在外國人眼中，中醫和西醫是同等地位的嗎？

12-28

怎麼說呢？

在大多數西方人眼裡並不存在「西醫」這種概念。大概只有「現代醫學」，也就只有一個主流體系了。大家基本上都認可這個領域是唯一科學靠譜的。而且所有人都認為這是全世界科學家一起努力合作研發和改進的龐大領域。相比其他科學領域，有一些地方還屬於探索實驗階段。

（西醫這個說法，還真的是中國特色）

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以我爸爸為典型英國人來看，他承認超多現代治療和醫藥都來自各地傳統醫學，但是他不會接受人家的迷信體系解釋。雖然他是專業（「西醫」）醫生，但是他也很認真很中肯看待一切突破。沒有效率證據的東西，或者沒有嚴格試驗過的那些，他一率不認可。

這一點我也很欣賞爸爸。畢竟他大學是學生物化學的，後來才學醫，肯定有一定的判斷能力。

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以個人經歷來看。有時候我真的會吃中藥（我女朋友會給我推薦一些）。在英國也會吃，雖然運過來很麻煩（很慢），至少很多時候解決了問題。有些讓我感覺很有效，也有些實在讓我感覺沒啥用，很失望。但是自己經歷又不能說明什麼，因為不是一種嚴格實驗。

所以整體來看，還是保持了一種懷疑態度。以前寫過類似回答（中醫是科學嗎？中醫和西醫的區別是什麼？ - Lightwing 的回答 - 知乎）。

至於中藥各種玄幻的理論，我肯定是不信的。沒有提供證據，或者根本無法否證，一點道理都沒有（甚至都不敢去做實驗）。對我來說都是玄學，跟宗教沒啥區別。

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也有少數西方人相信各國傳統醫學理論，但是絕不是主流看法。

如果調查一大批西方人，問中醫與現代醫是否平等這樣的問題，估計沒什麼人贊同。

主要問題在於：就算這些中醫療法真的很有用，下一步就得把它的作用研究清楚。涉及到化學和細胞方面的機制影響。到這時候，都做了實驗了，已經不僅僅是中醫，而是成為了現代醫學的一部分。

最後，各國傳統醫學到底是什麼？很難說。

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前天在牛津，有個嘉賓（@sun jiahao）問我中醫與深度學習（計算機）的區別。折騰了一段時間，還真有點相似；某些中醫方法解決問題又無法解釋，真的很像。

可是回倫敦的火車上我又在想：不同深度學習模型的結果都是可以理性對比的。不僅允許對比，又可以重複實驗，量化證明誰的模型最厲害。可是中醫，非常缺少這種對比思路，完全不一樣了。

（就算是嚴格證明過的中醫，效率高於一切其它東西，那還屬於傳統醫學範圍嗎？）

當然不是。
中醫在國外被歸為替代醫學，跟跳大神，印第安巫術等等一類的。就是不能用醫保的

不是。
中醫作為補充和替代醫學，不能作為一個整體進入官方支持的現代醫療系統。執照和准入系統也不一樣。
但是中醫的一些具體診療技術和產品，可能會被有選擇地納入提供現代醫學醫療服務的機構。

要強調的是，在國內，中西醫也只是名義上等同，實際操作中管理規範差別很大。

澳洲對中醫應該是比較好的了

我讀的UTS大學把中醫歸類在健康科學health science 下面

主要是兩部分，中醫草藥和針灸

讀出來了可以做草藥師和針灸按摩師

讀完或者在讀中都是無法轉科到醫科的

C10186v9 Bachelor of Health Science in Traditional Chinese MedicineC10186v9 Bachelor of Health Science in Traditional Chinese Medicine

沒有中醫，只有作為醫學輔助的藥方和針灸什麼的，辨證論治現代醫學也在用，整體觀念不新鮮。

當然不是。

就好比，在中國，普通話和英語是同樣的地位嗎？

外國人是指的哪國呢？你是指以現代醫學為主流，中醫為替代醫學的歐美么？歐美一些地方，比如加州，針灸是享醫保的.人家是不鼓勵不貶低，有效果就研究，能治病就運用。

還是指國旗由被我們「唾棄」得玄學八卦的太極圖與乾坤離坎四卦組成的國家呢？在他們國家國旗圖案是他們的文化，他們已經要把「韓醫」申遺了啊，另外被中醫黑唾棄的李時珍是韓國的，孫思邈可能也是韓國的，張仲景黃帝老子沒準都是韓國的。
中醫黑們，你們進錯片場了，去韓國噴吧！去拯救或徵收他們的智商稅去！

