Practicing Eastern Medicine - Embrace the modern. Respect the ancient.

Practicing Eastern Medicine

-------- Embrace the modern. Respect the ancient.

Eastern medicine is an ancient medical therapy that is as important as western medicine.

Many changes have been introduced into traditional eastern medicine throughout the millennia.

Good changes added more glory to the traditions; meanwhile bad changes shifted the right to the wrong.

The thorough research and work people have diligently done on treating the problems that we have higher chance of suffering from nowadays, such as cancer, hypertension, diabetes, etc, has elevated eastern medicine to a new level.

The advanced technology of processing herbal medicines shortened the time of production and made high quality medicine accessible for everyone.

However, regarding the way of practicing acupuncture for the doctors, it is not always good to adopt all the newer changes.

Acupuncture was greatly developed in ancient China. Since it has been practiced for thousands of years, different acupuncture styles have been formed.

Some practitioners have learned to use shortcuts when treating patients. It might not bring noticeable side effects on patients but it could leave the illness still inside patients’ body when symptoms are gone, or it heals illness not as fast as following the traditional way.

We can find the traditional way of practicing acupuncture in the greatest ancient medical book “Huang Di Nei Jing (黄帝内经)” attributed to the earliest emperor in China, Yellow Emperor (黄帝).

For example, the book emphasizes pulse diagnosis. Pulse tells everything. By checking the pulse, doctors should know which organs have problems. After the treatment, doctors must check the pulse again. If the strength of the pulse changed to even, then the illness had been removed. If the strength of the pulse did not change but the patient stated feeling better, the illness might still be there (Ling Shu, chapter 9).

Unfortunately, not enough doctors realize the importance of this book. They might find it too long to read and the words are too ancient to understand. But, the “Nei Jing” way of practicing acupuncture will always be respected and embraced by people who truly understand eastern medicine.