Traditional Chinese Medicine For Beginners

What probably comes to mind is acupuncture for stress relief, or maybe you have a friend going to a local acupuncturist for in vitro or something like that, or for physical pain. But bigger than acupuncture is a system called traditional Chinese medicine that's been practiced for thousands of years and is an incredibly rich both philosophical and clinical natural science. Now in this video, I want to share the first in this series behind what is traditional Chinese medicine. Hey, I'm Dr. Alex Hine, author of the health book Master the Day. I'm also a licensed acupuncturist and I have a doctorate in Chinese medicine. Now I've also included two very important links beneath this video. The first down below there is for a free guide for daily rituals that can help you add years to your life with traditional Chinese medicine. And the second is a link if you'd like to become a patron of mine either locally or via telemedicine, you can find that down there below as well. Now Chinese medicine is a natural science dating back thousands and thousands of years. Ancient Chinese physicians, philosophers, and often even mystics or sages were interested in describing all of the cosmos through these universal principles. So almost like how Einstein spent his life looking for those one unifying, that one unified field theory, or how Nikola Tesla was trying to understand these various laws of the universe, these ancient naturalists and physicians were trying to do the exact same. For example, all ancient people, not only in China but outside of China, made close observations between the relationship between astronomy, cosmology, and the seasons. And it was obvious that certain stars were present at certain times of the year, or even that certain seasons had certain illnesses that were more common during that season. A lot of these connections meant life or death for these agrarian societies, harvesting crops, when to plant, the kind of animals that would be available, as well as for hunter-gatherers. Now in the Yijing, the Book of Change or the Book of Changes, Dr. Heinrich Ruhoff says when describing the characters that the character Yi, change, was originally a pictogram of the sun and the moon, while the character Jing means both universal path and classic, depicting the warp and the woof of their movements. So the ancient Chinese observed and believed that these macrocosmic forces influenced, or maybe even created, the way our daily lives played out. And so it was important, it was essential, to understand these macro, or maybe these invisible laws of the universe. So tools like the Yijing, the Book of Change, or Book of Changes were used to establish what are the many different possibilities that could end up happening so that it can live a harmonious life. And he continues with a quote from Stephen Hawking. He said that he once described the science of quantum mechanics in that it never predicts a Instead, it predicts a number of different possible outcomes and tells us how likely each of these it is. So the second very important concept here is that when it comes to medicine and the human life in between, in order to stay healthy and live a long life, we need to live in harmony with these natural laws and these natural principles. For example, in chapter 25 of the Tao Te Ching, it says that human beings follow the laws of the earth. The earth follows the laws of heaven. Heaven follows the laws of the Tao, and the Tao just is. So from these philosophies came the idea of aligning oneself with these guiding laws of the universe. And this became one of the other foundational concepts, which is yin-yang theory, which is balancing ourselves or counterbalancing ourselves with not only the laws of the cosmos and cosmology and the seasons, but also the microcosm, which is within the human body, and balancing all these various factors and imbalances that can come up. And in one of our most important medical texts, an ancient text called the Huangdi Neijing, for example, look at some of the first chapters and the topics that they cover. Neijing chapter 1 describes a mythical dialogue where the Yellow Emperor asks a physician Qibo, why did the people in ancient times used to live to be a hundred but be stronger, and yet now by 50 they're already old and worn out? And he goes on to describe yin-yang theory, lifestyle practices, and methods of longevity. Now in the second chapter of the Huangdi Neijing, in this chapter, it describes how to regulate oneself and one's affairs, how to live, and how to adjust our lifestyle based on the four seasons. So these periods of changing yin and yang indicate natural periods where we should align our own lives with what nature is already doing for proper health. The third chapter of the Neijing talks about the origin of what's called or nourishing life or preventative medicine. And this is all about the concepts of balancing yin and yang, and not in an abstract sense, but in a pragmatic, practical sense, like balancing work and rest, or if you have certain disease patterns or organs that are weak, what flavors to eat to counterbalance that pathological process. And then it goes on to describe pathological factors in our environment that make us sick. And finally, the fourth chapter of the Neijing, this chapter goes on to describe the relationship between climate and seasons and the correlation between various illnesses human are susceptible to, people are susceptible to during those seasons. It describes how these affect the yin and the yang of the body, and how certain illnesses are more likely to show up. And then it even shows the relationship between our five essential organs, you could think of them as the solid organs, and their relationships to the resonance of that season. Now one final thing worth mentioning here is that another distinct feature of Chinese medicine is what most people mentally associate with acupuncture, which is the meridian or channel system, acupuncture, and the use of the concepts called the five phases. Now the channels are related to a concept called organ manifestation theory, which as some people have translated, these mean that the inner state of physiology and the organs reflect themselves on the channels or in external signs and symptoms in the body. For example, a patient with gallbladder disease may have referral pain up into the shoulder or up almost into the neck area. Now ancient people observed this link between gallbladder disease and some weird pain up here. I would say most practitioners today would say that that is referral pain from the phrenic nerve that goes up to this area. Now ancient people may not have been aware of that nerve, but they knew that for some reason the gallbladder channel goes to this area. Now you can treat a gallbladder issue on the gallbladder channel, or you can treat it through channels that seem seemingly unrelated, and that's also based on these relationships between certain organs in Chinese medicine. Five phase theory is also another theory closely tied to ancient Chinese medicine, where each organ in the body is associated with a certain phase, certain season of the year, and even certain pathologies. So for example, placing the lung within metal and also the season of fall. This seems abstract until you realize the correlation between people with asthma having more issues going into the fall, as well as for many people in the temperate climates, that fall equinox is the transition between the summer and the colder seasons, the drier times, and that's frequently one of the first times where the first round of cold goes around. So some of these were just clinical observations based on observing patterns in nature, and they ended up becoming a systematic method of how everything relates. So again, the organs and how they relate, and nature and how the seasons relate. Now that is a very brief or maybe long-winded introduction to what traditional Chinese medicine really is, some distinguishing unique features, and a little bit of the history and the philosophy of where it comes from. Now in the next video in this series, we are going to continue through this what is traditional Chinese medicine roadmap. Now again, if you'd like to stay in touch, check out the first link below this video for the free guide for daily rituals that can add years to your life, and if you'd like to become a patient of mine locally or online via telemedicine, you can check it out below this video as well. Before you go, check out two related videos on this topic right here.