日本？不要提日本，我學中醫的朋友說等他畢業要去日本繼續學習？！我不知道為啥！

不是。
不是一個體系。理法方葯特殊性導致中醫在國外立法、進醫保等問題一直是大問題，不過一直有人在推動這些問題的解決。
中醫在國外一般是作為替代醫學出現。
其實在中國，雖然立法保護中醫地位，但你看知乎上多少人黑中醫，就知道其實中醫過的日子也沒多好，在國內都遠遠談不上和現代醫學平起平坐的同等地位。

聲明：以下回答均搬自Quora中醫話題板塊，限於篇幅，僅選取30條。

註：TCM=Traditional Chinese medicine（中醫）

評：在Quora上瀏覽了近百條回答，覺得都相對比較客觀，平和討論，各抒己見，暫未發現冷嘲熱諷戾氣開撕的現象，不知過會兒知乎這邊會是怎樣。

———正文———

1、 I evaluate Chinese Medicine by results. I"ve been to a Chinese Medicine practitioner who was trained in China. He helped my migraines a lot. I later went to an acupuncturist trained in the US. Her treatments were not as effective. Maybe it was placebo effect, maybe not. I certainly don"t think my anecdotal evidence is good evidence for the general population.

I evaluate individual Chinese Medical practitioners by their credentials and by patient satisfaction reviews. For evaluation of the field as a whole, I would try to find research-based evidence that their practice works.

As to why mainland Chinese people are rejecting this traditional medicine, I would guess that it might be because they see it as old-fashioned or less effective than modern techniques. It wouldn"t surprise me if people in the other countries mentioned see it the same way.

2、 The answer to that very much depends on who you ask. I have had MDs refer their patients to me. I"ve also had MDs tell their patients not to waste their time with "quack medicine." Chinese medicine is rooted in a system of thought that predates western medicine by 1000s of years. It is difficult to quantify by western medical standards.

3、On a personal level I would say yes. Both my husband and I were treated with TCM and did very well on it. My husband had something on his foot that would not go away. He was prescribed various creams and iodine spray, but months of this made no difference. Taking herbal teas prescirbed by a TCM practitioner and some herbal creams handled the situation permanently.

I had a similar experience with a persistent cough, just drinking the special tea made a real difference.

TCM is now our preferred treatment for most things. What I liked about seeing a TCM practitioner was that he was very straightforward. When I did not respond to a treatment he told me he could not help me and did not try to sell me something else.

4、I believe that the answer to your question really boils down to the environment that the individual was raised in as well as their personal experience. There are multiple factors that can help someone believe or discredit TCM.

If someone was raised in an environment which TCM was used often then yes they probably will end up believing in it. The same applies to if they have had a good response to it. However if they took it and it didn"t work for them, they will discredit it and choose not to believe in it.

Personally I believe (to a certain extent) about the efficiency of it, however I still rely heavily on western medicine due to the evidence proving its efficiency.

5、I don"t have much knowledge about Chinese Medicine like Thomas Pearce but had witness someone close to me getting better from using Chinese medicine.

My mom has a serious kidney malfunctioning where her kidney function only left 20%. She went to several doctors and most of them gave her some medication and recommended strict diet but it didn"t work well.

As days go by, despite taking the medicine given, she was suffering from serious itch all over her body, redness can be seen all over her skin and soon she started suffering from joint pain rendering her unable to walk properly or even stand up straight.

As a last resort we decided to send her to a doctor who we called a Chinese/Western hybrid, a doctor who is trained both in Chinese and western medicine.

The doctor gave my mom some Chinese medicine and after a few months, she began to feel better. Currently, she is able to eat normally, all the itch and redness on her skin went away and she can walk properly like she used to. But of course she still have to watch her diet properly but it was a lot better than taking "western" medicine.

6、I "m not going to be a real doctor but I know enough pharmacology to scientifically conclude that TCM (and Ayurveda) has medicinal value. It has been long understood and appreciated that natural compounds have strong medicinal properties AND that the combined effects of hitting multiple pathways does produce effects that single-target allopathic medicine won"t achieve. This resonates personally as my great-grandparents and grandparents made their entry into the pharma industry by extracting compounds from the skin of the mangosteen and their legacy is a large part of why I am following their footsteps into the drug industry.

