 People are often surprised to hear that I think there are quite a few similarities with conventional medicine and Chinese medicine and this idea of what's Western or Eastern really doesn't exist fundamentally There there is no Eastern medicine because conventional biomedicine is the de facto medicine of the world now even in China So I do think though there are some key differences that are worth knowing that are very important to distinguish What traditional Chinese medicine or classical Chinese medicine is versus conventional care? Hey, I'm Dr. Alex Hein acupuncturist and doctor of Chinese medicine author of the health book master the day Which is available on Amazon? I've included a link below this video, which is for a free download Which is for daily rituals that can potentially help you add years to your life with traditional Chinese medicine as well as Links to my weekly newsletter with the latest videos So the first difference is I think this emphasis on root or branch as we call it in Chinese medicine So really what's the underlying? etiology and what is a branch or kind of symptomatic manifestation of this specific illness or the specific pattern You know you take anemia for example and Chinese medicine has some very distinct thoughts on the etiology of many cases of anemia and Having a conventional care, you know, you take an iron supplement boom most of the time the anemia is gone But with a lot of primarily female patients. I have it keeps coming back throughout varying phases of their life and treating you know taking an iron supplement is great if it really fixes it long term But for some people it doesn't now in Chinese medicine We often say that the spleen or the digestion nourishes the blood And so what I find is that was very interesting Even in clinical studies you can use formulas that primarily work on the digestion from a western perspective but they actually improve anemia biomarkers And in Chinese medicine that is often the way you treat anemia is through the digestion as one of the ways to treat it One of the patterns that gets to the root cause So I find that in Chinese medicine It's very interesting because you have formulas that can often treat both at the same time They're designed where you have three or four herbs in a formula to treat the root and three or four herbs to treat Symptomatic manifestations The second big difference you see clinically is the body being viewed as separate systems or parts versus An actual systemic approach To the whole body looking at the entire system of the human body and the physiology or the pathology So for example, you take SIBO where patients have a lot of bloating They're constantly producing gas a lot of food sensitivities or food allergies Now in conventional care one of the common unfortunately treatments used is antibiotics Whether it's something like refaximin or another kind of antibiotic And I find that for some patients this helps But where are they a year from now? You know widespread antibiotic use is extremely damaging in a huge percentage of patients specifically in a case of chronic illness less so with acute illnesses like infections or urinary tract infections or kidney infections But I see them being used excessively for chronic illness And what's very discouraging is that they're used often multiple times in a year Like for example, earaches in children The big problem is that I have not seen many cases where that permanently stops those symptoms and in fact a lot of the time the symptoms get progressively worse or Worse in a sense that they get progressively more chronic So there's not only not been a resolution There's just a prolonging or extending of the symptoms Now again, this is looking at something as an individual part versus as a system So great for the time being the SIBO symptoms have gotten better But what about the rest of the pattern the whole body? What's going on now with the person's mood? Do they develop an anxiety disorder after giving that? I've seen that clinically many many times after antibiotic usage for Lyme disease very commonly I've seen patients almost immediately develop anxiety depression and zomnia symptoms that can take years to heal I've seen children with Suddenly a mild cold expression they continually get that after rounds of antibiotics they're getting more severe from a Chinese medicine perspective cold symptoms like recurring earaches or now they're getting bronchitis and it's not just Localized to you know the nose and the sinuses now it's gone deeper from our perspective The third big difference and frankly something that gets under my skin is that whether it is explicit or implicit Often the approach in conventional care is effectively medication for life for most internal medicine issues And in Chinese medicine, it's really about restoring physiology Now what I find is that Chinese formulas are very effective in my experience For addressing and managing some of the symptoms of a lot of illnesses And also in my experience after a certain duration of time with a skilled practitioner The a normal ish state of physiology Can be attained which means that someone who goes from having migraines daily or SIBO symptoms or anxiety symptoms daily to Now maybe once for a few months or only a couple times a year And that's strongly linked to some unbalancing factor in the environment something going on in life Or a you know a dramatic change in diet over a short period of time I don't seem that to be true with conventional care's approach to chronic illness Where most of my patients that get acid reflux meds or antidepressants are on them