5 Roots Of Traditional Chinese Medicine
- May 04, 2019 Root of Chinese Pulsatilla: 白头翁: 1. To clear heat and release toxins; 2. To cool the blood and stop dysentery Bai Wei: Radix Cynanchi Atrati: Blackend Swallowwort Root: 白薇: To remove heat from blood, to relieve dysuria, and to counteract toxicity and cure sores. Bai Xian Pi: Cortex Dictamni: Densefruit Pittany Root-Bark: 白藓皮.
- Jun 24, 2018 Chinese Herbal Medicines. According to the Cleveland Clinic, “Chinese herbal medicine is a major part of Traditional Chinese Medicine it has been used for centuries in China, where herbs are considered fundamental therapy for many acute and chronic conditions.” Chinese herbal therapy has its roots in a traditional medicinal text called “Materia Medica.”.
Apr 11, 2016 Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is one of the world’s oldest systems of medicine that is still being continuously practiced today and shows no signs of fading away into obscurity. Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is one of the world’s oldest systems of medicine that is still being continuously practiced today and shows no signs of fading away into obscurity.
Traditional Chinese medicine is a type of holistic and natural medicinal system that has been in use for over two thousand years. It is designed to stimulate the healing mechanisms of the body, and can bring many health benefits to you both physically and psychologically.
Here are the top five health benefits of traditional Chinese medicine:
What Are The Five Roots Of Traditional Chinese Medicine
1. It Can Reduce Inflammation
Reducing inflammation in your body is extremely important because inflammation serves as the root cause of a wide variety of different diseases, including heart disease, diabetes, autoimmune diseases, and even cancer.
Traditional Chinese medicine can help to reduce inflammation and the consequences associated with it through a number of different means, including herbal treatments, acupuncture, and acupressure.
In the process, Chinese medicine can also help you to stop any lifestyle habits that are harmful to your body and make inflammation worse, such as eating too much, smoking cigarettes, or drinking too much alcohol.
2. It Can Improve Your Muscle Strength and Flexibility
When we want to improve strength and flexibility in our muscles, we commonly turn to strength training exercises. That’s great, but traditional Chinese medicine is another way you can improve your muscles as well.
In fact, practicing tai chi regularly provides you with an important aerobic workout, and practicing it for just three months can improve your balance, help you maintain or even enhance your flexibility and agility, and boost the overall strength in your muscles.
3. It Protects and Improves Your Cognitive Health
Protecting your physical health should be a top priority for you, but equally if not more important is to protect your mental health, and yet again traditional Chinese medicine is great for this.
Chinese herbs don’t just help reduce inflammation, they can also help to relieve stress in the process. This is because Chinese herbs can effectively regulate the hormones that protect your brain, which also serves to control the immune response of your body. Using Chinese herbs decreases the risk of you developing dementia later in life as well.
4. It Has Very Few Side Effects
Most medications and stimulants designed to help the body often come with a number of bad side effects, but fortunately, this is not the case with Chinese medicine. In fact, the few side effects that do come with Chinese medicine are practically harmless.
5. It Can Improve The Quality Of Your Sleep
5 Roots Of Traditional Chinese Medicine Books
Last but not least, traditional Chinese medicine can help to improve the overall quality of your sleep. The typical adult needs an average of eight hours of high quality sleep each night, and getting this sleep helps improve blood circulation, calm anxiety, and improve your cognitive strength.
The Health Benefits Of Chinese Medicine
All in all, these are the top five health benefits of traditional Chinese medicine for your body. Hopefully this article has helped convince you that Chinese medicine is something you should explore if you have been suffering from major ailments as of late.
Medical systems in Asia have been developing for millennia. Ancient wisdom was passed down through family lineages for generations and eventually, several schools of thought were developed around the best ways to treat illness.
THE ORIGINS OF TRADITIONAL CHINESE MEDICINE
The first medical text in Traditional Chinese Medicine, The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine or Huangdi Neijing, dates back to 2697 B.C. and contains the foundations of TCM and diagnosis. Over the next several dynasties, other ideologies of herbal treatment and physical therapies built on the foundation of the Neijing. People learned through apprenticeships and some recorded their empirical findings.
This medical system, based in Taoism, was rich with our connections to the world around us and the effects of our diet, lifestyle, emotional balance, and environment. The conversations around Yin, Yang, Qi, and Blood painted a beautiful picture of the interconnectedness of our internal and external worlds.
STANDARDIZATION OR ATTENUATION?
