Western medicine and meditation

[Xue Sheng]

It seems to me that there is a failure to communicate. This thread is shaping up to be full of taunts and name calling, instead of an intelligent debate between the western and eastern sciences. It is beginning to remind me of some religious chat rooms I used to visit.

Unfortunately, I cannot offer to either side, but it would be much better for those less initiated in both sciences if the two "experts" would engage in an open discussion rather than what we have read.

To Empty Hands:

I feel like your opening post was a bit abrasive, maybe even obnoxious, but it is your opinion nonetheless. You are entitled to your objection, but know that it may provoke an argument. You backed up your argument when challenged, kudos to you. You remained respectful and professional throughout this thread.

To Xue Sheng:

Empty Hands posted a link to the evidence that you requested. You in turn deflected the argument and chose to attack him instead. It is not enough to take a side without being able to back up your own claims with evidence. I also don't see where he resorted to name calling. I think his reponse after your challenge was professional and appropriate. You, on the other hand, obviously passionate about your beliefs (I like that, by the way) failed to respond in the like. Empty Hands merely expressed his opinion based on his own research and you responded with attacks and assumptions without knowlege of his expertise.



We are taught as martial artists to be respectful. It is possible to have an open debate without it sinking to snide remarks or sarcasm. This only happens when one has lost the argument and fails to concede or they lack the ability to defend their ideas with their own words.

I respect both of you as martial artists and human beings, let's have an informative debate about this issue that we all can learn from.

Kindest regards,

Alrighty then. My apologies I have attempted to change this with the last part of my last posts but apparently that was taken as offensive as well. And from my read there are questions I have asked that have not been answered but as you wish. I will stay out of this if at all possible.

As for "belief" it is a bit more than a belief but so be it, later

 

[Xue Sheng]

First my apologies to all that I may have offended in this post including Empty Hand. All I can say is that last Friday I had pretty much the same disposition as a Hungry Grizzly bear, that was locked in a cage, being poked with a stick. All from work related issues but I sadly let that get onto MT. Also I likely took his statements more personally than I should of since my wife is a graduate (top of her class) of one of the top or possibly the top TCM University I China and was rather high up in the TCM department (acting head of the Acupuncture department) of one of the top Hospitals in China, the one that the government uses (AKA Mao’s hospital).

To the topic of TCM, and I do apologize in advance and I am not trying to single anyone about but I do need to refer to Empty Hand for this.

Empty Hand is asking for Western Scientific studies of TCM that he may or may not know do not exist and I feel without those studies to point to that he will then label it all Bunk or say it is a placebo effect. Ironically when western medicine first arrived in China they pretty much said the same thing about western medicine too, they were just more interested in curing patients and saw the results in some cases and realized it was not so bad after all.

As far as I know the majority of “Western” Scientific studies are of acupuncture and the rest are done with a cultural Bias (sorry I need to add this as example) such as the importance of the spleen. You will not find a TCM OMD (in American they are labeled OMD in China they are simply an MD) that will argue the point of the importance of the spleen over the heart and liver but it is rather important to TCM diagnosis. What many may or may not know is that part of the curriculum for a TCM person in China is Western Medicine. Also this may come as a shock to some a TCM OMD in China can and does from time to time prescribe western medications and order X-rays and other tests that are strictly the realm of Western Medicine. They are very aware that there simply are things that western medicine handles better and they are aware there are things Eastern Medicine handles better. I will admit however they do not appear to be big on Western Medications since they tend to do more damage to the body than Chinese Herbal Medicines but there are cases that it is necessary to prescribe them for the good of the patient.

I have said this before on MT that if you are looking for proof of TCMs ability to cure patients you need to look to medical records of hospitals in China. Also there are Chinese studies on things like Qi and western science may be surprised to here that they are not claiming that they know exactly what is going on when it comes to internal Qi. External Qi is rather easy to prove as far as they are concerned, just look to the martial artists of China, Shaolin for example that can take great amounts of physical abuse in the form of being hit by various large painful objects and being pokes with sharp spears and not getting injured. But internal is harder and they are working on it and are trying to develop equipment to measure it but have so far not had much success and they will tell you that as far as they are concerned at this point those out there telling you of their great powers of Qi that can heal with a light touch or that can project it and knock someone down are fake.

