How Chinese Medicine Treats Disease

By Wanzhu Hou, LAc

Chinese medicine has treated various diseases for thousands of years. Just about every disease that can be diagnosed by modern medicine has been treated or managed in some way with Chinese medicine, including autoimmune diseases and cancer.

Nobody clearly understands how Chinese medicine works, however we do know it is different than the allopathic treatment mechanism.

Chinese medical specialists in China conducted a clinical research study on treating chronic hepatitis B. The treatment was found to inhibit the hepatitis B virus, and some other positive results were found as well, which were published internationally.

Patients often have more than one disease or condition at the same time, especially elderly patients. Chinese medicine aims to solve multiple health problems at the same time. For example, a patient may have a cold caused by a virus infection, which could induce liver enzymes to rise. A cold may also trigger an asthma attack. Hepatitis, hyperthyroid, rheumatoid arthritis, and so on, could all present in the same patient. Therefore, a Chinese medical specialist needs to have a deep and wide medical knowledge of both Chinese and western medicine to change the treatment plan dynamically and individually as needed.

Patients may be diagnosed with the same condition in both Chinese and western medicine, but with different pathologic states and different cellular pathologic patterns. The treatment of Chinese medicine will be the different than western medical treatment. Chinese medicine's philosophy is based on fixing damaged cells, not covering the symptoms only.

For example, two patients may be diagnosed with psoriasis, but the local damaged skin condition is different for each patient. One has local skin dryness and ecdysis. The other has watery ooze. In western medicine, both patients would be treated similarly with steroids. In Chinese medicine the treatment would be different, since the symptoms presented are not the same. All treatment plans are based on the pathologic state that the patient presents.

Chinese medical practitioners usually follow the patient's symptoms, tongue and pulse to determine the diagnosis under Chinese medical knowledge, which indicates the abnormal internal environment and cellular state.

For example, conventional medicine treats hypertension symptoms (water retention and high cholesterol) with a diuretic or beta blocker, but this does not help the cause of those symptoms. Therefore patients may need to take these medications for the rest of their lives, and this may not allow the condition to heal, and side effects may show up later. Natural medicine would focus on the cause of the hypertension and related symptoms.