| A traditional Chinese herb, ephedra, is a mainstay of asthma treatment in chinese medicine. Typical Western herbs include pleurisy root, yerba santa, and lobelia. Ginkgo biloba, commonly thought of as an antiaging nutrient, has specific antiinflammatory effects in asthma.
Acupuncture, the ancient Chinese healing art, has been proven in numerous studies to be helpful in mitigating the symptoms of asthma. In China, departments of pulmonary medicine, while adopting modern techniques of pharmacological management, are never without the attendance of skilled acupuncturists. |
| A doctor practicing traditional chinese medicine may examine a patient and say, "Ah, very weak spleen," and this could be part of a life-long theme for the patient. It doesn't mean that the spleen got kicked by a horse one day and all of a sudden became a problem, but rather that the person has a constitutional problem, which can generate many different difficulties. We can apply the same principle using the high-tech diagnostic techniques of Western medicine. |
James S. Gordon, M.D.
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 Singha had combined foods, spices, and herbs; struggled to penetrate the unfamiliar concepts of Ilza Veith's translation of The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine, the fundamental text of Chinese medicine; and planted an herb garden.
I also began to realize that my personal quest for new and more effective remedies was part of a larger process of questioning. Many people were discovering the limits of bio-medicine and putting its history into a broader perspective.
My first tutor was the great microbiologist Rene Dubos. |
| Watermelon," I respond, explaining that it stimulates the kidneys' functioning and that in chinese medicine the kidneys are connected with the bones and joints. For the two weeks following his watermelon fast, I would like him to eat only raw food, a diet that will stimulate his digestion while allowing his body to detoxify, to rid itself of all the chemicals he has consumed over the years. For three months afterward, 70 percent of his diet should be raw, and he should avoid all milk and milk products, sugar, red meat, wheat, caffeine, and food additives. |
| It draws on the perspectives and practices of the world's great healing traditions, including chinese medicine and Indian Ayurveda, Native American, and African healing; and it gives a full and honorable place to popular European and American therapeutic practices that have been swept aside or scorned by our modern mainstream medicine—the use of spinal manipulation by chiropractors and osteopaths; such "natural" approaches as diet, herbalism, and massage; homeopathy and prayer. |
| In Western medicine there is one pulse; we time its rate and check if it is strong and regular. In chinese medicine that same pulse, palpated on the radial arteries at the wrists, resolves itself into a dozen parts —or according to some variations, far more —each revealing facts about physical and mental functioning that are unavailable to even the most sophisticated Western diagnostic methods. |
| I wanted to learn about chinese medicine, but the only two English texts I could find seemed relentlessly impenetrable. And no books had anything to say about chronic diseases becoming acute or about how eating pineapple could affect the structure and functioning of my back.
I sat with my dilemma for a while —until it occurred to me that the best place to begin my study was with myself, with those parts of me that were crying out for help, and those therapies that I could begin to learn about and easily use on my own. I took an inventory of my problems. |
| In this chapter I want to focus on two of the modern alternative healing approaches, the manipulative therapies and homeopathy, and on one of the great healing systems, classical chinese medicine. Taken together these three systems give a fair sample of the range and benefits of the other medicines—of the new ways of thinking and being they demand, and of the therapeutic possibilities they make available to us. I choose these three because they are becoming increasingly well known and widely practiced in North America and because I use them myself and with my patients. |
Andrew Chevallier
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 They developed quite separately in China, and the five elements system was only accepted and fully incorporated into chinese medicine during the Song dynasty (ad 960—1279).
On the streets of Hong Kong herbal chemists are a familiar sight. Prescriptions are formulated during a consultation with an herbalist, and the patient then obtains the appropriate herbs.
Lycium (Lycium chinense, p. 109) is used in China as a blood tonic.
Lycium berries
Lycium bark
_Hong hua
(Carthamus tinctorius, p. 181). |
Bill Gottlieb
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 Abbreviation
Meridian
B
Bladder
CV
Conception vessel
(channel)
GB
Gallbladder
GV
Governing vessel
(channel)
H
Heart
K
Kidney
LI
Large intestine
Abbreviation
Meridian
Lu
Lung
Lv
Liver
P
Pericardium
SI
Small intestine
Sp
Spleen
St
Stomach
TW
Triple warmer
You'll find that the acupressure remedies usually combine points near the area of pain or tension with points that seem to have no obvious connection to the immediate problem. chinese medicine calls the nearby points local points and the faraway points trigger points. |
Andrew Chevallier
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| Traditional chinese medicine (tcm) and the herbal tradition that is part of it developed separately from Chinese folk medicine. It arose from ideas recorded between 200 bc and ad 100 in the Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine (Huang Di Neijing). This text is based on detailed observations of nature and a deep understanding of the way that all life is subject to natural laws. It contains concepts that are fundamental to tcm, including yin and yang, the five elements (wu xing), and the theory of the effect of nature upon health. |
Bill Gottlieb
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| The goal of traditional chinese medicine was to restore chi to a state of balance, and acupressure (along with diet, herbs, deep breathing, gentle exercises and other methods) was one of its techniques.
