The Treatment of Modern Western - Biblio.nhat-nam.ru

INTRODUCTION 11the first thing to do is determine what are the main Chinesedisease categories which correspond to the Western diseasesmain clinical manifestations. 11 For instance, two of the mainclinical manifestations of Lyme disease, a disease not yet discussedin the Chinese language Chinese medical literature asfar as we know, are joint pain and fatigue. Joint pain correspondsto the Chinese disease category of impediment or bi,while fatigue is simply fatigue. Each of these is a traditionalChinese disease category in its own right about which there isvoluminous Chinese literature. Therefore, every Chinesemedical book and journal article dealing with a modernWestern disease always begins by identifying the Chinese diseasecategories covering the same clinical manifestations.Every entry level student of either acupuncture or Chineseinternal medicine will have studied the disease causes, diseasemechanisms, pattern discrimination, treatment principles,and treatments of 20 or more of these Chinese disease categories.This is basic, foundational material which all professionalpractitioners are supposed to have well memorized andat their fingertips. If one knows that the chronic symptoms ofLyme disease revolve mostly around impediment and fatigueand one knows how to pattern discriminate and treat impedimentand fatigue, then, voilá!, one knows how to pattern discriminateand treat Lyme disease. This is why the reader willsee that the first category of Chinese medical informationafter the Western medical description of each disease coveredin this book is a statement of the Chinese diseases which correspondto that Western disease. For more information onthese traditional Chinese diseases, the reader is recommendedto Philippe Sionneau and Lü Gang’s seven volume series, TheTreatment of Disease in TCM also published by Blue PoppyPress. This is the largest and most complete collection of patternsand treatments of Chinese disease categories yet toappear in English.Further, most Western diseases are covered by more than oneChinese disease. If one knows the patterns for each of theChinese diseases manifesting in a given patient, this can helpone determine the patient’s most likely core patterns. Forinstance, let us say that a systemic lupus erythmatosuspatient has joint or impediment pain and periodic eruptionsof a red, macular rash which, as a disease entity, is calledcinnabar toxins in Chinese medicine. The most commonpatterns describing the Chinese disease of impediment are:A. Wind damp coldB. Wind damp heatC. Qi & blood vacuity not nourishing thesinews & vesselsD. Liver-kidney yin vacuityE. Kidney yang vacuityF. Blood stasis blocking the network vesselsThe Chinese patterns covering cinnabar toxins are alwayssome kind of evil heat which has entered the blood division.Although it is possible for a person to have two different diseasemechanisms for two different but simultaneous Chinesediseases, this is not the most likely scenario, especially whenboth Chinese diseases are pathognomonic symptoms of asingle Western disease. Since, according to Chinese medicine,the entire human bodymind is a single integratedwhole, it makes more sense to suppose that there is a singledisease mechanism at work causing both disease manifestations.Therefore, when one looks at the above list of patterns(and hence disease mechanisms) at work in the above conditions,only some kind of evil heat is common to bothChinese diseases. Therefore, we should immediately suspectthat there is evil heat.We can further complicate this scenario by saying that thispatient also has occasional bouts of diarrhea. The main patternsassociated with the Chinese disease of diarrhea are:A. Wind coldB. Cold & dampnessC. Damp heat (including summerheat)D. Food stagnationE. Spleen qi vacuityF. Spleen vacuity with damp encumbranceG. Spleen-kidney yang vacuityH. Lingering heat evils damaging yinSince heat toxins (i.e., cinnabar toxins) may develop fromdamp heat and since damp heat may cause both diarrhea andimpediment, it makes sense that the most likely pattern inthis patient’s case is damp heat. Armed with that supposition,we should then examine and question the patient toconfirm or deny that hypothesis.We refer to this method of determining the most likely hypotheticalpattern from which to begin our pattern discriminationas “triangulation.” In geometry and, therefore, surveying,triangulation means working from what you know inorder to figure out what you do not know. When we attemptto discriminate any patient’s pattern, we should have somebasic hunches about the most likely patterns based on thepatient’s sex, age, body type, coloring, carriage, affect, andvoice. Determining which patterns are common to all thepatient’s named Chinese disease categories should furtherrefine the most likely list of suspects. Then questioning andexamination merely confirm or deny those workinghypotheses. On the next page, Fig. 2 shows this method oftriangulation in visual form.