies health-trajectories, based on deviations from standard norms |
| Length of treatment (chronic cases) | Most treatment is long-term (patients take many prescriptions indefinitely) | Most treatment is (supposed to be) short term |
| Goal | Most treatment is focused on stabilization (alleviation of symptoms, avoidance of disability or death) | Most treatment is focused on alleviation of symptoms, balance, and cure |
| Responsibility | Success or failure is attributed to the “state of the medicine” (surgery may be an exception) | Success or failure is attributed to the skill of individual doctors |
| Disease and Health | Has minimal theories of health, has mostly theories of disease | Has many theories of health and longevity; also has many theories of disease |
| Wellness | Has very few drugs that expand health | Has large classes of medicinals that nourish, enrich, boost, warm, consolidate, and more |
| Psyche and Soma | Distinguishes between mind (psychiatry, psychotherapy) and body (all other medicine) | Sees mental and physical health as two sides of the same coin, with the ability to focus on one or the other, and an emphasis on improving both simultaneously |
| Safety | Often injures patients, either through misprescribing, untested drug effects, or iatrogenesis | Rarely injures patients |
| Purpose of Research | To create knowledge | To explore and deepen what is already known |
| Maturity | A young, incomplete medicine with treatment still missing for many conditions | A mature, complete medicine with treatment available for nearly all possible experiences of illness |
Many who are struggling with chronic digestive disorders are already taking a critical look at medicine. The point, here, is that chinese Medicine is very different from what most of us have come to know as “medicine.” It works very well for chronic health problems, in fact it works better overall, and this is not just my opinion.
Among the herbal medicine departments in China, some of them are focused on prescribing herbs according to modern research instead of traditional practice. One of my professors had been a gastro-surgeon in China before immigrating to the US, and he gave me some perspective on this. He told me that these departments of modernized herb prescribing have a terrible reputation among doctors in the hospitals. This was because the results of their treatment were poor compared with more traditional departments. They caused side effects and had difficulty curing even simple conditions. He told me all this as a warning. I have always been a science type, and I spend a lot of time reading research.
Many people hear about chinese herbs and approach the difference with questions like, “Which herbs are good for intestinal motility? Which are good antibiotics? Which will reduce histamine sensitivity?”
I understand where this is coming from because I used to only ask these sorts of questions. When you start from these kinds of questions, though, you are thinking through the lens of modern medicine and using its concepts. What makes chinese medicine valuable is the difference in its approach. Even drugs can be prescribed according to chinese medicine, but when you look at herbs according to only their biomedical properties, you’re using herbs as if they are drugs. There is limited benefit to doing this, and there are also downsides.
It is well known that some approaches will help some, and some will help others, and everyone is trying to find their own way through the morass. If this works for you, great. However, if you’re stuck, there is this other way…
(originally posted on reddit, July 2024)
u/SomaSavant