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The Chinese herbalists recognized that the best medicine is that which nature provides. Since the beginning of life on earth, nature has provided everything essential to promoting and maintaining health for all the various life forms. Our environment provides us with air, water, and food. The sun brings warmth and life to the planet, and we can find or build shelter from the resources the earth provides. The balance of life allows us to utilize the waste products of other life forms, while they thrive on ours in a cycle of nutrient exchange (for example, the oxygen and carbon dioxide exchange between plants and animals). While modern scientists try to synthesize new drugs based upon naturally occurring chemicals, or extract and concentrate a single substance from a plant which already provides that chemical in a balanced state, a practitioner of Traditional Chinese Medicine seeks to use these herbs in their original form, knowing that nature has long ago perfected these medicines. The key to the treatment of disease is in recognizing the patterns of illness and formulating the right blend of herbs to match the individuals unique combination of signs and symptoms.
While some herbs directly attack illness causing pathogens, most herbs support the body’s natural tendency to move toward a healthier state. This philosophy of nourishing the body is the hallmark of Chinese herbal medicine, and this is why herbs are considered to be part of a healthy diet. The foundation of our diet should be based upon plant products; grains, vegetables, legumes and fruits. This provides us with all the nutrients we need to sustain our lives when we are healthy. However, sometimes we become ill, and then we must again turn to nature for a cure. The medicines we need to return to, and maintain, health are again found in the plants, but this time we need to use the bark and twigs, roots and leaves, flowers, seeds, and vines. Since often these are not easily digested when eaten whole, they are usually boiled in water in order to extract their medicinal qualities.
By designing each individual formula to exactly match the pattern of illness in the patient, the occurrence of unpleasant side effects is greatly reduced, while the effectiveness of the treatment is greatly enhanced. This is what is meant by treating the patient instead of the disease. In contrast, the biomedical approach treats only the disease, and fails to acknowledge the individual differences of the patients. The scientific model prefers the method of "if A then B", using a medication based on the diagnosis of the disease alone, not of the person who is living with that disease. One of the fundamental principles in Traditional Chinese Medicine is that the same cause of disease will manifest in different symptoms depending on the unique qualities of the patient, and that the same symptoms in different people may be due to different causes.
Western biomedicine, as well as western herbalism, has usually focused on the idea that for any given illness, there is one drug or herb that is best suited to treat that illness. Whether it is viagra for impotence, St. John’s Wort for depression, or glucosamine sulphate for joint disorders, the prevailing philosophy is that only one substance is needed to treat the condition. Since humans are complex creatures they often suffer from more than one condition, and as a result are often taking many different pills or herbs without any consideration toward the interaction of these substances. A holistic approach, such as that taken by Chinese herbalists, creates a formula that takes into account all the various aspects of a person, and seeks to balance them all with an herbal formula. The reliance on the single substance treatment paradigm doesn’t allow a physician to modify a treatment according to the unique condition of the individual.
Scientists are always looking at plant medicines in order to create their synthetic drugs, believing that the key to success lies in finding the one "active" chemical in a plant, and using only that single substance, removed from its natural state and modified so that it can be patented and sold at ridiculously inflated prices. As a result, the side effects of pharmaceutical drugs are often worse than the diseases they treat, and the adverse reaction to prescription drugs is the fourth leading cause of death in America. When this method works, it works amazingly well, but when it fails, the failure is often catastrophic and deadly.
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It is interesting that historically western medicine began as a holistic system, with Hippocrates (best known for the Hippocratic oath all doctors take) stressing the importance of treating the whole person, and also emphasizing the role of diet and nutrition in health. His disciple, Galen, was an outspoken critic of the doctors of his time which he felt had lost sight of the Hippocratic teachings on the unity of all living organisms with the forces of nature. I wonder what Galen would say today.
The history of Chinese herbal medicine predates any written record, however, the earliest medical works, such as the Huang Di Nei Jing (Yellow Emperor’s Internal Classic) written during the Warring States period (475-221 B.C.) contains a highly refined system of diagnosis and treatment principles that surely was developed over hundreds, even thousands, of years, and passed on orally from teacher to student. The earliest work devoted to herbal medicine is the Shen Nong Ben Cao Jing (Shen Nong’s Herbal Classic) written around the 1st century B.C. which describes 365 different substances, their medicinal use, and a three tiered classification system of superior, common and inferior or toxic herbs. Building upon these great works are hundreds of other "classics" that developed the system of Traditional Chinese Medicine over the next 2,000 years. Further developments described the herbs according to their principal functions such as Tonifying Yin and Yang, Regulating the flow of Qi and Blood, or Transforming Dampness and Phlegm. Herbs are classified according to their taste (sweet, salty, bitter, sour, acrid), temperature (hot, warm, neutral, cool, cold), and the specific channels or organs they affect. Today, we are privileged to have the opportunity to benefit from a system of medicine that has been refined to such a high degree over so long a time.
It is ironic that modern medical science, a system that is at best only 200 years old, questions the validity of this medicine and asserts that not enough research has been done to support the claims of efficacy. A recent study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA. 1998;280:1585-1589) on the treatment of irritable bowel syndrome with Chinese herbal medicine, a disorder for which there is no reliable treatment in biomedicine. The study used three groups; a placebo group, a standardized herbal formula group (the same herbs for different people), and a group who received individualized formulas (different herbs for different people). The initial results showed notable improvement in the non-placebo groups over the placebo group, with no difference between the standardized and individualized herbal treatment groups. Most significantly, however, a follow up 14 weeks after completion of the treatment showed that only the individualized group maintained the improvement. Instead of using our research efforts to further the development of herbal medicine, we are just "proving" what the herbalists have known to be true for thousands of years in order to placate the scientific cynics.
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