Is Traditional Chinese Medicine the Future of Global Healthcare?

China continues to attract a large number of foreigners yearly. It has proven itself on the world stage as a formidable trading partner and has continued to extend its reach across the world through numerous influential bilateral agreements. The education sector alone sees hundreds of thousands of foreigners from across the globe join the Chinese workforce and burgeoning economy. But this is only one of the many reasons why foreign families choose to settle in China. China still holds a mystic charm to the West. It is still an ancient culture steeped in mysterious customs and traditions. And at its heart sits Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), which in and of itself continues to hold the world’s fascination as nations around the world try to grapple with the burdens of providing healthcare for ever-growing populations.

However, many of us who now call China home are yet to dip our toe in the TCM pool. We might have dabbled in spicy hotpots and attended Beijing Opera (jing ju), but why are so many foreigners reluctant to give TCM a try? And in a post-COVID-19 world, is it realistic to turn to TCM to provide the answers that Western medicine can as yet not provide?

Acupuncture to help relieve your headaches?

The most widely known form of TCM treatment is acupuncture, which has become part and parcel of Western medical healthcare practices. But few understand how this quite works. Acupuncture relies on TCM’s theory of Qi, which is considered a vital energy that flows along meridians to promote health in the body. Acupuncture needles pierce the skin along any of the hundreds of meridian points in an attempt to redirect qi to encourage normal body function. This can be used in conjunction with herbal remedies to rebalance the forces of yin and yang within the body.

Many Western medicine practitioners still regard TCM with suspicion, despite the World Health Organization’s decision to officially recognize TCM in its global compendium in the mid-2000s. This is because Western medicine relies on controlled clinical trials and statistics to determine how various forms of treatment work for patients.

TCM takes an entirely different tact. It is believed that causes of illness in the body are as unique as the individual, and as such, making a general conclusion on treatment is virtually impossible. Each treatment is tailor-made to meet the needs of the patient, as opposed to a broad cure-all staple of drugs.

Many Western medicine practitioners still regard TCM with suspicion

Dr. Shelley Ochs, a Beijing-based TCM practitioner delves further into who is best suited to TCM treatments. “Chinese medicine is best suited for things that are functional and the way that works from a biomedical point of view is becoming clearer,” offers Ochs.

The efficacy of TCM as a treatment for ailments ranging from chronic pain to infertility has been questioned by mainstream medical experts, but there seems to be new evidence of just how the treatment works.

As Ochs explains, “Now we have FMRI’s where you can see what is happening in the brain in real-time. There are more and more studies that come out about the mechanism of action that shows that if you put a needle in the foot or above the ankle, and we know from traditional knowledge, from the classics, that it affects the eyes. And sure enough, the visual cortex lights up. But it begs the question of how the signal gets there.”

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Ochs first fell in love with TCM when she was backpacking as a youth through Asia, and relied on its remedies to bounce back from chronic allergies. Twenty years later, she continues to profess the efficacy of the treatment as a legitimate alternative to otherwise harmful conventional medicines such as antibiotics. Ochs is well supported by evidence such as the compound, artemisinin, which was first isolated by Youyou Tu at the Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Beijing and is currently being used as a powerful treatment against Malaria. It even won Tu the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine.

“In clinical practice, people can come in and be very cynical and it still works,” says Ochs. “You don’t have to believe in it. But medicine is also about relationships. The trends in Western medicine is to recognize all those components like how we communicate with people and even being positive. If expectation effects, which are part of a placebo effect, if they are real, then why not amplify it, as long as you are not lying to people.”

She goes on to explain that, “You come in and someone listens to you. You are in a quiet room by yourself, with some nice music. You lie on a table for 30 minutes and that is therapeutic.”

This might be because, even though Ochs might seemingly work at cross purposes with a conventional medical doctor, they might both be treating the same thing. Put simply, Western medicine treats the Yin, or everything physical, and TCM strives to treat the Yang, the energy in the body. Western medicine is great for trauma care and treating acute problems, while Chinese medicine works to treat chronic problems and as a preventative therapy option.

Depending on what your needs, it seems possible to have your cake and eat it too as far as Western medicine versus TCM goes. It might be time to set aside your reservations the next time you get a case of the sniffles and see whether TCM might have something for you, as it did for Ochs.

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Photos: Unsplash

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