During China's Cultural Revolution in the 1960s, Mao Zedong decided to standardize Chinese medicine. The new government was beginning to choose Western medicine over its ancient medicine and, in developing a more modern Chinese medicine, they stripped away large pieces they felt were 'unscientific' or 'superstitious'. Consequently the 'Traditional Chinese Medicine' (TCM) that resulted was a watered-down version of thousands of years of wisdom.
The TCM currently taught in schools in the US and Canada introduces students to the foundations and diagnostic methods. There is great value in learning quick prescriptions of acupuncture points and herbal combinations. However, when it comes to chronic problems, in my experience, TCM is missing a vital component.
Traditional Chinese Medicine Schools Online
FIVE-ELEMENT ACUPUNCTURE
Many practitioners and scholars of Chinese medicine knew that the dilution of the ancient medical traditions in Mao's era represented the loss of a deep connection with roots in body, mind, and spirit medicine. Several of these scholars, from all over the world, went to China and worked to piece together the missing components. After many years, they developed 'Classical Chinese Medicine' and 'Five-Element Acupuncture'.
J.R. Worsley brought the Five-Element Acupuncture (5E) School to the United Kingdom. Instead of treating only symptomatically, 5E treats the entire constitution of a person. In treating the constitution, we address the weak link where the body, mind, and spirit tend to become imbalanced. It is believed that this weak link is the root of most disease.
DIAGNOSTIC DIFFERENCES
In TCM, we use questioning, pulse and tongue diagnosis, and palpation to analyze a pattern of symptoms. For example, if a patient’s symptoms include lower back pain, where there is weakness and aching in the late afternoon, the pain gets worse with exercise and is accompanied by frequent urination, overall coldness, a pale tongue, and a deep and slow pulse, the diagnosis would be kidney Yang Qi deficiency. The treatment would involve using moxibustion and warming acupuncture on kidney-related acupoints.
However, if the pain had been more sharp, worse before her period, better with exercise and stretching, and accompanied by a purplish tongue and choppy pulse, we would diagnose her with Qi and Blood stagnation. In this case, cupping and acupuncture would be more indicated.
CSOE Diagnosis
In 5E, we ask more questions about the type of pain, the levels of pain, and a majority of TCM diagnostic criteria. However, as the patient is talking about their problem, we are also looking and listening to assess their main colour, sound, odour, and emotion (CSOE diagnosis).
Colour: The hue that radiates from a person's temple area.
5 Roots Of Traditional Chinese Medicine Herbs
Sound: The voice may have a sing-song nature or a slight groan to it, for example.
What Is Traditional Chinese Medicine
Odour: This one can be difficult to assess without making the patient uncomfortable! Generally, smelling the lower back can give us an indication of the person's elemental scent. It might be slightly sweet or of freshly fallen rain. I usually just note the scent upon entering the room when the patient is ready on the treatment table.
Emotion: What is the person's guiding emotion? Do they always seem to come back to an over-concern for others, or is there a tendency to get stuck in grief?
Essentially, the CSOE diagnosis helps us to identify the lens through which the person views life and where they may become physically imbalanced. We call this the causative factor. If we can come to a clear diagnosis about whether this person is a Fire, Water, Wood, Earth, or Metal 'causative factor' (CF), we can proceed with treating both their symptoms and their CF.
Causative factors
Each causative factor is made up of a combination of organ systems or “officials”. Fire is composed of four officials, the other causative factors are composed of two officials.
Fire: Heart, Small Intestine, Pericardium, and San Jiao
Earth: Spleen/Pancreas and Stomach
Metal: Lung and Large Intestine
Water: Kidney and Bladder
Wood: Liver and Gallbladder
Traditional Chinese Medicine Herbs List
Pulses
As in TCM, we take the pulse, however the assessment is slightly different in 5E. By taking the patient’s pulses during the treatment, we can tell if we are on the right track or not. If we treat the correct points, all twelve pulses will be more balanced, which tells us that the Qi is moving more efficiently in the system. If we had solely used a TCM approach, there may still be a pulse change and symptoms may improve but, in my experience, the results are not as immediate, strong, or systemic.
FINDING THE BALANCE WITHIN
5 Roots Of Traditional Chinese Medicines
The beauty of using TCM and 5E systems together is the ability to address symptoms while at the same time reconnecting someone to their deeper self. This self is the part of us that remains untouched by difficult events of life. Often, when people return for a second or third treatment, they remark on feeling more 'like themselves' and more happy overall. By reestablishing the balance of the nature within a person, we can assist in their body's true healing.