Where I break from TCM is that a large, non-trivial chunk of the discipline is pseudoscience and rightfully should be generalized with Homeopathy. I also think that the marketing of the discipline of "safe" and "natural" gives patients the wrong impressions and unwisely causes them to not trust western medicine. Furthermore, the philosophy of achieving "balance" and "harmony" in the body is no different from Western medicine with the exception that they come up with different terms and metrics for measuring such things. Every cardiologist uses signs from the face and feet to diagnose the heart; they just have a mechanism to explain it.

TCM has its uses in medicine. I certainly used Gua Sha (tiger balm) as a kid and I wouldn"t rule out acupuncture if the situation arises. Multiple-targeted therapy is becoming a measurable and drugable option as system biology matures along with work by pharmacologists like Tommy Cheng. Combined with traditional Western Medicine, there is synergy between the two approaches and there is a lot of alternative medicine that can be considered "medicine". However, unless there is areasonable molecular mechanism, I would rule out TCM.

7、That actually depends on the doctor . . . Those who are more accepting of the idea that western medicine doesn"t know everything there is to know about how the human body works, and are open to trying new things that are not necessarily accepted by the mainstream medical community (or explained by scientific studies) tend to think that TCM has some things to offer patients.

On the other hand, doctors who refuse to consider any treatment without multiple scientific studies backing it, tend to think that TCM is useless and any positive results are caused by the placebo effect. These types of doctors forget that willow bark tea was easing pain for centuries before there were any studies proving that salicin relieved pain, and that ginger relieved nausea for centuries before the studies proving that it works were done. (Aspirin was originally derived from willow bark.) They also tend to assume that a lack of proof that a claim about something is true is the same as proof that it is untrue. This is a very common logical fallacy, since the only way to prove anything, positive OR negative, is to test it.

8、I was a nurse for ten years or so. I believe in science and that orthodox medicine is always the best first option.

Some years ago my wife had a persistent cough. After three courses of antibiotics there was no improvement. She, being Asian, decided to visit the local Chinese medicine shop. She came home with a big bunch of weird and wonderful plant bits and pieces wrapped up in a grotty looking piece of paper. She had to boil them up and drink the juice over a day or two. Within 48 hours her cough was gone.

9、This is a good question.

Here is what I believe. There is only one kind of medicine that works, and that is medicine which has been proven to work by the tools of modern science and statistics. Anything else is guesswork, quackery or fraud.

All of that said, I completely believe that no group of doctors has a monopoly on observation, on insight, on understanding of the human condition, or on benevolence and the desire to help. I strongly believe that medicine is culture-based: different cultures have different illness behaviours, different expectations from their doctors, and different responses to therapeutic overtures.

Therefore, did your Chinese doctor recognise a pattern of signs in you? Yes. Did they formulate it in a way you found helpful? Yes. Did they do that out of a desire to help? Almost certainly, yes.

In my opinion, your doctor is acting in good faith, and deserves my respect as a colleague. However, for full marks, they should then recommend an evidence-based treatment for you. If they didn"t, then they are falling way short of the mark.

10、Chinese medicine is a functional approach to medicine that is many thousands of years older than conventional western medicine. It has worked for the Chinese for a long time. Chris Kresser, a functional medicine practitioner and licensed acupuncturist has written that the traditional Chinese medical texts do not mention meridians. This was a later addition during translation into western languages. There is nothing magical or imaginary about Chinese medicine. It』s difficult to study Chinese medicine or any alternative medical system in the form of our modern randomized controlled trials because each patient is taken as a whole and treatments are not necessarily standardized for disease entities like high blood pressure, diabetes, etc. Skilled Classical Chinese medical practitioners can successfully treat acute and chronic medical disorders.

11、A doctor"s purpose is to improve the patients" quality of life. If a placebo improves a patients" quality of life better than any other treatment, the doctor should prescribe it. If a so-far-unproven-in-science alternative medicine treatment improves the patients" condition, the doctor should encourage it.

During my internship, I know of patients who have undergone 3 rounds of IVF but fail to bear a child. After 1 year of Traditional Chinese Medicine treatment, they conceived naturally without IVF. Was TCM just a placebo, merely relieving their stress and create a conducive environment for child-bearing? Or did it change something in both man and woman that improved their fertility? No matter which one is true, you can"t deny that the patients" quality of life improved. I think that is most important.

