During my trip to China last year, I visited a Traditional Chinese Medicine centre and have been interested in learning more about TCM. I’m beginning to become more and more convinced that the drugs in Western medicine could do more harm than good. TCM is mainly based on the yin and yang.
Yin – cold, dark, being passive
Yang – warmth, luck, being active
When your yin and yang are balanced, you are in an ideal state of health. TCM has been passed down through ages and has a history of over 2000 years.
I’m not sure how appropriate TCM is for little children but I would like to find out more about it. Will update this entry if I find more information on this subject.
-martini
1 response so far ↓
gopi // May 18, 2007 at 12:09 pm
I think the biggest problem in the way medicine is used in the West is that many people believe that there should be a drug for every problem. People want to take more drugs than they should.
That being said, there’s been a lot of scientific progress in the last 2000 years. “Western Medicine” is not a singular type of medicine. Rather, it’s based on one simple principle: evidence. Placebo controlled studies. Give people the drug you’re testing, or give them a sugar pill. Look at the results, and see whether the drug helped more than the positive thinking you get from a sugar pill.
Aspirin is derived from tree bark. You can actually get FDA approved leeches for treating certain types of wounds. Western medicine is actually a lot more expansive than the common perception. Testing to figure out if it works or not is the determining factor.
Regarding the yin and yang idea you refer to in TCM, I haven’t seen any objective way to demonstrate that it’s actually accurate. It sounds nice in some literary sense, but in a practical sense there’s just no basis for it.