Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and Western medicine (WM) findings about the health and illness very, very often cross their paths. This is not surprising, since both medicines are studying and treating the same human body and mind. Although the methodologies and terminology of these two medicines differ from each other, their goal is the same: restore and preserve the health.
Chinese medicine has about 3.000 years of written history, whereas Western medicine has history of (only) about 500 years. Nowadays, when modern medicine is developing fast, the credit of the “new” findings goes to modern science. But very often, it is merely inventing again the wheel, and the original inventors are forgotten in the shadows of the past.
Except, not on my watch, and not on this site!
I want to emphasize this is not a competition of which medicine is smarter or better. Both – when practiced for the good cause – can learn and progress more efficiently when they share their knowledge openly. Let´s remember that sharing means also listening what the other one has to say.
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In Chinese medicine each organ is related to a specific taste. Heart`s taste is bitter. In short this means that bitter taste, when consumed in modesty, favours the heart, and if consumed in abundance it can be harmful. As a simple example: dark green leafy vegetables have a bitter taste and are full of nutrients that help lower blood pressure and reduce cholesterol levels, which again lowers the risk of cardiovascular diseases. On the other hand, if someone drinks too much coffee – that also has a bitter taste – the overload of caffein can cause heart palpitations. Even though ancient Chinese doctors didn´t talk about “nutrients”, “cholesterol” or “caffein” (they didn´t even consume coffee in China 3.000 years ago), they knew bitter taste has these effects on the heart.
In 2014, a team of University of Queensland researchers made a surprising discovery that taste receptors, particularly those that respond to bitter compounds, exist in human hearts. Why are there taste receptors in the heart, remains unclear, and is now an area of ongoing investigation.
Even though we don´t yet know why heart has bitter taste receptors, it is fun to see how TCM related bitter taste to heart already thousands of years ago, and practitioners gave their patients dietary advise based on this knowledge.
Zhang Zhongjing (150-219 AD) was one of the great fathers of Traditional Chinese Medicine. His claim to fame was treating typhoid and other fevers by deducing that there were only a few effective methods that could battle the illnesses. Before this discovery, doctors used a “shotgun” approach to medication — basically giving every type of drug to the patient to discover which one worked.
Fevers are miserable, and high fevers can be dangerous. Cool baths are soothing and help treat fever. So if you’ve ever had a fever and placed a cold washcloth on your head or given a cool bath to calm your feverish child, you’re following a practice of Dr. Zhongjing. This is knowledge that we take for granted, but thousands of years ago, it was an innovative treatment.
The irony? No one used this treatment for fever therapy until Scottish physician James Currie promoted it – 1,700 years after Zhongjing’s discovery.
Traditional medicine is sometimes seen as pre-scientific, its practices and treatments to be replaced by modern, better, more efficient science-based medicine. What is less known, however, is its contribution to modern science and medicine, and a long history of traditional products and practices being translated into effective treatments for health conditions.
According to WHO (World Health Organization), around 40% of pharmaceutical products today draw from nature and traditional knowledge, including landmark drugs: aspirin, artemisinin, and childhood cancer treatments. A closer look at these drugs reveals that the scientists behind them built off traditional knowledge to achieve their breakthrough discoveries.
Here is one of the numerous success stories: Chinese scientist Tu Youyou, head of the “Project 523” to discover a cure for chloroquine-resistant malaria, turned to traditional Chinese medical literature for clues. There, she and her team found a reference to sweet wormwood to treat intermittent fevers. In 1971, Tu Youyou’s team isolated artemisinin, an active compound in sweet wormwood that was particularly effective in treating malaria. Artemisinin is now recommended by the WHO as the first and second line of treatment for malaria. In 2015, Tu Youyou was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for her work on malaria, which has saved millions of lives.
Currently WHO is urging countries to work to create a framework to regulate and standardize traditional medicine products.
In modern medicine the idea that the gut is a “second brain” is a metaphor for the enteric nervous system (ENS), a complex network of more than 100 million neurons lining the digestive tract that can function somewhat independently from the brain. The ENS, like the main brain, uses many of the same chemicals and cells to control digestion, nutrient absorption, and communication between the body and the brain, influencing our mood, health, and even our decisions.
Dr. Michael Gershon published his book, The Second Brain, in 1998. Early research in the 19th century linked emotional states to digestion, while the 20th century saw the discovery of the enteric nervous system (ENS) and its autonomous capabilities. In the 1990s, neurogastroenterology emerged, leading to the understanding that the ENS is not only independent but also signals to the brain, making it a “second brain”.
TCM has always seen the mind and the body as one unit. When we talk about digestion in TCM, we don´t talk only about digesting the food, but also the thoughts, emotions, and how we digest the world around us.
Why do we have so many problems with our gut? One big pathology we have nowadays is the digital overload, which certainly makes it more difficult to digest the world.
A digestion that doesn´t work as well as it should, can physically show as a problem in the bowl (constipation, diarrhea, IBS etc), or in the mind (fogginess, low mood, anxiety, depression etc.).
Good digestion is fundamental for our health, and Chinese medicine has known for (at least) 3.000 years, that also the so called mental issues show symptoms in our physical digestion. When CM practitioner then treats the DIGESTION with its all aspects, both physical and mental and/or emotional symptoms start to heal.
Historically (as well as currently), Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioners placed an enormous emphasis on preventative medicine. After all, that’s what they were paid for.
Doctors treated people to keep them healthy, and as a result, were regularly paid. However, if one of their patients got sick, the doctor was not paid until the patient got better.