12、Because oftentimes, it works -- and what"s more, it works when everything tried by Western medicine has failed absolutely. This is particularly true of chronic conditions and certain joint problems. Traditional Chinese Medicine did far more for my eczema and my wife"s injured knee than Western doctors could -- and in both cases, we went to a number of different Western specialists before resorting to TCM. I happen to know that a number of top NFL players absolutely swear by the benefits of acupuncture, and this despite having access to the very best that Western medicine can come up with.

The jury is still out as to whether qi exists, whether meridians exist, etc. But the methods? They work. And thankfully, at least some Western doctors are losing their arrogance and admitting that they don"t know nearly as much about the human body as you seem to think they do.

13、This phenomenon isn"t only exclusive to Chinese medicine. When we come to realise there is something we can"t figure out with our scientific knowledge, we tend to make up for it by guessing. Are there aliens in the universe? We don"t know, but we don"t stop here. People guess. Scientific equations are even created to assess the possibility of the alien existence in the universe.

The same thing happens when we look at the traditional Chinese medicine. Can this disease be cured? We don"t know, but we can guess and try. Chinese doctors in the ancient time tried every possible means (even surgery!) to save people"s lives. Their knowledge was based on pure experience. This empirical tradition has been so strong and convincing that generation after generation it is kept and discussed.

Science does have boundaries. Unfortunately, the territory of science is still relatively small even today. So it"s no wonder people would break out the circle for enlightenment. And more importantly this will not do harm to our imagination, as long as we make progress on a right track bound to the ultimate destination of science.

Anyway, this track might lead to wrong ends. Who knows.

14、I have interacted with manufacturers of herbal medicines in China, and also with their customers in the United States. What struck me as interesting was that I never met a Chinese-educated doctor who considered Traditional Chinese Medicine"s concepts of chi and luo and so on to be literal, only as extremely useful metaphor, but I"d run into many Americans (who didn"t go to our medical schools) who took them as real things. I"ve run into more foreigners who believed in Traditional Chinese Medicine than Chinese who did. I personally believe that there are simply many things about it that work and we don"t know why. I don"t "prefer" it to Western medicine. I just recognize that some times it works better, and often it does not.

15、By saying foreigners, I assume that you mean non-ethnic Chinese.

Like the Chinese people, there are skeptics. Believers tend to be in two types: 1. Those who already have a natural interest in a more holistic approach to health, and 2. Those who were skeptics but whose close friends/family or even themselves have experienced the magic of Chinese medicine.

I have observed one more interesting thing: the ethnic Chinese people who do not believe in Chinese medicine are very adamant about their position, while the American skeptics I have met do not mind trying. I had a co-worker from the States that I worked with in India, and had been having a bad appetite, which was later worsened after two episodes of food poisoning. I suggested that he take the patent herbal formula I brought with me, Xiang Sha Liu Jun Wan (香砂六君丸). He was skeptical at first, but took the herbal pills anyway. After taking the pills for only two times (once in the morning and once around noon), his appetite came back and he had to eat a massive meal. He didn"t have any complaints after his appetite in the next nine weeks of his stay in India.

16、This is my personal opinion, many conventional doctors treat symptomatically and rarely look to find the cause of the symptoms, its more reactive than proactive where as Chinese medicine looks at the whole body, skin tone, eyes, condition of the tongue etc to get a better look into the depth of the condition. Usually their treatments consist of herbal remedies that take time to be effective where as conventional medicines go to work almost instantly to mask symptoms making you feel better quicker.

Personally I would love to see a balance between the two approaches, one where conventional medicine looks more to the whole body as well as treating symptoms of the conditions.

17、 The principles of TCM are centered upon the kidneys.

The kidneys are referred to as the ""Door To Life"".

Chi, or Qi, the Life Force, is stored in the kidneys.

Kidney (Chinese medicine)

The 5 Organs Network of Chinese Medicine

Chinese herbs in cancer exhibit multiple biochemical and molecular targeting pathways.