Back to TCM, and this part will likely get me in trouble no matter what I say.

There are some fundamental difference between TCM and Western Medicine and two big ones are diagnosis and treatment (and I am not talking Pills vs Herbal here although that is a major difference) diagnosis is done based on old Chinese medical theory which is going to reference the spleen, heat, cold, qi blockages, etc. and the reason is that they are looking for the cause of the problem so they can treat it. They are not looking to treat the resultant illness or problem and this is where TCM learn in China and TCM learned in the USA have big issues. Culturally in China you are taught as you grow up things like this, I have a head ache, what caused it ok let’s treat that cause so I don’t get that headache again. Where in the west we taught I have a headache I want it to go away take a pill. So when it comes to teaching TCM in the USA it tends to be taught form a western perspective and TCM people trained in the USA tend to look to treating the result and not the cause and it is not as effective this way, it can work, but generally not as well. And this is not the fault of those trained here, they are trying very hard to do a good job they just do not have the cultural background, access to many of the books due to the way those books are written (this is starting to get better by the way) and they do not have the internship that you would get if trained in China. My wife also use to train people in Acupuncture for the World Health Organization when she was in China and she said that the biggest problem that many western have is diagnosis based on Traditional Chinese Medicine. They tend to look to the problem that resulted and not what caused it. And as some will say the fact they are using the terminology of “Blockage of Qi” as part of the diagnosis that it is fake. All I can say is that it is from this type of diagnosis that TCM works and has worked rather well for a thousand years or more in China. What comes to a shock to many westerners and Americans more so is that when it comes to China they tend not to care what we think. Admittedly in some cases that is good in others it is bad but that is the truth of it. And, as I have seen and sadly did not practice earlier in this post, are just as likely to tell you you’re right if it makes you go away. Basically many in TCM do not need Western science to tell them whether or not it works, they have a patient list that tells them it does.

My wife has treated many people both in China and the US and like western medicine not all successfully but her success rate is rather high. But in the US it is different since there are many that show up after years of problems, multiple surgeries or cortisone shots that expect Acupuncture to be the miracle cure, one visit and all is better, this is not that case and they never return. This is even after she has explained to them that this will take time. She has told patients they need to see their Western MD for various things, one of those being Cancer. She can treat the pain but not the disease itself that is the realm, in most cases, of western medicine. If a patient is there for back pain and has had multiple surgeries she will tell them that due the scare tissues that has developed that Acupuncture may not be as successful and certainly not as quick as someone that has not had multiple surgeries. Same goes for multiple cortisone shots as well. If someone has been being treated for years or on medication for years or even had this problem for years it is likely TCM can help (and that can mean a combination of acupuncture and herbal) but it may take longer than if the problem is more recent and it will not go away at the first visit and what does actually tend to happen is that as the problem goes away it goes away maybe for a day at first and then another treatment and it is gone for a few days and so on until the problem is gone. But many here in America want it to make them better now of in 2 or 3 visits even though she has explained to them how the treatment must proceed.

And lastly herbal and this is a big one that is affected by books being in traditional Chinese and not translated into simplified Chinese and certainty not English. My wife has patient show up with herbal prescriptions that are from people trained here and they are incomplete, this means that they may cure the problem but it would take longer. The full prescriptions tend to be written only in Classical Chinese.

One final thing, as my wife has said she feels that the Americans that are trained in the US are trying very hard to do a good job but they start off with less training than she recieve4d in China and that is not any fault of theirs it is simply that the teachers with high levels of knowledge on the subject tend not to be here, there are some however. They do not have access to the books that she had access to and they do not generally have any hospital internship or hospital training.
Now if none of that got me in trouble this might. A warning when looking for a TCM person, there are those out there that are from China and claim “trained in China’ PLEASE make sure you ask what they were trained in. I have seen that claim made by people trained in China as Western MDs, Nurses and Gym teachers. “Trained in China” does not mean trained in TCM in China.

 

[Xue Sheng]

A correction

After talking to my wife the undergrad for TCM MD in China was about 180 credits and 5 years now she thinks they have changed that to 7 years and of course increased the course load as well.

 

[Ian]

Hello all,
I find the passion this topic routinely generates in its discussion fascinating and I am more of a lurker than a poster on this forum but can equally share the viewpoints of Xue Sheng, Empty Hands and MA-Caver.

