Traditional Chinese Medicine and The West

western medicine can cure my ailments
Western medicine is generally the use of synthetically manufactured single compounds that are administered to the body in highly concentrated doses.These drugs can obviously be highly effective and cure many diseases.Interestingly, many conventional synthetic compounds are derived from plant materials.Aspirin and Cisplatin (one of the world’s leading anti cancer drugs) are both derived from trees.
Chinese herbal medicine uses lower dosages of more dilute herbal extracts to help the body retain or maintain its balance in a step-by-step fashion. Perhaps the philosophy of Chinese medicine is best expressed by the writings of one 7th-century physician:Superior treatment consists of dealing with an illness before it appears.Mediocre treatment consists of curing an illness on the point of revealing itself.Inferior treatment consists of curing the illness once it has manifested itself.
what's the difference
Conventional Western medicine and traditional Chinese medicine take different approaches to health and diseases. Each medicine develops its advantage in some areas, such as chronic diseases and syndromes; functional and emotional disorders; pain conditions; gynecological, neurological, muscular, and gastrointestinal problems for traditional Chinese medicine; trauma, acute conditions, and catastrophic problems for conventional Western medicine.
Traditional symptom-based approaches to disorders such as cough, palpitations, constipation, insomnia, vomiting, and pain are treated holistically using TCM internal medicine.
To determine when an herb, a food or an acupuncture point is appropriate for a patient, recognition of the right pattern from the patients’ constitutions, main complaints, general body conditions, and tongue and pulse is fundamental.