Chinese medicine view on the causes of disease: weak constitution

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)

Click on the cause above to understand the Chinese medicine view on each of those and learn about your own health.

Weak Constitution

In Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), it is believed we're all born different and our body and mind come from our parents constitution and their health at the time of conception and during pregnancy.

Some of us are born with better health than others at the start of our life and those individuals, according to TCM, have a weaker constitution which pre-dispose them for certain illnesses. Someone born with a chronic condition is definitely weaker than a healthy baby. Also some hereditary disorders are due to a weak constitution or our parents passing on their genes to us.

So overall, like the color of your eyes, your constitution is your blue print, your DNA and cannot be changed. It is possible to keep the patient comfortable if their is an illness with weak constitution but very difficult to change it or reverse it completely.

That is the only cause of disease in TCM that is the hardest to treat or see great results from, but TCM can often slow the disease down and allow the patient a better quality of life.

Clara Cohen

Coquitlam & Port Moody Acupuncture

Chinese medicine view on the causes of disease: Emotions

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)

Click on the cause above to understand the Chinese medicine view on each of those and learn about your own health.

Emotions: Worry, over thinking, fear, shock, anxiety, anger, sadness...

In Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), emotions play a major role in one's health. It is important to experience and express our emotions on a regular basis. It is healthy. It becomes an issue when emotions are repressed or one specific one is long standing. If someone is very angry but never express it, the day that person blows, it affects their whole world and their own health. Their blood pressure may rise, they may get a migraine, vomit or have sleep disturbances.
Also, in the same token, one person may worry constantly for years. Usually they will have a difficult time falling asleep or sleeping at all. Their digestion will suffer with diarrhea and/or constipation, and feel exhausted from a constant over thinking mind.

Our physical body is connected to our mind and never separated. For example, if you have to speak in front of a crowd for work and you are anxious about public speaking. The mind will affect the body and your palm will sweat, you face may feel hot and red, you may be shaking or become nauseous. Is that make sense? It sure does to me.

I often tell my student about this study that was done in England a few years ago on women with uterus cancer. 86% of them had had some sexual abuse in their life. That is a huge number.
The impact of the emotions that an abused victim feels is tremendous: guilt, shame, fear, anger, worthlessness, low self-esteem...And especially if the woman did not receive psychological help, the emotions may have festered for years and finally formed cancerous cells in the area that was violated. It is a powerful study for it really reenforces TCM view on emotions and their effect one health.

Acupuncture and TCM has been proven to be very helpful in calming the mind and relaxing the patient especially when there is worry, over thinking, obsessive disorder, anger, frustration, depression and or anxiety.

Clara Cohen

Coquitlam and Port Moody Acupuncture

Chinese medicine view on the causes of disease: external pathogens

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.

Clara Cohen

Port Moody & Coquitlam Acupuncture
604-618-1552