TCM vs Modern Medical Science

Our Arthritis Herbal Tea is based on TCM system, which is totally different system from current Modern Medical Science system. 

TCM stands for Traditional Chinese Medicine, which has been practiced for 2000+ years and is still widely practiced in China and other Asian country now. TCM has it’s own theory, ways to analyze the “root cause”, methodology, and herbal formulation.

1. Different theory.

Modern Medical Science is based on anatomy. With technology developed, we can “see” more details in the body, tissue/organ, cells, through microscope, X-Ray, MRI, and blood test and other kinds of equipment/machines. However, everything is still based on “materials that we can see and touch”. (In TCM, this part is called “Yin”)

TCM is based on overall understanding for the body’s function, including anatomy-based material part, and also Energy-based or Qi-based non-material part. The Energy-based or Qi-based non-material part can be felt but would be extremely difficult to measure or test, and this part is called Yang in TCM.

For example, in TCM, we may say “the small intestine is cold, or the stomach is hot”, but in current science, we can’t really measure the temperature for those organs. Sometimes, we may say, “the Stomach Qi (Stomach Energy) is low”. But there’s no machine that can measure the energy level of stomach.

That’s why in TCM, practitioner always refer to “Yin” and “Yang”, which is material based part and non-material based part, respectively. And each organ has its own “Yin” and “Yang”. Such as: “Stomach Yin & Stomach Yang”; “Kidney Yin & Kidney Yang”. Basically, every part of body (organ, tissue) have “material” (Yi) and “energy or Qi flow” (Yang) to make the whole body working together. TCM focus a lot on the energy or Qi (Yang).

To make the whole body be healthy, “Yin” and “Yang” should be balanced each other.

TCM also pay attention to “temperature” and “water distribution” in the body and organ/tissue. It divided diseases into “hot” and “cold”. Also, it checks the water distribution for all over the body and all tissues/organs. Many diseases, according to TCM, are due to the improper water distribution in certain organ/tissues (either not enough water, or too much extra water retained in certain organ/tissue. Haven’t seen any machine being able to check the water distribution in the organ/tissue yet.

Also, TCM believes that our body is perfectly and precisely built since born. If our body gets wrong, it should have symptoms or body signals, such as: feel cold/hot, fatigue, pain, insomnia, no appetite, irregular urination, constipation, high (low) blood pressure, etc. Basically, body will send “signals”. And TCM practitioners rely those “signals” from body to tell what gets wrong inside, where the water distribution is wrong, which part has low energy, which part has irregular temperature, etc.

In summary, TCM focus on study Energy (“Yang”) flow in the body, and pay attention to the “cold/hot” in each organ/tissue, water distribution (excess water or lack of water, or wet or phlegm), Qi stagnation in the organ/tissue/body, fighting outside evil (virus/bacteria) with inside Qi (similar as immune system, but in a different view and dimension), etc.

2. Different categorizations of diseases

Most disease named under current Medical Science system would be deemed as “description of the symptoms” of certain disease, instead of a real cause of disease. TCM tries to categorize the disease by the “root of cause” and has different naming system.

For example: “high blood pressure” is defined as a category of disease name in modern medical science; while in TCM, “high blood pressure” is just a symptom, and shouldn’t be defined as a category of disease name, because there are many reasons/causes that can lead to high blood pressure.

Modern science use tumor location to name the disease such as “lung cancer”, “stomach cancer”, “liver cancer”, etc. But TCM also thinks tumor is just a symptom or a result from body’s imbalanced status. Instead, TCM categorize diseases more often depends on its “root cause”.

Another example is: Covid-19 is a category of disease in Modern Medical Science. But in TCM, it can be divided into different diseases, according to it’s seriousness and infections of the body (so TCM would use different herbal formulas for mild situation, for more serious situation, for dangerous situation, instead of one solution).

So, if a patient had fever, Medical Doctors may use same method to treat it, but TCM may use different herbal formula for the fever (fever is a symptom); Sometime, TCM may use same herbal formula for different diseases but with similar symptoms.

Now TCM is adapting to modern disease naming system and trying to explain and differentiate a disease under the name. For example, “High Blood Pressure” is a common disease name. But in Modern Medical Science, it is only one disease, symbolized by the high blood pressure. In TCM, it can be divided into several different types of High Blood Pressure (because TCM check all the body signals and found out that there are different root causes for high blood pressure, and need different herbal formula for each type).

 

3. Different methodology

Modern Medical Science divided the whole body into different organ/tissues, and also divided organ/tissue into cells, and use machine to check everything to find what’s wrong.

TCM doesn’t go deeply into cellular/protein/molecular level, but instead, it more focus on the dynamics of different organs/tissues’ interactions and functions within the whole body.

TCM believes that human body is a very precisely tune machine that there would be body signals to show up if anything is wrong, such as: pain, headache, swallowing, rash, etc.

Everything that we feel as well as the appearance change outside of body are body signals that TCM uses to analyze what’s going on inside of the body. Based on many years of accumulated experience and knowledge, then TCM came up some solutions (acupuncture or herbs in most situations).

 

4. Different approach to treat diseases.

Modern Medical Science is trying to solve a disease by targeting to a specific acting point by simple molecular or use surgery to cut something off.

TCM use acupuncture and/or herbs, to stimulate/boost/enhance the body’s self-healing capability, and make the body’s energy flow freely, to get the body back into balanced status.

Our bodies have a great potential of self-healing capability. Unfortunately, most of us have ignored this point. TCM’s main focus is to use all kinds of methods to stimulate the body’s self-healing capability and get the body/organ back into balanced situation again.

For example, when there’s mosquito exists in a small pond, Modern Medical Science’s approach is to use chemical to kill the mosquito (very direct approach to the target), while TCM’s approach is to drain and dry the pond (change the micro-environment so mosquito will disappear) and gets the ecosystem rebalanced.

Also, Herbs contains thousands of active ingredients, while most modern medicine contains only one purified active ingredient for one specific targeting point. A great example is injecting the insulin for diabetics, the patients need to take it forever to “control” it, instead of “recovering” from it.

 

Let’s use some samples as comparisons:

Comparison of the Medical Science System and TCM system, with the mosquito as an example (assume there’s a small pond that produced the mosquito):

 

Comparison of the Medical Science System and TCM system, with Covid-19 as an example：

 

Above are some very brief comparisons of the two systems: Modern Medical Science system and TCM system.

There are much more that scientists are doing research on TCM (acupuncture and herbs). You may refer to more references for the research here, or find more general information about TCM here.