"" While reading about ancient remedies still in use today, Cheng discovered that Chinese medicine had been using the multiple target approach for generations. ""

East Meets West in Cancer Treatment: Ancient herbal remedies prove their worth in modern clinical trials

"" The underlying theory for TCM to treat or prevent cancer is to bring the patient back to a healthy state by modifying multiple cancer-causing events. Since carcinogenesis involves multipleabnormal genes/pathways, using TCM in cancer chemoprevention may be superior to the agents targeting a single molecular target alone. ""

Molecular basis of traditional Chinese medicine in cancer chemoprevention.

"" Current technology is demonstrating the multidimensional activities of Chinese herbs as anticancer agents. ""

Chinese medicine and biomodulation in cancer patients—Part one

Chinese medicine and biomodulation in cancer patients—Part two

18、I think it』s unfortunate that people who have a western medical bent can be so hostile towards traditional medicine. It』s common knowledge that many western medicines are derived from plant sources.

Here is an article listed on the US National Library of Medicine』s website:

Natural products derived from plants as a source of drugs

This is from the Journal of Advanced Pharmaceutical Technology and Research.

Here』s an article from CNN about a pharmacologist who won the Nobel Prize by treating malaria with a specific Chinese Herb. Her research is at the forefront of eradicating malaria.

Nobel Prize winner scoured ancient texts for malaria cure

Being an acupuncturist and having seen so much I can honestly say with 100% certainty that Traditional Chinese Medicine is a safe and effective first line of defense.

Western medicine is often too strong for treating chronic disease- thus the myriad of side effects that are always listed. Natural medicine has evolved within nature』s paradigm and usually, you can treat a lot of symptoms with herbs and have zero side effects. I don』t know why anyone would choose otherwise.

And acupuncture has been proven through clinical trials to be effective. Insurance is willing to pay for it. I can』t go into the countless research studies but I』ve answered other questions on Quora before regarding the merits of acupuncture.

Let』s just say if you care about existing at optimum health, you should look into alternative medicine. Exercise. Eat right. Meditate. You only live once. Why be uncomfortable?

19、Some do, but not all.

TCM (traditional Chinese medicine) is thousands of years old, and thus fall victim to the fact knowledge now is more advanced.

It"s not enough to just say "But the Chinese have been living for XXXX years using TCM", because so has the rest of the human race survived without them.
(Added 10:30 26/12/14 in response to the amount of times I have seen this on this thread alone)

A good example is Artemisia annua, which has been used in TCM for about 2000 years to treat fevers.

Since about the 1960s it has been used to help in the fight against malaria.

One thing to consider though is that most modern biomedicine isolate the active ingredient and extract it. A lot of the time a raw herb isn"t sufficient, as in the above case we are now using Artemisinin, in combination with other anti malarial drugs.

There are many other cases of TCM working.

However there are still many remedies which simply fail to stand up to testing, these are generally regarded as old fashioned or quackery; although not always.

20、Traditional Chinese Medicine - an ancient Chinese method of healing considers disease to be a result of disharmony between two opposing life forces known as qi. When the flow of energy gets blocked, health illnesses occur.

Today, Chinese medicine is being considered as alternative form of treatment by the practitioners of conventional medicine. Owing to this popularity, many prospective candidates are getting interested towards this personally and professionally rewarding career. Consequently, many traditional colleges and universities have started offering Chinese medicine studies, which were earlier available in oriental medicine schools. So, if you are residing in Brighton, there are several institutions offering studies in Chinese Medicine in Brighton.

Doctors and practitioners of Chinese medicine have developed multifaceted methods to examine the human body so as to understand what exactly goes wrong before an illness strikes. Examining the tongue and the nails is an essential element of the Chinese diagnostic system. So, if you are looking for practitioners offering Chinese Medicine in Brighton, you can browse through the internet to come across several service providers. So defiantly traditional Chinese medicine work.

Have a look at some of the benefits of Chinese medicine:

Treat Broad Range of Diseases
Natural Form of Healing
Restores Balance
The Root Cause
No Side effects

21、There are lots of scientific studies done on Chinese medicine in Chinese journals, BUT since scientists and researchers in this country A) discount studies on stuff they don"t understand and B) Don"t value research done by other countries, you won"t find many traditional allopathic docs and researchers giving the nod to traditional Chinese Medicine. PS the people doing this research likely don"t care what American doc"s think.

22、Someone wrote a very good answer that effectively stated in the right hands/practitioner it works well as has done for many years, but in the wrong hands by unregulated unqualified practitioners it is quackery. Obviously those who have interests against TCM publicise the damage done by unqualified people.

