Monday, December 5, 2016

Xinhua — China issues first white paper on traditional Chinese medicine

The Chinese government published its first white paper on traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) on Tuesday, detailing policies and measures on TCM development and highlighting its unique value in the new era.
"TCM has created unique views on life, on fitness, on diseases and on the prevention and treatment of diseases during its long history of absorption and innovation," said the white paper, Traditional Chinese Medicine in China, published by the State Council Information Office.
As ideas on fitness and medical models change and evolve, traditional Chinese medicine has come to underline a more and more profound value, according to the document.
Boasting the establishment of a TCM medical care system covering both urban and rural areas in China, the white paper said there were 3,966 TCM hospitals, 42,528 TCM clinics and 452,000 practitioners and assistant practitioners of TCM across the country by 2015....
Western allopathic medicine is particularly suited to acute conditions, whereas traditional health care approach like TCM are suited to chronic conditions.

However, traditional health approaches emphasize perfection, prevention and treatment in that order.

The objective is maintaining excellent health and preventing ill health from arising. Treatment is the last resort.

According to traditional wellness approaches, the four pillars of health are diet, exercise, rest and life style. Intervention is only needed in the case of accident or imbalance if one adheres to a healthy regime.

In the West this approach is called holistic health.

China.org.cn
China issues first white paper on traditional Chinese medicine
Xinhua

2 comments:

MRW said...

TCM has twice as many elements in its pharmacopia as western medicine. Give me a great TCM practitioner over a western doctor any day. Emphasis on great. There are lots of stateside quacks, imo, and in my neck of the woods they're Asian.

Had one years ago. She was also a medical doctor back in China. She barely spoke English. After 30 years in practice in China, they were allowed to study abroad. She was accepted at Harvard Medical School for her sabbatical, 1989. Then Tiennemen Square happened. She applied for political asylum and was granted it. "President Bushee let me stay," she gushed.

She was superb. She got rid my painful, crippling rheumatoid arthritis in one month and a half. I've seen things in China--yes, with these eyes--that competent TCM doctors can do that no one would believe.

They'd be called medical miracles here. For example, I watched one practitioner apply coins to a friend's ankle and correct a condition caused when his paramedic's ambulance crashed a decade before in Wales and his foot wound up 90 degrees to his leg. He had been in pain ever since, and kinda' flop-walked. He was due to have an operation where two steel donuts would be applied around his ankle and stretched apart. it would take him six months to fully recuperate. He went to this sports doctor in China, and the guy did some gentle massaging of his leg and ankle (I was sitting there watching it) and then the coins (I proferred one of them), and my friend got up and for the first time in ten years could walk like a human being with no pain. This "sports" doctor was 27 years old. He came from a family that specialized in this kind of treatment, and he had been trained since the age of three to use the coins by having to move them on a wall and then onto his finger without dropping it. According to this guy, what he did was considered no big deal in China; there was no status granted to his talent. So this White Paper is an interesting advance.

Tom Hickey said...

Russian Army to Start Using Traditional Chinese Medicine