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 Traditional Chinese Medicine & Western Medicine

by Dan Schalm R.Ac, R.TCMP

Eastern and Western styles of medicine arose on opposite ends of the globe, so it’s not surprising that they are based on two fundamentally different views of reality. Not only do they contrast in the way they describe disease and it's origins, they are also different in the methods they choose to restore and maintain health within their respective paradigms. And both work extremely well within their area of expertise, hence the growing trend in calling Eastern medicine ‘complimentary’, instead of ‘alternative.’

Western medicine, which is relatively young compared to Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), began at a time in history when Sir Isaac Newton's philosophy of mechanism was the prevalent scientific thought. Newton believed that for the most part, the human body was just an intricate machine. Medical scientists that came after continued in that vein and using mechanistic-reductionism thinking broke the human body down into smaller and smaller pieces in an attempt to understand how it works. The result is our present, modern day Cartesian style medicine which has become incredibly skilled at repairing and manipulating the biological/material aspects of the human organism. Modern surgeons can perform complicated repairs to the nervous system and with molecular biology, can counter-attack the destruction of viral epidemics.

However, with all the amazing knowledge and skill science has given us, it is still relatively helpless in understanding the disease mechanism itself. Though doctors can repair the damage caused by disease and destroy some of the harmful pathogens that invade the human organism, science is still unable to satisfactorily explain how or why illness manifests. Why does a bacteria overtake one healthy immune system but not another? The process of growing old or of becoming chronically ill still evades understanding.

This is where Traditional Chinese Medicine has it's greatest strength. Born thousands of years ago, in a culture that held a deep understanding of the interrelatedness of all things, TCM grew and developed through trial and error into what it is today. TCM differs from Western science because it doesn't try to reduce the organism into smaller and smaller particles to understand it. Instead, it gains understanding into the human organism by observing how it relates to the world around it. Using that data, TCM then makes differentiation's of diseases and syndromes by observing the relationship that exists between the different aspects of the internal environment. In this way, TCM looks at disease as a question of balance, and to be healthy, an organism must be balanced. This balance is profound and must exist at all levels. Internal/external, emotional/physical, organic/energetic. Most of this is summed up in what is called the theory of Yin and Yang.

Traditional Chinese Medical treatment can be very beneficial in areas that modern medicine is not. It is a superior form of preventative health care and one that can successfully treat chronic disease and pain where allopathic medicine throws up its ‘hands’ in frustration. Since it's view of reality deals with relationships and follows a holistic philosophy, TCM is very adaptable. Perhaps one of the reasons that TCM has survived over other traditional approaches is precisely because of it's adaptability. Other traditional approaches, perhaps steeped in more rigid views of reality, have been unable to survive the advent of modern Western science. They have not been able to incorporate the idea of Western thinking within their own philosophy. TCM utilizes the information gathered by Western science and blends it with its holistic approach. For instance, it is common for an acupuncturist to use both traditional meridian theory for musculoskeletal pain combined with trigger point therapy, a more science based method of pain and muscle treatment.

Hardly the new kid on the block, TCM is now establishing its own here in North America … lagging way behind Europe, Asia and Australia. Countries there have integrated it for years.

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