Chinese Proposal to blend their old traditional medicine with modern western medicine
This has been done for many years, at least in West, under the rubrik "complementary" medicine.
For a while there were a lot of empirical studies on acupuncture, particularly in pain management. However, it was also looking good for hormone and a few other areas. Unfortunately, that came at a time when the big pharmas running Western hospitals and medical schools started to invest heavily in to allopathic treatments for hormone disorders, in particular hormone replacement therapy. Can't sell a $4 pill if you can solve the same problem, even part of the time, with a few needles or moxa.
Newage (rhymes with sewage) has given herbs a bad name. However, the active ingredients in most of our current allopathic medicine have come originially from natural sources. Refining them and isolating the active ingredients is a skill. Using unrefined ingredients, however, also requires skill. Adverse drug reactions , negative synergy, is something that allopathic medicine is just beginning to address. Synergistic reactions have been used in TCM for a long time.
One area that Western medicine could benefit most might be use of diagnostic methods such as pulse, tongue or trigger point diagnosis. However, mapping the Eastern terms to Western ones can be done, but it's not an easy cross-walk with 1-1 mapping. The Western (generally allopathic) are mostly not looking for the source of the symptoms and the Eastern are a bit anachronistic and from a time when dissection of humans was not allowed.
This has been done for many years, at least in West, under the rubrik "complementary" medicine.
For a while there were a lot of empirical studies on acupuncture, particularly in pain management. However, it was also looking good for hormone and a few other areas. Unfortunately, that came at a time when the big pharmas running Western hospitals and medical schools started to invest heavily in to allopathic treatments for hormone disorders, in particular hormone replacement therapy. Can't sell a $4 pill if you can solve the same problem, even part of the time, with a few needles or moxa.
Newage (rhymes with sewage) has given herbs a bad name. However, the active ingredients in most of our current allopathic medicine have come originially from natural sources. Refining them and isolating the active ingredients is a skill. Using unrefined ingredients, however, also requires skill. Adverse drug reactions , negative synergy, is something that allopathic medicine is just beginning to address. Synergistic reactions have been used in TCM for a long time.
One area that Western medicine could benefit most might be use of diagnostic methods such as pulse, tongue or trigger point diagnosis. However, mapping the Eastern terms to Western ones can be done, but it's not an easy cross-walk with 1-1 mapping. The Western (generally allopathic) are mostly not looking for the source of the symptoms and the Eastern are a bit anachronistic and from a time when dissection of humans was not allowed.
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