often for life And I think that that's you know from the perspective of conventional care If they do not believe these things can be reversed or managed through lifestyle and through Chinese formulas or acupuncture or whatever Then it makes sense logically to take medications for life But I don't see that to be true clinically So a big difference is treat this symptom with a medication for life to manage your physiology or pathology And the Chinese medicine side it's trying to restore normal physiology So that these symptoms are no longer there the fourth difference. I would say is Seeing the mind and psychology as separate from the body and therefore they are treated separately Versus being the same part of the same web effectively I mean I can think of something right now an awful life experience an awkward experience Something stupid. I've said and I can get sweaty and clammy And the same way I can have a clear mind But I can get on a roller coaster and I can also feel clammy and sweaty So it's very tricky This interplay between the mind the psychology and the emotions and I think it's always been complicated Since the dawn of time that humans and physicians have noticed this link And in conventional care, this is also a difficult aspect of medicine is psychiatry or mental health mental illness, whatever they call it now I think the big problem Is that because so many illnesses that are very common like for example, let's say anxiety and depression viewed I believe in conventional care as mental illness And yet the problem is that for those specifically they have such a contextual component That This guy his dad and his mom just died in a car accident and his wife divorced him Does he now have mental illness or is he going through the biggest grief period of his life? And it's going to take a couple years for that to heal The problem is maybe if he addressed those in a holistic fashion working with many practitioners addressing it from all the various angles And focusing on his healing in three years the differences He won't have those symptoms anymore versus if he was on an antidepressant He may still be on it in 10 years with no resolution And so what I see is this very damaging dissociation of the mind from the body And so it results in people not only believing that you can only treat anxiety or depression From the mind as if you could only treat stuff in here With a method that goes in here like journaling something cognitive like cognitive behavioral therapy Or an antidepressant that supposedly only works on here, which is not true because it affects your physiology This just this very Artificial split I think is very damaging because it leads to an incomplete approach to treating these kind of illnesses The last big difference I think is an emphasis on what is Structural versus functional to just broadly categorize things So conventional care is strongly focused on what it can measure Which makes sense from a scientific perspective If you have 100 patients come in and they have all these different stories And you're not sure what is real and what is not real Focus on what you know and can measure right? I firmly agree with that But it shouldn't be the only data we take into account I think this often runs into problems Where a disorder is functional and many disorders are physiological or functional in nature And there's nothing necessarily structural you can easily see I see this a lot in anxiety depression But even on a more a lower level I see this in a lot of digestive disorders like IBS Which is often a functional disorder where a patient gets an endoscopy colonoscopy Most of the time I see them they're normal or it says there's mild colitis And the person's like well, what do I do now? Right What do I do now? This is very difficult for physicians and conventional care because you can't really measure it What do you measure? What do you treat these kinds of physiological disorders that have not yet progressed to a structural level Are often the forte of Chinese medicine. They're often extraordinarily Effectively treated in my experience You can get great symptomatic relief with acupuncture and Chinese formulas And I think these ancient physicians in Chinese medicine were always concerned with more of the physiology than the structure So even though we have historical physicians who emphasize surgery A lot of Chinese medicine is concerning Why physiologically has this been happening and why even more important has this not been healing Some people get symptoms of anxiety or depression or IBS and then after a certain duration the body recovers And some people they don't Why is that is a very important question and not always so easy to understand But Chinese medicine has some very very sophisticated Tools to understand and to explain that and in my experience to get great results with those conditions So these are five. I think very big differences between conventional care and traditional Chinese medicine I do think we have a lot in common in the way we approach and treat illness and I think Some of the overlap is very important as well as some of the differences are also very important For our patients to get the best results and the best healing that is possible All right Now if you'd like to become a patient of mine either locally or online via telemedicine There's a link below to contact my clinic And again, if you'd like to stay in touch otherwise to get my free newsletter and the latest video updates There's also a free download below for that free guide for you there Okay, and again, I have two related videos on this topic for you over here