"If a person is totally healthy—mentally, emotionally and physically—energy will flow through the body freely, like electricity is conducted through circuits," says Dayton. "But none of us is totally healthy. We all experience disease, injury and emotional trauma. And there are environmental assaults, too, such as air pollution and noise. |
| These basic human impulses—to touch, to heal—were combined in China with the principles of traditional chinese medicine, which has as its original text the nearly 4,000-year-old Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine. In that text, and over the next two millennia, Chinese doctors discovered a system of channels and points on the body that, if correctly touched or stimulated, would relieve pain and speed healing.
The traditional Chinese doctors said these channels, called meridians, were the invisible wires that conducted the body's chi, or energy. |
| Think of the rest of this chapter as a tour of an exotic foreign country—your body, as understood by chinese medicine and as healed by acupressure.
Hill
The Instinct of Healing
"Acupressure is as old as instinct," says Dr. Gach. "When your head hurts, you rub your temples. When your stomach aches, you bend over and hold the place where it hurts."
The Many Flavors of Acupressure
Ice cream is one food, but it has lots of flavors. It's the same with acupressure. It's one technique with a lot of varieties. Here are your choices. J^o^in. |
Richard Leviton
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 By combining dynamic psychotherapy with chinese medicine, we have an opportunity to embrace both approaches in a simultaneous and integrated fashion. I see the Five Elements as developmental stages in the evolution of a human being. My thesis here delineates an evolutionary approach to energetics reflecting developmental psychology."
Hammer aims to redefine the negative implications of the internal demons and cast them into a model of psychological development relevant for the Western psyche. |
| Drawing on thirty-nine years of psychiatry, with twenty-two years of chinese medicine, Hammer links the energies of the Five Elements (water, metal, wood, fire, earth) with a Western model of psychological development.
Hammer sees in acupuncture the long-sought-after bridge between body and mind, a comprehensive clinical model that respects the presumed interrelations of psyche and soma. |
| If you ask a doctor of chinese medicine, the answer will be yes: my liver carries a definite signature of my energy, my style of Qi. Perhaps it is "rebellious Qi," in which the fire (or yang quality) of the liver energy is usually banked down but subject to sudden, unpredictable flare-ups. Ask an esotericist, such as a doctor practicing anthroposophical medicine, and the answer will also be yes: the energy contours and functionality of my liver are a direct result of my soul destiny and the subtle input of macrocosmic stellar bodies. |
| Acupuncture, which is part of traditional chinese medicine, has a traceable history of about 5,000 years; homeopathy has a 200-year documented history; reflexology and color and music therapy were practiced in classical Greece, and even Egypt.
Naturopathy, as an umbrella category for a variety of disciplines, derives from the mid-nineteenth-century hydrotherapy spas and herbal sanitariums—the nature cure or Naturheilkunde—of Central Europe run by the Naturartz, the nature doctor, such as the Swiss priest/healer Sebastian Kneipp (1824-1897). |
| What is most crucially at stake is the freedom of the physis, the vital human life force—the autonomous, spontaneous, purposeful nature, the organismic vitality and living force within biology. chinese medicine calls it chi; the Western metaphysical tradition calls it the etheric body; homeopathy calls it the dynamis. The physis is that aspect of the human totality that responds to the environment on behalf of the life process when presented with an infection, disease, or illness. Pbysis is the vital life spark in the physical. But whatever we call it, the physis is in jeopardy today. |
| Both are expressions of chi, the vital, intangible life force. chinese medicine recognizes the emotions as the Seven Internal Demons—anger, grief, fear, excessive joy, anxiety, worry, compassion. According to Chinese theory, these demons take expression simultaneously in the organ systems and emotional life of an individual and if unchecked or unresolved can lead to physical illness. "The disease process is both psychological and somatic at all stages," says Hammer. |
John Robbins
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 Resistance does not develop to the tonics of chinese medicine, because they are not acting against germs (and therefore do not influence their evolution) but rather are acting with the body's defenses. They increase the activity and efficiency of cells of the immune system, helping patients resist all kinds of infections, not just those caused by bacteria. Antibiotics are only effective against bacteria; they are of no use in diseases caused by viruses. Western medicine's powerlessness against viral infections is clearly visible in its ineffectiveness against AIDS. |
Andrew Chevallier
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| The Shanghanlun (On Cold-Induced Maladies), written in the 2nd century ad and revised and reinterpreted in commentaries over the last 1,800 years,
Ginseng has been used as a tonic remedy in chinese medicine for at least 5,000 years. recommends the herb cinnamon (Cinnamomum verum, p. 80) as a principal remedy when the patient "shivers with fever, breathes heavily, and feels nauseous. |
Berkeley Holistic Health Center and Shepherd Bliss
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| He is fast losing credibility.) "In chinese medicine the lung and colon are the mother of kidney and bladder." (The mother?) "The bladder and kidney are connected to the back____"
He was right. It made no sense. But I didn't want the myelogram, and I didn't want surgery, and something about Dr. Singha, an authority I did not understand, moved me. I decided to do it. I was desperate.
