Traditional chinese medicine

I have heard that traditional chinese medicine is good for general health.Someone could tell me more about that ?Thanks!

[caregiver222]

You are asking a question that could take thousands of pages to answer.

Clearly, traditional Chinese medicine, particuliarly dietary recommendations, are not nonsense. Accupuncture performed by Chinese on Chinese is effective. Different populations have different arrangements of nerves so the accupuncture charts used in China cannot necessarily be used on a European.

The real question is whether or not traditional medicine is a proper alternative to so-called "modern" medicine, based on double-blind studies and large numbers of patients who have been evaluated with placebos.

The answer is "sometimes".

One of the problems with herbal medications (used extensively in Chinese medicine) is that the exact dose of the helpful substance can never be accurately determined. If extracts of herbs are used the extraction method in China often involves such toxic mutagenic substances such as trichlorethylene. In the west super-critical carbon dioxide is used to extract the healing substances from herbs.

Let's take artimesia, for example. This plant has been used for a thousand years in China to treat malaria. But modern medicine uses super-critical carbon dioxide to extract the healing substance and then it can be administered in measured amounts.

Another example is the use of foxglove tea. It is true this is useful for certain heart conditions, and is ocasionally used in China for such purposes, but digoxin is much safer, because one knows exactly what is going into the bloodstream.

Another problem involves use of pesticides. Many herbs grown and used in China are cultivated using pesticides, which are absorbed into the plant. This is a problem with artimesia grown in China, for example.

There are also philosophical differences, which revolve around fundamentally different belief systems. To evaluate these diffferences I suggest you read the book "The Biology of Belief" by Dr. Bruce Lipton.