What is traditional Chinese medicine?
A few thousand years old, traditional Chinese medicine (known as MTC) represents a 'system', that is to say a set of theories and practices concerning humans and their health. Its relative complexity, for Westerners, is mainly due to the following facts:
- It has its own philosophical and symbolic base
- She sees the body, heart and mind as a whole
- She considers phenomena not in itself, but from relationships between them. Therefore, the health of an organ or a person depends on multiple factors all linked together
- It uses several usual terms in a different sense from what is usually heard in the West.
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Different practices of traditional Chinese medicine
To ensure good health, traditional Chinese medicine uses 5 main practices which are:
- the Chinese massage Tuina which may include the use of chinese cupping and guasha ;
- l'Acupuncture which includes the use of needles and moxa ;
- Chinese pharmacopoeia (use of medicinal herbs);
- Chinese dietetics;
- Qi Gong exercises.
People trained in 5 practices bear the title of doctor of Chinese medicine. Only trained in one or some of these practices, they carry a specific title as Tuina practitioner or acupuncturist for example.
General principle of traditional Chinese medicine
Traditional Chinese medicine aims to maintain the harmony of Qi energy inside the body as well as between body and the external elements. There health is linked to the body's ability to maintain the dynamics necessary to face attacks. There disease manifests itself when the body loses its adaptability.
Each individual has a particular constitution where the different elements interact according to a balance of their own. This is called the terrain. In two people, the same symptom such as a headache does not, a priori, is of the same cause, but of an imbalance specific to each of them.
To keep health, the harmony must reside in each of the elements of the whole as well as between its different elements. And also on all levels: in each of the organs of the individual, and between these organs; in the individual, and between the individual and his environment. Traditional Chinese medicine does not treat symptoms but their cause. She aims to treat the person so holistic.