Alternative Chinese Medicine

Alternative Chinese medicine has been around for thousand of years and has formed a unique system to diagnose and cure illness and disease.

In alternative Chinese medicine, medical problems are considered to be symptoms rather than diseases. Alternative Chinese medicine emphasizes curing the cause of illnesses. People mistakenly assume that Alternative Chinese Medicine mainly refers to acupuncture. In fact, acupuncture is only a small part of Chinese medicine. The main part of this alternative approach is diagnostics and herbal medicine.

Chinese medicine is based on the overall concept of Chi energy. This includes the five elements of wind, earth, fire, water and metal, as well as the concept of the opposite life forces of Yin-Yang. Chi acts as a carrier of information that is expressed externally through your system. These sources of energy and how they affect the human body and its relationship with the surrounding environment are the foundation of Alternative Chinese medicine. In alternative Chinese medicine, an illness is never really treated by itself. In order to maintain the proper balance between the mind and the body, the mind is always treated when any other part of the body is treated. The thinking behind this is that if the body is sick, then the mind is also affected, and if the mind is sick, then the body is affected. Because the mind and/or the body has the ability to cause problems for the other, both are always treated at the same time in Chinese medicine

In alternative Chinese medicine, practitioners treat both the mind and body with a focus on the cause, location, and nature of the disease. Treatments are based on the symptoms and differentiation of syndromes. Therefore, those with an identical disease may be treated in different ways, and on the other hand, different diseases may result in the same syndrome and are treated in similar ways. There is a great emphasis on looking for the cause of the body’s overall imbalance, since by treating this imbalance, harmony can be restored to the body and the problem will go away.

The typical alternative Chinese medicine approach includes acupuncture, herbal medicine, and qigong exercises. With acupuncture, treatment is accomplished by stimulating certain areas of the external body. Herbal medicine acts on organs internally, while qigong tries to restore the orderly information flow inside the network through the regulation of Chi. Qigong is a meditative practice that uses controlled breathing techniques and slow graceful body movements to help promote the circulation of energy within the body. These alternative Chinese medicine therapies differ in their approach yet they all share the same underlying sets of assumptions and insights in the nature of the human body and its place in the universe.