In our culture, there are two types of medicine: Chinese and Western. Western medicine is made up of antibiotics, ibuprofen, flu shots, etc. They're the modern medicine and care you receive from a hospital. Chinese medicine is comprised of herbal medicine from natural ingredients, acupuncture, moxibustion, and other treatment for chronic illnesses and chronic problems that are not cured by modern medicine.
Although Western medicine is proved to be scientifically useful, Chinese medicine has been used for literally thousands of years and is sometimes believed to be a better and a more natural cure to diseases.
I remember when I first heard about Chinese medicine. Actually, when I first smelled it. It was one of the strangest, most... "herb-y" smelling thing I've ever encountered. I asked my mother what it was and she showed me a black liquid and I gagged at the sight of it, but that was when I was young. As the years went by, I've grown accustomed to the smell and now it doesn't bother me anymore. In fact, I quite enjoy the smell. However, the taste still bothers me quite a bit.
Chinese herbal medicine
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| Chinese herbal medicine http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/eet-content/uploads/2012/12/155248496-676x450.jpg |
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| Pharmacist measuring the amount of herbs to give to the patient. http://www.discoverhongkong.com/us/images/see-do/culture-heritage/large/1.4.6.2-Chinese-Medicine_03.jpg |
Chinese herbal medicine has a lot of natural ingredients, such as:
- Ginseng roots
- Mushrooms
- Cinnamon
- Ginger
- Coptis chinenis
- Ephedra
- Sometimes the skin of worms (I know it's gross.)
You throw all the ingredients in a clay pot and boil them (it takes several hours for the nutrition to seep out of the ingredients). You then strain it and drink the medicine.
It takes some time for these to work so the person would need to keep drinking this every day, a couple times a day, for a month for the first signs of improvement to show.
Acupuncture
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| http://static.ddmcdn.com/gif/acupuncture-1.jpg |
Acupuncture is a collection of procedures involving the penetration of the skin with needles to stimulate certain points on the body. Usually acupuncture complements Chinese herbal medicine. People don't normally do acupuncture without Chinese herbal medicine, although it's not required. According to traditional Chinese medicine, stimulating specific acupuncture points corrects imbalances in the flow of qi through channels known as meridians.
Other types of Chinese medicine
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| http://www.topchinatravel.com/pic/china-guide/medicine/chinese-medicine-22.jpg |
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| Another form to relieve stress in muscles and restore the balance of qi. |
There are other types of Chinese Medicine but these are the main ones.
Why and when is Chinese medicine used?
This has a lot to do with Chinese food therapy, which is the practice in the belief of healing through the use of natural foods instead of, or in addition to medicine. Central to this belief system is the idea that certain foods have a "hot" or heat-inducing quality while others have a "cold" or chilling effect on the body and its organs and fluids. An imbalance of this "heat" and "cold" is said to increase susceptibility to sickness or to directly cause disease itself. Such an imbalance is not necessarily related to the subjective feeling of being hot (like sweating) or cold (like shivering).
Chinese medicine is used to counterbalance this imbalance in our bodies. However, one needs to see a Chinese medicine doctor to be prescribed the proper ingredients. If you visit the Chinese pharmacy without a prescription and ask for certain ingredients and ingest them, you may end up becoming more imbalanced.
Suggestion: If you do choose to go with a more natural route than Western medicine that contains man-made chemicals, please go visit a Chinese medicine doctor. We don't want you to become more sick than you really are!
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