ASIAN MEDICINE...
“How can Asian medicine help me when Western medicine could not?”
Asian medicine can treat problems for which Western medicine doesn't have solutions. This is not because Chinese Medicine is "miraculous" by any means. To understand this, one has to realize that Asian medicine and Western medicine attempt to solve the patients illness from completely different perspectives. Western medicine is based chemical reactions and focuses on viewing the patient microscopically; only looking at molecules, receptors, enzymes, and pathways that are in chemical imbalance. Asian medicine takes a larger view, macroscopically looking at how various systems of the body work together to generate health or disease. By changing how the larger systems interact, problems can be treated even when the exact molecular cause cannot be found.
Current medical approaches are not making sufficient progress toward combating degenerative and chronic diseases. Pharmaceutical drugs and high tech approaches have, however, proven quite effective in treating many infectious, communicable diseases such as pneumonia, meningitis, and smallpox, and in responding to medical emergencies. I'm sure we would all agree that if we were in a severe automobile accident, it is an ER we would prefer to be taken.
In Western medicine, if you don't know the specific molecule involved, the options are limited. Also one must understand that Western medicine is highly dependent on a pharmaceutical industry which is foremost a business; if the illness does not merit spending millions on a new pill to treat it, than it will go untreated; or if the patients can't be cured but they can have their symptoms controlled for the rest of their lives, still with no cure, dependent on meds and meds to control the side effects of the meds, the business of medicine makes more money.
In Asian medicine, the focus is not on getting the patient dependent on their Doctor and Pharmaceuticals but to work with them, and through the course of treatment. Patients learn how to better tend themselves and pay attention to the signals of their bodies. Most importantly patients often discover the tremendous healing potential that exists within themselves and the power they have in creating wellness in their lives. If one suffers from a chronic disease of any variety, trust that a 6,000 year old medicine has encountered it before.
Each person is considered a unique individual, not a collection of symptoms to be fixed. Mind, body and spirit are intricately interwoven as components of an inseparable whole. By focusing on resolving the root cause of symptoms, acupuncturists are often able to offer patients more than temporary relief from difficult ailments.