Over a quarter of the world’s population turns to Chinese Medicine for a significant portion of their healthcare, making it the most vibrant and flourishing of the traditional medical systems still existing today. Indeed, it has proven itself so effective that it has spread far beyond its cultural borders and taken root right around the globe, with Australia, USA and Western Europe embracing its many virtues with particular enthusiasm.

Part of the reason for its increased popularity worldwide is that Chinese Medicine and Western Medicine are not in competition with each other. The strengths of Western Medicine are different from those of Chinese Medicine: screening tests such as the pap smear for cervical cancer for instance, provide far earlier detection of insidious pathology brewing than a standard Chinese Medicine diagnosis would. The intrinsic worth of Western Medicine (WM) lies in its ability to analyse molecular and cellular changes and to design medical intervention which operate on the same level. Similarly, its capacity to respond to medical crisis with emergency medicine is phenomenal and unrivalled.

However, it is this very focus on the minute and microscopic level of disease that prevents it from taking a ‘whole person’ view. To a certain extent, the deficiencies and problems that arise from modern approaches to healthcare are due to the very factors that underlie its strength.

Conversely, Chinese Medicine is fundamentally borne out of the ‘whole person’ perspective. Its medical theory offers an insightful map of the entire human experience. This is held in the mind of the practitioner whilst he or she considers the many inter-related physiological, emotional and psychological factors influencing the patient’s condition, many of which are often overlooked by the modern medical paradigm. However, used intelligently in tandem or in combination and played to their respective strengths, Chinese Medicine and modern Western biomedicine can form useful allies to enhance healthcare outcomes.

Health is not a fixed state. Life is fundamentally a process of change, constant change. Our biology reflects this and is itself a dynamic process of constant change that continually orchestrates infinitesimal responses to change to achieve a finely-balanced and optimal homeostasis. By extension, we are not operating in isolation from our environment either but are wholly subject to and influenced by the world in which we live. In health, climactic and seasonal changes will be correspondingly registered and adapted to by our biology, albeit largely unconsciously. However, illness can occur, in part, as a result of a reduced ability to adapt successfully to the seasons, rhythms and cycles of natural order.

While management of an acute or threatening condition with pharmaceutical or surgical intervention can be crucial, it is equally crucial to help the body restore its own capacity to respond optimally and effectively to the process of change that lies at the heart of health, disease and indeed life itself. At times, this can involve a patient taking medication to stabilise the acute nature of certain symptoms as a short term measure, while acupuncture and Chinese Herbal Medicine undertake the longer term task of restoring the body’s natural capacity to function healthily of its own accord.