TCM causes of diseases
In Chinese medicine, the causes of diseases are as follow:- External pathogens invasions (say what?)
- Emotions
- Weak constitution
- Lifestyle (diet, sleep, stress, exercise, drug use...)
- Environment
- Poison
- Wrong treatment (happens more often than you may think)
- Trauma (mental or physical)
And that's it. In Chinese medicine, there is always a cause, the practitioner and the patient work together to find the root of the issue, mainly the cause, and together they can try to correct and rebalance the body. It doesn't matter if the disease has been diagnosed as unknown cause by a medial professional. There is always a cause. Let me explain the above.
6 External pathogens invasion: heat, cold, dampness, dryness, wind, summer-heat.
According to text from ancient time, the above pathogens may cause illnesses. Those will often cause acute symptoms.
Let's pick cold as an example: if someone falls into a frozen lake and gets hypothermia, that's invasion of cold and the treatment would be to warm the patient and get rid of the cold. That makes sense.
If someone were to sit in the sun unprotected for a long time, they may get a heat stroke and/or sunburn. That is heat invasion so the treatment would be to cool the patient down. Is that make sense to you? It does to me. Chinese medicine is so easy to relate to and understand.
Years ago I went to the Grand Canyon and hiked down the long path to the Colorado river and back up the same winter day. It wasn't cold or hot but it was very dusty and very dry. The next day, my lips were cracked and vey painful. That is invasion of dryness.
As you can see pathogens invasion is often due to the external environment. But often those pathogens may mix and we could have invasion of dampness and heat or wind and heat. Those combinations show in a bunch of symptoms and often look like a bacteria or a virus. When someone catch the flu virus. According to Chinese medicine, it is an invasion of wind-heat which is different from a common cold which is referred to as wind-cold. Because the symptoms would be different. With the flu, we may have sore throat, fever, and often cool juices will feel good: that is wind-heat. While with a common cold, we feel chilly, achy, sneezy and a warm chicken soup may feel comforting: that is wind-cold. With bacteria or virus, we treat the symptoms and as the disease progresses, we change our treatment accordingly. The diseases are always changing and so are the treatments.
Port Moody & Coquitlam Acupuncture
604-618-1552
604-618-1552