Just to set the boundaries of my experience; I am based in the U.K. and thus have no experience of how things are in the USA, I am not a doctor but I have worked as a radiographer for over 20 years and am also a trained biologist so I have some grounding in western medicine and science.
My interest in disease and healing seems to have been lifelong and through my martial arts training, about 8 years ago I decided to train for a diploma in acupuncture which included a small clinical placement in one of the TCM hospitals in Nanjing and I have just qualified as a Shiatsu practitioner. None of this makes me an expert in any of this but the journey has been interesting and still continuing but I feel I can sit conformably in either of the 3 camps above, depending on my mood : )

My western medicine and science training made me initially very passionately dismissive of any non-western medicine systems because they did not stand up under scientific study and were "just plainly nonsense". This changed to intrigue and eventually now to some small degree of understanding after deciding I needed to undertake formal study.
My current take, and this changes as I increase my learning and experience is that treatment of the sick and the prevention of disease could be dramatically improved if there could be better fusion of the 2 health disciplines. Each system has its strengths and weaknesses and integration brings with it a much better toolbox. This does seem to be happening to a greater extent from what I have seen in China than it is in the UK. It is only my opinion, but after conversations with both western doctors and TCM doctors, those trained in TCM seem to have a much less bounded outlook and are keener to take whatever works to treat patients within the constraints that they have to work with.
The challenge would seem to be greater, and was in my case, for those trained under western science, to begin to accept that, again in my case, that TCM had real basis and relevance.
Does the TCM "Spleen" do the same as the western spleen? There are some overlaps but clearly, no.
Where is the Triple Heater in western medicine? It does not seem to exist.
If someone tries to correlate western medicine with TCM you are likely to end up with quite a big headache. I know I did, but if you can suspend the need for western scientific proof and accept TCM as a theory where if you diagnose using that theory and treat using that theory there are some surprising results.

What I find even more fascinating is that whilst western sciences study and "proof" of aspects of TCM (and other health system beliefs) can be extremely skewed (again in my opinion) some stuff does stand up to scientific study. The scientific papers are out there.
Not recent, but I particularly like the nuclear medicine experiment regarding meridians mentioned in this article that looks to be copied from a 1992 issue of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine (Vernejoule, Albarede, Darras).
http://google-sina.com/2008/09/19/acupuncture-and-its-slow-acceptance-in-mainstream-science-circles/

Does this mean that the entire theory used in TCM is the biological "truth"? I do not believe so but as stated above, if you diagnose and treat using TCM theory you can get results, so from one perspective does it matter?

I am still searching for my personal truth but fascinating stuff and great to discuss down the pub with a couple of pints of beer.
If anyone is genuinely interested, I can thoroughly recommend getting some formal training and would be surprised if it did not change your viewpoint.

Regards,​

Ian

 

[theEXxman]

I too think that integration or a better term synthesis is the key. I've decided to go to my local tech school to enroll in their practical nursing program. My long term career goals however is too somehow and I mean "somehow" intergrate my knowledge that I've learned from my martial arts experiances and studies in and being exposed to tai-chi, chi-kung and pressure point fighting and also the knowledge i gain from western medicine. I would like to follow the same process that seems to have happened when martial arts was exposed to us in the west. Which is take what works discover what doesn't. That takes time and it also requires for us in the west a more open minded approach along with the more traditional western skeptic approach. But I think if we in the west would take this middle way approach(appologies to practicing buddhist's) we might discover something about what it is to be human. What the mind is. Is it more than just neurons and synapses and etc. My main point is that we should find a middle way approach between beliver and skeptic. But I do agree we in the west discover from the start that TCM is not perfect. For instance in fighting because of the physiology that takes place in the body during B.A.R.(Bodily Alarm Reaction)that unless you have the dexterity of a god there is no way you can pick individual meridian points like Xena does or Jet Li does on Kiss of the Dragon. What we do in class is we take the technique from Bunkai and then discover what points are affected after the technique has been applied on the opponent's body. Sometimes Blunt Force trauma can be just as effective or even better than trying to pick out individual points. Then I've seen some that just don't respond to pressure point attacks. Which then leads me to doubt what I just learned.