Western medicine and Chinese medicine views diseases from different angles.
It is currently watermelon season. Do you know how to pick a delicious one in the market when you can't cut it open？There are several tips.
You can pick one, and knock it to hear the tone to see whether it is dull or not. Carry one, and feel its weight to see if it is solid. Examine the watermelon skin to see whether it is a bright color. Put the watermelon in the water, only the ready-to-eat one will float.
This is the way to tell which watermelon is more delicious without even cut it open. It is quite similar to the way TCM finds what the problem of a patient is.
TCM doctors don't really need to examine the cells, and the vessels（like cutting a watermelon open）etc.
By examining patients' tongues, feeling their pulse, touching their bellies, and asking some questions to collect the messages, TCM doctors can tell which part of the body needs to be adjusted.
the root cause of the discomforts
Therefore, when there is not a clear Western medicine diagnosis, TCM doctors can still prescribe and treat patients, only if the patients indeed feel discomfort subjectively.
In this way, not only can the chief complaints be cured, but also some other discomforts, since TCM focuses on the root cause of the discomforts.
Take my patient for example. If a patient suffers from skin problems, the treatment goal is to not only deal with the skin, but also all the other discomforts the patient mentioned.
I don't only care about a patient's subjective feeling, but I also care about some other objective differences, such as blood test and tongue differences.
For Western medicine, it needs precise diagnosis（like cutting the watermelon open）to decide the treatment. If there is no diagnosis, then there is no treatment, but only support care.
Since every diagnosis has a protocol treatment to follow, the prognosis can be more easily predicted and won't vary when seeing different doctors. This is a benefit of Western medicine.
TCM is aimed at the imbalance of patients' bodies, and there is not such a protocol treatment. Therefore, the quality of care will vary amongst doctors.
TCM also sets different goals to Western medicine. The goal of TCM treatment is have no more treatment as well as medication - the patient is really cured, not just relieved.
The goal of Western medicine on the other hand tends to control or relieve but not really cure the discomforts.
Take atopic dermatitis for instance, the protocol treatment in dermatology is to apply atopic steroid and intake antihistamine to control the inflammation.
In TCM, what I consider is to deal with the root cause of the skin problems. In this way, since TCM is tailor-made, patients with atopic dermatitis might get a totally different prescription.
TCM medication is also different from Western medicine, the ingredients are all organic, not chemical artificial compounds.
Western medicine research inspired by classic TCM
However, although there is quite a lot difference between TCM and Western medicine, we can see lots of Western medicine research inspired by classic TCM.
- 黃芩湯 （called PHY906）
Recently, Western medical pharmaceutical companies have found inspiration not just from a single Chinese herb, but also from a prescription (composed of several different Chinese herbs), such as 黃芩湯 （called PHY906）, a four-herb Chinese medicine formula.
It is actually a prescription recorded in a TCM classic 1,800 years ago. I also very often prescribe it.
PHY906 is currently undergoing several clinical trials and might be approved by the FDA very soon.
It is found that combining PHY906, patients can deal much better with the discomforts resulting from chemo and radiation therapies. Nausea and diarrhea caused by the therapies can be significantly reduced, and PHY906 can even help tumors to shrink.
- Artemisia annua
In the 1970s, a Chinese scientist Tu Youyou discovered artemisinin, a compound which is extracted from Artemisia annua, a Chinese herb, to treat malaria. As a result of this discovery, she shared the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
- Fecal microbiota transplant (FMT)
Fecal microbiota transplant (FMT), also known as a stool transplant obtained from a healthy donor, is actually recorded in a TCM classic from the 4th century to cure food poisoning and diarrhea.
The effectiveness of FMT has been established in clinical trials for the treatment of Clostridioides difficile infection (CDI), whose effects can range from diarrhea to pseudomembranous colitis.
Different angles, same goals
Western medicine and Chinese medicine indeed views diseases from different angles. However, the goals are both to cure sometimes, to relieve often, and to comfort always.
