Acupuncture Trinity - Preventative Medicine

The barefoot doctors of antiquity did not treat those who were already sick, but those who were not sick..."When a disease has already broken out and is only then treated, would that not be just as late as to wait for thirst before digging a well."

These words, from a classic Chinese Medical text written 4601 years ago, express the primary importance of Preventive Medicine. They are proof positive that Chinese Medicine has long valued Preventive Medicine above emergency disease intervention.

Historically in China, each village was under the care of one doctor. In return, they took care of him (fed him, clothed him, etc.). What's so different about this from the exchange that goes on in modern healthcare? The traditional Chinese doctor's job was to keep the village from getting sick in the first place. Once people got sick, they were unable to support the doctor. It made more sense for him to keep them well than to wait until they were sick.

The most prestigious position for a Chinese doctor was to become the Emperor's personal physician. However, if the Emperor got sick, the doctor could end up executed. The best physician in China was blessed and cursed; for him, preventive medicine was a matter of life and death!

Traditional Chinese doctors were rewarded for preventing disease, and punished for allowing their patients to get sick. Western Medicine is only rewarded if there are sick patients to cure. If no one got sick, most of our health care industry would quickly go out of business.

These cultural influences may be one reason why Chinese Medicine put so much into developing its complex and effective understanding of the causes of disease.

In Chinese Medicine, the only idiopathic disease is the one you have not properly diagnosed. The advantage of CM's simplicity is its ability to lucidly explain, in its own terms, 99.999% of disease processes, and then to right away be able to suggest preventive solutions.

Fortunately, Chinese Medicine (CM) contributes a great deal to our Western understanding of risk factors and behaviors. Because CM was practiced for over 4000 years without lab tests or visual studies, it developed other methods of disease detection. We are able to catch subtle manifestations earlier, and to reverse imbalances quickly instead of allowing them to worsen over years into life-threatening illnesses that finally show up as a blip on the Western Medical screen. Once we know the nature of your imbalance, we can suggest foods, habits, exercises, and herbal medicines that will stop the disease process in its tracks, or at least slow it down.

Living preventive health doesn't sound like much fun. You don't live fast and hard. You might not get to eat all the rich, greasy, or sweet foods you want. You might have to give up excessive capichino"s and alcohol. You might have to choose a job that doesn't pay as much so that you have more time to relax, to enjoy, to nurture yourself and your friends and family. You might not get the vacation in Tahiti. You might not need it. Preventive medicine calls us to re-examine every aspect of our lives, our choices, our values, and our plans.

The key is BALANCE and my goal is to help you progress rather than attain perfection. If you choose to embrace Preventive Medicine, you are bucking your culture, the mainstream media, the marketing messages that come from some of the richest and most powerful companies out there. And you are joining a growing society of health. Baby Boomers in particular have flocked to Alternative Medicine... so much so that M.D.'s are following us now! They have changed their schools to put more emphasis on compassion, rapport, and the human side of medicine. They take courses in acupuncture. They are writing books about spirituality.

It's clear that, as challenging as it may be to live healthily, Americans are sick of being sick. They want more life, more happiness, health and harmony. They want solutions. Practical ones. The kind of solutions that two-thirds of the world's population has already gotten from Chinese Medicine. Chinese Medicine (acupuncture and chinese herbs) will play a huge part in the health care solution and in your journey of health!