Of course exactly the same applies to so-called Western Medicine, there are actually far more cases of medical negligence by practitioners of Western Medicine than ever recorded against TCM.

Let me illustrate this with a rather sad tale, but absolutely true. A doctor in China suffered lung cancer and his father had liver cancer. They discussed the best solution. The doctor practiced conventional medicine in China and sought advice on TCM. He was advised to contact one of the leading Professors of TCM currently practicing in the UK and was given a herbal treatment which he took as one month"s supply for himself and two months supply for his father. After one week the doctor was impatient and decided to try chemotherapy. He gave the remainder to his father.

Subsequently the doctor has passed away but his father still lives. One observation is that herbs are prescribed in a way that the human body is designed to absorb most chemical medicines are not and it is the body that actually cures itself not a chemical reaction.

You believe it from experience or in some cases are never convinced. The main requirement is to use a practitioner who is qualified and understands the prescription rather than simply looking it up in a text book.

23、 Does conventional medicine work?

You can easily see statistics that it does (or doesn"t, depending on the illnesses, cause of the illnesses, and so forth).

I had patients who complain about having Urinary Tract Infection (UTI). They had taken antibiotics for over 2 months, and their doctors kept on prescribing more. This is when conventional drugs obviously do not work, but it"s silly to conclude that conventional medicine doesn"t work. Same thing with Traditional Chinese Medicine: you need to use the right ones in the right situations.

For thousands of years people use Traditional Chinese Medicine to cure their illnesses and better their health. And if that doesn"t sound convincing enough, universities in Japan, Hong Kong, and Taiwan have done numerous studies on Traditional Chinese Medicine.

If interested, you can look at articles published by the Baptist University of Hong Kong and The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Some of the areas that TCM definitely excels in are chronic digestive and respiratory problems.

24、As a gongfu and Chinese Medicine student, I feel obliged to answer this question.

If you cut open a dead brain, can you see consciousness? Can you see the 「self」 that used to be the master of that brain? No. Because they are gone after one is dead. But one can surely feel it when s/he is alive. Consciousness is real, but nobody really knows what the nature of consciousness is. Sure, we have neurobiology and cognitive science . But no one can write down the equation of consciousness, AKA, the physics behind it. It remains to be the biggest mystery of the universe.

You can"t find Chi and Meridians in dead bodies because they are heavily dependent on consciousness. Well, we can do some safe experienments on living people. But our current knowledge and technology is too limited to do anything constructive about this mystery. Until recent years, people found that quantum phenomena are involved in cellular activities. The point is that science is in constant progress and there are too many things we don"t know yet .

Chi and meridians are real because I can feel them.The best way to experience them yourself is to practice Qigong, which is a method of controlling Qi to circulate in Meridians with consciousness. The two most important meridians are Ren(任脈）and Du （督脈）.They are like the equators of human bodies. After practicing Qigong for half a year, I finally got Ren and Du connected and I learned to control Chi to run in cycles through them. I can feel the two meridians ( they are unbelievably straight!) and chi ( very warm, sometimes hot) loud and clear.

Ren:

Chinese medicine works. It really works well, at least on me. Well, I don"t have cancer or anything serious. All I have is some common minor problems and Chinese medicine works on them very well!

String theory must be nonsensical to Newton. Things we don"t understand for now are not necessarily wrong or fake.Tu Youyou got a Nobel Prize for her work that was based on Chinese medicine. In that mysterious field, more discoveries are waiting to be made.

25、The question of whether or not TCM is a science is definitional. If you define science in terms of the scientific method, than no it is not. If you want to use science more broadly to mean a complex system of theories and principles used to describe the natural world, than it could be considered one. But, I don"t think the question of whether TCM is a science or not is particularly useful for understanding it.

TCM could be falsified, but most clinical tests of TCM aren"t designed to text TCM theory. For example, I recently read an article discussing several studies that tested the use of buzhong yiqi wan, a commonly used herbal prescription, on people with chronic fatigue syndrome. But, the study didn"t classify the patients in terms of TCM theory of disease.

That is, a specific disease as understood in modern medicine might have more than one cause when diagnosed in terms of TCM. Simply prescribing herbs based on symptoms without diagnosing that cause is not a test of TCM. So, for example, chronic fatigue syndrome can be caused by a spleen deficiency or a kidney deficiency (organs in TCM do not refer to the same thing as they do in modern medicine). So, buzhong yiqi wan might help with chronic fatigue patients who have spleen deficiency, but wouldn"t help and might even harm those with kidney deficiency.

