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

12 THE TREATMENT OF MODERN WESTERN DISEASES WITH CHINESE MEDICINEIMPEDIMENTWind damp coldWind damp heatQi & blood vacuity not nourishing the sinews & vesselsLiver-kidney yin vacuityKidney yang vacuityBlood stasis blocking the network vesselCINNABAR TOXINSHeat in blood divisionCOMMON POTENTIALDISEASE MECHANISMDamp heatDIARRHEAWind coldCold & dampnessDamp heat (including summerheat)Food stagnationSpleen qi vacuitySpleen vacuity with damp encumbranceSpleen-kidney yang vacuityLingering heat evils damaging yinFIGURE 23. DIFFICULT TO TREAT, KNOTTY DISEASESIn modern Chinese medicine, the kinds of Western diseasesdiscussed in this book are mostly referred to as “difficult totreat, knotty diseases.” This means that they are chronic,complex conditions commonly developed over decades dueto faulty diet, lifestyle, and mental-emotional habits compoundedby constitution and aging. 12 According to WanWen-rong:So-called knotty, difficult diseases mean diseaseswhich present-day practitioners in clinical practicefeel thorny. The question revolves around knottiness[due to their complicated nature] in discriminatingpatterns and, [therefore,] difficulty in determiningtreatment. 13These conditions are mostly not self-limiting, and they rarelypresent as a single, discrete pattern. In fact, based on ourclinical experience treating Western patients with these kindsof diseases, we would say that most patients will display notless than three, often five, and sometimes eight or more patternsconcomitantly. This means that one cannot rely on thesimple formulas for simple patterns which tend to be thenorm in textbooks such as this. However, that does not meanthat such multipattern presentations are insoluble. Complexcombinations are made up of nothing but simple aggregates.In order to treat such complex presentations, all one ever hasto do is tease apart the individual patterns, state the treatmentprinciples for each pattern, and insure that the treatmentplan (whether acupuncture or Chinese medicinal)addresses each of these stated principles.Wan Wen-rong lists five keys for improving one’s treatmentof difficult, knotty diseases:1. Strengthening one’s proficient mastery ofbasic theoryTo us, this means memorizing verbatim the key statementsof fact in Chinese medicine and understanding what thosefacts mean. The more of these facts one has memorized and