Traditional Chinese Medicine versus Western Medicine

In China, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is often used in conjuction with Western medicine for the treatment of chronic disease. Both can be very effective together because TCM will treat the root of the disease while the Western medicine can mask the symptoms.  This is very commonly done in Chinese hospitals. For example, you can take Traditional Chinese herbal medicine to treat the root of asthma, but continue using a corticosteroid puffer to ease breathing immediately.  With the support of Traditional Chinese herbal medicine, the patient can gradually cut down the dosage of the puffer and eventually stop using it altogether. 

Another example is cancer treatment.  Western chemotherapy is very toxic to the body and sometimes the patient's health begins to fail because of this.  In China, Traditional Chinese herbal medicine is combined with Western chemotherapy to combat side-effects and help the patient maintain their appetite, improve sleep quality, supress nausea, stabilize mood, increase hemoglobin, and maintain stable white blood cell counts.  In this way, it is not necessary to choose one type of medicine over the other since they are both complementary.  

TCM can also predict and treat conditions that are not yet detectable by diagnostic methods commonly used by Western medicine.  For example, an EKG (electrocardiogram test) may indicate nothing is wrong and yet the patient still reports symptoms of chest pain. The patient may report low blood pressure symptoms like dizziness and fatigue, but Western medicine typically has no method to treat such symptoms.  And so, in TCM great emphasis is placed on what symptoms the patient reports and not on what diagnosis was determined by Western medicine.  This means that it is not necessary for a patient to have a Western diagnosis prior to coming in for treatment.

A TCM practitioner may choose to make use of x-ray, MRI, or blood test results, but these are not necessary in order to make a diagnosis.