New to Group...FMS and TCM

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> My suggestion is that if one does not consider themselves Master

> diagnosticians (few are) then staying with the symptom picture of

the

> particular patient will keep you on track - try to ignore disease

> names unless you are sure of your analysis (with confirmations).

At

> best disease names - especially western disease names - are simple

> indicaters - they can never be definative for TCM practioners

because

> we are approching the patient from a completly differant

perspective

> than the alleopaths.

 

One thing which I stress to those new to TCM is that TCM healers

analyze and treat TCM imbalances, not Western-defined medical

conditions.

 

One of the things that stands out for me about that first

consultation with a TCM herbalist is that even though he wrote down

known Western diagnoses, he would not accept them at face value. He

made me describe the symptoms of each problem. For example, I

reported I'm hypoglycemic, and he asked, " What does that mean? " In

other words, I needed to tell him specific symptoms.

 

For readers new to TCM: Very few Western diagnoses correspond to

TCM diagnoses. One of the few which do is the common cold which in

TCM usually is Wind Cold Invasion but can be Wind Heat Invasion.

BUT, the common cold (and most cases of the flu) are not the only

possible manifestations of Wind Cold Invasion. For example some

headaches can be due to Wind Cold in the Bladder and Small Intestine

meridians.

 

What usually happens is that a Western-defined medical condition can

have one or more of several different TCM imbalances underlying

them. For example, I believe there are 6 different TCM imbalances

that can underlie peptic ulcers, and the ulcer sufferer may have one

or more of them. This is why people can have the same Western

diagnosis but the TCM treatment be different for each of them. They

have different TCM imbalances, and what TCM healers treat are TCM

imbalances.

 

This may sound confusing and even impossible until one starts to

consider that there can be quite a bit of variation in the clinical

picture among people who suffer from the same Western diagnosis.

 

As much as possible TCM healers treat all the client's problems at

the same time. This is to prevent side effects from a treatment

which helps one imbalance but can aggravate another. But sometimes

this isn't possible or as possible as one wishes it could be. The

case is just too " knotty " (complex). In knotty cases there usually

will be a standout problem - like the Kidney Yang Deficiency in my

case. That was the key to correcting (or partially correcting) some

of the other problems. For example, the Phlegm and the Qi

Stagnation problems had been triggered in part by my problems with

Cold. (Cold is one of the things which can cause Qi Stagnation.

Yang warms, activates, and dries the body. I didn't have enough

Yang to warm me properly. Also in time, Yang Deficiency can cause

the person to be very vulnerable to Invasion by Exterior Cold.)