Traditional Chinese Disease Categories & Their Importance in Modern Clinical Pr

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Traditional Chinese Disease Categories & Their Importance in Modern

Clinical

Practice

by Bob Flaws, Dipl. Ac. & C.H., FNAAOM

 

In TCM there are pattern diagnoses and disease diagnoses. For

example, the common cold is the disease, and the possible underlying

patterns for the common cold are Exterior Wind Cold (invading the

body - the more common Root of the common cold) and Wind Heat.

 

" One of the key steps in the step-by-step methodology of standard

professional Chinese medicine is the making of a traditional Chinese

diagnosis. In Chinese, this is referred to as bian bing, disease

discrimination. Within Chinese medicine, there are several hundred

traditional Chinese diseases or bing. Sometimes these are the same as

modern

Western disease categories and sometimes they are different. For

instance,

headache is a disease category in both Chinese and Western medicine.

However, there is no identical equivalent between wasting and

thirsting (or

wasting thirst), sudden turmoil, malaria, running piglet, mounting,

or lily

disease and a single Western medical disease. "

 

The Chinese recognize symptoms and diseases that are not recognized

in Western Medicine. Sometimes a Chinese disease/symptom does

correspond to a Western-defined medical problem, but sometimes it

does not. Flaws gives an excellent example when it comes to the TCM

disease/symptom Wasting and Thirsting:

 

" For instance, based on the patient's main clinical signs and

symptoms (as

opposed to laboratory and imagining tests), someone with diabetes

mellitus

might be diagnosed as suffering from the Chinese disease of thirsting

and

wasting (xiao ke) based on their excessive thirst and progressive

weight

loss. Likewise, so might a person with HIV infection in the advanced

AIDS

stage. "

 

Not all cases of diabetes are cases of Wasting and Thirsting Disease,

and Wasting and Thirsting Disease is not restricted to diabetes.

Some of the diseases/symptoms recognized in are not

recognized at all in Western Medicine, and Flaws names some of these.

 

Flaws reports that in modern Chinese medicine, the move is toward

dual diagnoses - both the Chinese diagnosis and the Western

diagnosis. But, Western MDs and DOs who want to incorporate and use

Chinese medicine effectively within their practices still need to

learn the Chinese diseases/symptoms (as well as the TCM patterns).

When making a Western diagnosis, use the Western criteria. When

making a TCM diagnosis, use the TCM criteria. Doing so will increase

your knowledge of and wisdom in both systems. You'll be surprised how

often a knowledge of TCM will cause you to start considering things

in Western medicine that you never thought of before, and how the

knowledge of Western medicine will cause you to consider new ways of

doing things in TCM. For example, the ancient Chinese were not

enhancing acupuncture with electricity, but the modern Chinese do

(when appropriate). (Keep in mind when studying TCM that the Chinese

tend to be very pragmatic.)

 

One thing that strikes many Westerners when they first see a TCM

healer is how the healer refuses to take just a Western diagnosis.

For example, if the client reports a Western diagnosis of

hypoglycemia, the TCM healer wants to know what symptoms the person

is having. Aside from the fact that not all cases of hypoglycemia

are the same (assume nothing), the noting of symptoms aids the healer

in arriving at the correct TCM diagnosis, both disease(s) and pattern

(s).

 

There are a limited number of patterns which can underlie any TCM

disease/symptom.

 

" Once we know what a patient's Chinese disease diagnosis is, then we

can go

to the Chinese medical literature and see what the patterns are that

are

generally agreed upon to be the main ones in patients with that or

those

diseases. Over 2,000 years of professional practice, 100 generations

of

literate Chinese doctors have observed and recorded the main or most

commonly presenting patterns for each of the several hundred

traditional

diseases plus their treatment principles and various treatment

protocols

based on those principles. In other words, the Chinese disease

diagnoses

help us narrow down the number of potential patterns we need to

consider in

our initial working hypothesis and help focus our further questioning

and

examination. "

 

This process is very much like tracing or writing a computer

program. If X disease/symptom is present then possible patterns are

J, K, L.

 

TCM diseases/symptoms are divided into different categories. For

example:

 

" Diseases of the head

 

Head distention (tou zhang)

 

Head shaking (tou yao)

 

Headache (tou tong)

 

Hemilateral or one-sided headache (pain tou tong)

 

Dizziness & vertigo (xuan yun)

 

Heavy-headedness (tou zhong)

 

Head sweating (tou han)

 

Numbness of the scalp (tou pi ma mu)

 

Hair loss (tou fa)

 

Premature greying of the hair (xu fa zao bai)

 

Yellowing of the hair (fa huang)

 

Hot flashes in the head & face (tou mian hong re)

 

Swelling of the face (mian fu)

 

Deviated mouth and eyes (kou yan wai xie)

 

Facial tic (yan mian chou chu)

 

Numbness of the face (yan mian ma mu)

 

Facial pain (mian bu tong teng)

 

Supraorbital bone pain (mei ling gu tong) "

 

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