In my clinical practice, I am often confronted with questions from my patients about Chinese medicine, which somehow reveal misunderstanding or lack of trust in this 2,500-year-old form of healing. I would like to share some of the answers, which help my patients to gain confidence and trust, and thus help me to achieve healing results.

What are the Fundamental Beliefs of Chinese Medicine?
Two interdependent beliefs form the basis of Chinese medicine. The first relates to the system of blood vessels and blood circulation. The Chinese developed a very sophisticated and accurate model describing how blood circulates: it flows from the arteries to the veins and back to the arteries. They even succeeded in calculating with reasonable accuracy the speed of blood circulation. The Chinese did not differentiate between blood vessels and nerves. In their view, blood vessels fulfill the functions we now ascribe to the nerves: they establish a link between the acupuncture points and the inner organs.

The second foundation of Chinese medicine is the concept of vital energy and air, also known as Qi (pronounced "chee"). Qi is part of blood and therefore blood circulation is not separate from energy distribution.

The Chinese Approach to Health
The Chinese have a holistic approach to health, so they don't separate the physical and emotional as source of disease. In the west if you have an emotional disease, you go to a psychiatrist, and if you have a physical disease, you go to a physician. The Chinese, however, treat the whole person.

In the Chinese system, every organ has an emotional component, which can attack the energy, which in turn affects the organs. The emotion of the liver is anger. Worry and grief are both related to the lungs. Over thinking is related to the spleen. Fear is related to the kidneys, and joy is related to the heart.

Stress affects the adrenal glands. Worry and over thinking consumes energy. Fear and fright constricts energy. Anger causes stagnation of energy in the liver, and results in depression. Joy causes the energy to relax and move slowly.

What Diseases can Chinese Medicine Treat?
Chinese medicine, like Western medicine, cannot treat everything, but the following ailments have been treated successfully with the Chinese medical system: Back and Neck Pain; Headaches and Migraines; Gastrointestinal Problems; Fatigue, Epstein-Barr Syndrome and Candiditis; High Cholesterol; Drug Addictions; Weight Loss; Sinusitis; Sexual Dysfunction and Infertility; Bell's Palsy, and other diseases.

Chinese medicine and acupuncture are rapidly gaining acceptance in the United States and other Western countries, and are becoming more and more popular. The State of California recognizes acupuncturists as primary health care providers and issues licenses for acupuncture specialists. The National Institutes of Health have recently extended recognition to acupuncture as a medical specialty, and have created an Office of Alternative Medicine to conduct research on acupuncture, Chinese medicine, and related fields.

More and more Americans are coming to realize that acupuncture and Chinese medicine can be effective in healing them when traditional Western medicine has failed in curing their problems. As the benefits of Chinese medicine become more widely understood, its popularity will undoubtedly continue to grow.