 People seem to have a lot of confusion about the difference between Western medicine, aka modern biomedicine, and traditional Chinese medicine in the way that they think about health and illness, and in the way that they treat a person who is currently ill. Well in this video I want to share what I think are three of the most obvious differences between the current biomedical thinking and Chinese medicine thinking and how it can really help you think about whether it's your own health symptoms or your own life. Hey it's Alex Hine, author of the book Master of the Day. Now I've included below the first link in the description is for a free PDF, five daily rituals that can possibly help you add 10 years to life with traditional Chinese medicine. You can check it out right there, the first link in the description. So the first thing here is that in traditional Chinese medicine practitioners treat according to patterns and not just individual symptoms. So when it comes to treating a pattern for example let's say a person has insomnia. Well in my understanding if you go to your physician there will probably be very few referrals to maybe getting a sleeping pill or an anti-anxiety medication or maybe an antidepressant, some kind of SSRI. But that doesn't necessarily deal with any of the underlying reason why you have a sleep problem. You know by comparison you know let's say for example you have someone who's going through a divorce, someone with digestive problems, someone who's anxiety or depressed, someone who's stressed. All of these things could cause insomnia. And yet if you're giving someone a sleeping pill how do we know what actually caused it and how do we fix it, really fix it. In traditional Chinese medicine there are dozens of reasons for insomnia. You know for example a common reason is people can have insomnia due to digestive problems. One of the most ancient sayings is that when the stomach isn't harmonious or at peace then the person can't sleep. And everyone's probably had the feeling of having indigestion after a huge meal and having god-awful sleep all night. So in Chinese medicine you always look for a pattern rather than oh they just can't sleep, oh they've constipation, oh they're just bleeding, right? Why? What's the pattern? Which means you look at other symptoms that build out a more cohesive diagnosis. So the second thing is that non-material or physiological changes come before structural changes. So modern biomedicine is obsessed with the physical form. It's obsessed with digital imaging and blood work because if it's not on that scan or if it's not in your blood work then it's not real, right? And yet tons of patients, tons, say they don't feel well, they feel off or something's wrong, they have a symptom but it doesn't show up on blood work and it doesn't show up on digital imaging. So what does that mean? Well I mean I think a lot of physicians would send the person to a shrink or put them on an antidepressant but in Chinese medicine those are key important symptoms that come before a serious diagnosis. So for example let's say you have someone who has ulcerative colitis, maybe they have blood in their stool, okay? Before that there is some point in time where before that there is a physiological change that was not showing up as blood in the stool and in traditional Chinese medicine you can not only perceive that through the diagnostic methods but you can treat it before it shows up as ulcerative colitis and blood in the stool. Now that's a huge asset for somebody who would eventually be in a very very possibly life-threatening position and you can treat it long before it gets to that stage or if it isn't that stage you're still treating the root which is the underlying physiological imbalance that produced these symptoms. You know a dramatic example is obviously a physical tumor but where does the physical tumor come from? Right? If we're obsessed with surgery we don't ever deal with why the cancer started in the first place and that's why there is a very high rate of cancer recurrence at the same time. So that did not fix why the cancer happened and in the same way we need to understand what is the root behind all of this? Behind the gallstone, behind the uterine bleeding, behind the bleeding from ulcerative colitis, behind the cancerous tumor. What is the physiological change? What is the imbalance in the body that allowed that to happen? That's what Chinese medicine emphasizes treating not on treating the tumor or the current gallstone or anything like that. The last thing is to treat the whole person. So if you have doubt you treat the whole person. If you have insomnia you treat the whole person. You have cancer you treat the whole person. What that means is that different people's constitutions and genetics express illness a little bit differently and predispose people to certain illnesses or certain manifestations of sickness differently but often in consistent patterns. And so you may have someone who's predisposed to gout-like issues, predisposed to diabetic-like issues, someone who's predisposed to insomnia, anxiety, depression, predisposed to whatever it is, digestive problems. And so you're always treating the Constitution of that human. You're not thinking okay oh we got bloating and constipation we're gonna treat bloating constipation. That may show up in many many many different patterns, many different patients and many different times of their lives. You have to treat the person which is a unique constitution with unique emotional patterns, unique life. You have to treat the human being in addition to treating the illness which is often you treat the person to treat the illness. So those are three preliminary differences between what people call Western medicine as really just modern biomedical thinking, biomedicine, and traditional Chinese medicine. And I think you can apply these things to get better results even if you are a conventional biomedical physician or a conventional practitioner of medicine. You can also apply these principles to your life to live a better life in the same vein. So I hope that helps. Again best way to stay in touch you can grab the free guide down there below the first link in the description. It's for five daily rituals that can possibly help you add 10 years to your life with traditional Chinese medicine. And then check out my last related videos on this exact topic right there and then right there.