I took my baths and showers, and, to my own amazement, and the amusement of my friends, and colleagues, I ate my pineapple. After three days, I called London. |
Bill Gottlieb
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| Acupressure Energy Meridians—Side View_
This is a side view of the major meridians of the body, including those that influence the kidneys, lungs, bladder, spleen and liver. chinese medicine experts contend that these pathways are invisible "wires" of energy that need to be in balance in order to maintain health.
Massage
Illustrations
_ Swedish Massage pressure. Always stroke toward the heart. If you are using effleurage on the legs, for example, stroke upward from the ankles, as shown. On the arms, stroke from the wrist to the shoulder. |
Mark Stengler, N.D.
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 Diarrhea
There's a specific type of diarrhea, called "cold diarrhea" in chinese medicine, that ginger seems to help significantly. This is the kind that gives you a case of the chills as well as loose stools. (What's called "hot diarrhea," as you might expect, is the kind where loose stools are accompanied by a feeling of feverishness.)
°$-> High Cholesterol
In animal studies, ginger has been found to lower cholesterol levels in rats. Unfortunately, it doesn't show exactly the same effect in humans. |
Berkeley Holistic Health Center and Shepherd Bliss
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| She has studied chinese medicine and other natural methods for 10 years, in both the United States and the Orient. She is currently in private practice, where her aim is to integrate the appropriate natural techniques for each of her individual clients.
Homeopathy
George Vithoulkas
Homeopathy is based on the premise that a remedy can cure a disease if it produces symptoms similar to those of the disease in a healthy organism.
Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of homeopathy, found that a dilute remedy could induce healing without creating toxic side effects. |
John Boik
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 For example, Piper kadsura is used in chinese medicine to treat the pain of arthritis, and Leonurus heterophyllus is used to treat premenstrual abdominal pain. The traditional Japanese formula Saiboku To is used to treat asthma, which may be due in part to its anti-PAF activity.12
3.3.3 Kinins
Kinins are a group of highly bioactive peptides found in the pancreas (Greek: kallikreas) and a variety of other body tissues. They lower blood pressure and increase heart rate by causing vasodilatation, and produce edema by causing increased vascular permeability. |
| There are at least 15 different types of qi that are important in chinese medicine. These include the qi of each organ (zangfu zhi qi), the qi that circulates in the twelve channels (jingluo qi), the qi of food and air (gu qi and da qi), and the defensive qi (zheng qi) that protects the body from pathologic or evil qi (xie qi). Zheng qi is similar in some respects to the immune system.
Because the nature of energy is motion, healthy qi is never stagnant. This point is very important, for the stagnation of qi is one of the primary causes of disease. Among other things, stagnant qi causes pain. |
Ralph W. Moss, Ph.D.
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 Yet it "sounds as if it has been taken directly out of a page of a book on the theory of chinese medicine," Dr. Leung remarks.
Ginseng has been regarded as generally beneficial to cancer patients. But some recent studies show that ginseng may fight cancer in particular.
Its most remarkable quality is in the differentiation of cancer cells. Like garlic, DMSO and HMBA, a crude extract of Panax ginseng can not only stop the growth of malignant liver cells in the test tube, but can turn them back to normal (1,2). |
| Kampo: Nuherbs (see chinese medicine resources, above) is one source of kampo herbs. Interested readers are advised to consult Akira Tsumura's book, Kampo: How the Japanese Updated Traditional Herbal Medicine (ISBN 0-87040-792-9), published by Japan Publications, Inc. and distributed in the US by Kodansha America, Inc., Phone: 212-727-6460. The book is also available through the Kinokuniya Bookstores in New York (212-765-1461), Los Angeles (213-687-4447) and San Francisco (415-567-7625). Mr. Tsumura's Japanese company, Tsumura, Inc. is described as a "leading supplier of herbal medicinals. |
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