East-West Medicine: Expanding the Toolkit for Better Health

I mean, maybe we could just step back and kind of, how do you even just define those? I mean, Western medicine, we say, is conventional medicine.

But I mean, how would you define that for our listeners?

Western medicine is conventional medicine.

It's the typical medicine that we learn in medical schools these days.

Western medical school, yeah.

And then Eastern medicine, I would say, is a whole systems of medicine.

for for our purposes here i'm going to say traditional chinese medicine because that's what rolls off my tongue but it is eastern medicine i mean there's korean traditional medicine and you know japanese traditional medicine but i'll speak from my view which is traditional chinese medicine and traditional chinese medicine is a whole systems of medicine it has its own theories diagnoses we look at the tongue we feel the pulse you know there's different tools that we use to diagnose And then it has its own practices, and practices meaning therapies.

In the U.S., acupuncture is the dominant practice.

But in China, Chinese herbs are the dominant practice, right? But there are five practices.

acupuncture or acupoint stimulation, which means you don't actually have to use a needle.

You can stimulate the acupressure point through acupressure, cupping, you know, other modalities.

There's the Chinese herbs.

There is lifestyle, like mind-body medicine.

work, which is qigong, tai chi.

There's a body work massage, tui na.

That's a special type of Chinese medicine massage.

And then last one is lifestyle.

So the lifestyle is really the piece that it's whole person care.

We're talking and asking about sleep and diet and stress.

Are you overworking? Are you overexercising? there's that piece that really helps patients understand what is at the root of their symptoms and how do you tie it all together with all of their symptoms.

I think that's so helpful because I think, you know, I think we often I'll just say for I think especially Americans think of everything is very binary.

Right.

And so even just saying East West, but like you're putting them together at the center.

Right.

I think we're trying to get away from either or.