Chinese Herbs And Remedies

People use Chinese herbs and remedies to treat health disorders according to the principles of an ancient Chinese medical tradition. These herbs are harvested from either wild or cultivated sources that usually originate in China. There are approximately 6,000 species of herbs used in the practice of Chinese medicine, according to the "Institute for Traditional Medicine." The ultimate goal of these Chinese medical treatments is to balance and strengthen the chi, or the life force, in the body, and balance the yin and yang, the harmonizing elements that trigger disease when imbalanced. Every Chinese medical treatment, therefore, is related to the strengthening and balancing of these elements, and herbs and remedies are vehicles for achieving these results.

History

Herbal medicine is part of the practice of Chinese medicine, a healing tradition that includes many different but related methods of treatment. These treatments' origins are documented from the time of the Han Dynasty about two thousand years ago. This time period is known as the golden age of medicine, philosophy and culture in China. The Chinese government in the 1940s and 1950s compiled the various Chinese medical treatment forms under one umbrella term called Traditional Chinese Medicine or TCM, according to "The American Holistic Health Association Complete Guide to Alternative Medicine." TCM methods involve mainly herbal treatment with acupuncture as an accompaniment.

Function

According to the tradition of Chinese medicine, practitioners prescribe Chinese herbs and remedies as treatments in the quest for balancing the patient's chi, the life force or energy that is considered the source of all life. In order to determine the appropriate herbs needed for treatment, the practitioner evaluates the patient's symptoms considered signals of an obstacle in the flow of chi according to four principles: the interior/exterior principle that indicates the location of the illness; the hot/cold principle that describes the sensations the illness gives the patient; the full/empty principle that indicates whether the illness is acute or chronic; and the yin/yang principle that describes the balance of qi in the patient.

Types

An herb is a term used in Chinese Medicine to describe a substance that is of plant, animal or mineral origin, or any combination of these elements. The practitioner prescribes the herbs to the patient, usually in a combination that addresses a variety of symptoms, as a tea, pill or herbal extract form. The herbs the practitioners prescribe have been cleaned, soaked, sliced, and dried, depending on the method that delivers the appropriate concentrations and herbal constituents, according to the Institute for Traditional Medicine."

Benefits

Because the nature of Chinese medicine is subtler and more individualized compared with Western medical treatments, Chinese herbs are more successful than pharmaceuticals when treating disorders that are not readily diagnosed by standardized tests, such as chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia and food allergies and others that are not fully understood by Western medicine.

A allopathic physician might find nothing wrong with the patient according based on laboratory tests, but any imbalance symptoms the patient is concerned about are considered legitimate by Chinese medical standards because even the slightest problem is an indication of a chi imbalance. Additionally, Chinese herbal treatments can also be very effective treating the side effects of harsher Western therapies, such as chemotherapy or can be used as an adjunct treatment to these stronger medications.

Misconceptions

Some physicians practicing within the Western medical tradition think herbs are ineffective because of the lack of scientific evidence available to corroborate their anecdotal claims of efficacy, according to "The American Holistic Health Association Complete Guide to Alternative Medicine."

This perspective is flawed because the goal of Chinese Medicine is to rebalance the chi life force, and linear measurement tools used by Western science cannot capture the quality of the attainment of this goal. Corroborating the efficacy of Chinese treatments would require a qualitative evaluation based on each patient's individual outcome, because each set of symptoms is unique, therefore the Western scientific testing method that bases the success or failure of a particular treatment on the total results of a group is not compatible with the principles of Chinese medicine.

Costs

Chinese medical treatments, which include herbs, remedies and practitioner office visits, tend to be less expensive than Western treatments because there is no modern laboratory testing involved. The initial practitioner visit may be more expensive than successive visits because of the initial lengthy interview, but the overall cost of Chinese medical treatment is relatively inexpensive. For example, the cost of herbs for the treatment of a chronic illness might range from $10 to $50 per month, according to "The American Holistic Health Association Complete Guide to Alternative Medicine."