HERBALCONSULTS

Food and Disease in Chinese Medicine

Physical health became an integral part of the whole Chinese spiritual and social life with the Taoist principles of balance and correlation of forces applied to diet and medicine. Food is taken not just for survival but also to constantly balance and tune up both physical and mental health. Foods are categorized according to their therapeutic value into "cold" foods (such as fruits and vegetables) that were used to reduce "heat" in the body, "hot" foods (such as fatty and spiced foods) used to heat up a body that is cold. "Supplementary" foods (internal organs of animals) were taken to strengthen the corresponding organ in the human body. Diet and medicine can't be separated and together form powerful medical diets. Balancing the opposing forces of the yin and yang of our metabolism is the paramount concern. To avoid disease the equilibrium of yin and yang has to be maintained. Imbalances are corrected by applying the opposing food, when any of them is in excess or deficiency. For correcting imbalances the proper diet is always the first step. Herbal medicine is prescribed only if diet fails to balance the body, or for quicker results to assist dietary change.

This clearly exemplifies the nature of Chinese Herbal Medicine that focuses on preventive care, and the use of herbs as special foods. A physician that had to wait for the onset of obvious signs and symptoms of disease before treating the problem was considered inferior. It is interesting how Chinese medicine drew from observations made of their political system (again that is another story.)

The famous internal medicine Book of Huang Di (The Yellow Emperor’s classic of internal medicine) states: "To administer medicines to diseases which have already developed and to suppress revolts which have already developed is comparable to the behavior of those persons who begin to dig a well after they have become thirsty, and of those who begin to make their weapons after they have already engaged in a battle." The story of the famous physician of the Zhou dynasty Bian Que shows this approach to preventive care: he visited the nobleman Huan Qi and realized immediately that he needed to be treated. Huan Qi replied that he was feeling well and rejected Bian Que's advice. After Bian Que had left, Huan Qi said that all the physicians are interested in is making profits. However, Bian Que returned twice warning Huan Qi more urgently each time. At his fourth meeting he just saw Huan Qi from the distance and left immediately. When asked for the reason by a servant sent by Huan Qi he replied that on his first audience the disease was just in the pores of the skin and that it could have been cured with hot compresses. When it reached the blood circulation on the next visit it could have been cured with bloodletting and acupuncture. When it reached the stomach it could have been cured with herbal wines. Now it has reached the bones and there is no help for that. Five days after the servant delivered this observation Huan Qi got ill and died shortly after.

Chinese physicians reject the idea of instant remedies, considering most illness to be the result of deep-rooted problems that can only be cured with continuous long-range treatment focussing on the root of the problem.

Without treating the disease at the root it will simply manifest itself again and again in different parts of the body. This approach of total treatment and preventive care is becoming more and more influential in Western medicine. Chinese science and technology including medical science had been 1,000 years ahead of developments in the West well into the Ming dynasty (1600). Many drugs now "discovered" by Western medicine have been applied over centuries by Chinese herbal physicians. The curative properties of many of the 700 drugs of Chinese herbal medicine tested by modern science have been confirmed, others science can not yet understand.