The more fundamental TCM model of the body is not testable in scientific terms. There is no scientific correlate of qi, meridians, or the TCM organ system.

26、 TCM, like the vast majority of fundamental human knowledge, has its roots in empirical observation and experimentation. This empirical tradition provides a wealth of leads for scientific and pharmacognostic exploration. The studies that are promising quickly become proprietary and intellectually protected -- so it is disingenuous to imply that there is not advanced scientific research going on in TCM today. Initial studies, as previously mentioned, can be found using the abstract search on PubMed.

There are approximately 100 "gold-standard" empirical formulas in TCM collected over a period of 4000 years from a geographical region that spans the whole of the Silk Road. This is certainly well within the laws of probability.

E coli was only discovered 130 years ago. Empirical evidence is why smart people didn"t shit where they ate for thousands of years before then. Based on the logic of many supposedly within the pro-science camp they wouldn"t see the importance of doing so until the invention of the microscope and another 200 years of playing around with it.

Modern pharmaceutical science is relatively recent, expensive and the pharmacopeia does not comprehensively treat all the ailments humans suffer. It is logical that an individual will turn to an empirical tradition with millenia of clinical experience in order to alleviate a condition not fully addressed by what is currently available.

Many people do not grasp that TCM is a metaphorical and taxonomic language that classifies condition patterns; a sign that someone is not qualified to comment on TCM is their literal interpretation of the system.

27、TCM is theoretical, not scientific. However, this does not negate its efficacy. It only means that to this day the exact means by which it acts upon the body can not be quantified or explained by science. Most research findings are shoddy at best and the controls do not adhere to rigorous scientific study. Yet, I am a fan. Still: theory is speculation; and science is fact based upon predictable numbers and results that can be measured consistently and compared in a controlled environment. Science can be explained in logical, and yes, scientific terms. TCM has yet to demonstrate that. And I think that is what you are asking.

TCM is a poetic (if you will) interpretation of the physiological processes of the body based upon the laws of nature- aka the yin-yang theory and the 5 element theory- and how they interact within us. No one really knows how it works (to say so is untrue- leave the words "chi, energy, shen" and all other woo out of it), but it works for me. I don"t need an explanation.... yet

28、It just happened that my daughter』s school science fair (1) coincided with a friend getting diagnosed with Lyme disease. As I started reading into both, I though it is possible that our methods of scientific studies have not been adequate for researching the methods of Traditional Chinese Medicine.

The mainstream science is still narrowly focused on reducing any phenomenon to one thing: one hypothesis, one variable, one cause, one effect, one germ, one gene (2).

TCM, on the other hand, is based on an idea that interplay of causes produces an array of effects. As a system, TCM is about differentiating patterns made of patients』 symptoms, constitution, and environment.

That』s why multi-system diseases like Lyme has been treated successfully in China thousands of years ago (3), while Western medicine is just starting to recognize the nature of the disease (4). Many humans harbor spirochetes and mycoplasma pathogens, but only those with exposure to (for example) stress, environmental toxins, and other infections cannot fight the pathogens off and become chronically ill. Furthermore, once settled, the illness can manifest itself in a wide variety and combination of autoimmune diseases, neurological disorders, hormonal disorders, etc.

With the advances in non-traditional fields of science like behavioral studies, social studies, economics, and data science we become more accepting of multivariate or non-parametric research methods. I am hopeful that the modern research methods turned onto studying TCM will finally bring that ancient healing system in accord with Western science (5).

(1) Scientific Method: Is exploratory research considered outside of the scientific method?
(2) Frontiers Profile: Ted Kaptchuk
(3) Lyme Disease, An In-Depth Interview With Heiner Fruehaufcom
(4) 「Why Can#x27;t I Get Better? Solving the Mystery of Lyme and Chronic Disease」 Dr. Richard Horowitz
(5) A Push to Back Traditional Chinese Medicine With More Data

29、 Two aspects need to be considered when discussing Tradicional Chinese Medicine or other forms of CAM (Complementary and Alternative Medicine):

1) Is there any reliable evidence that it works?

This is done by well-designed randomized controlled trials, or even better, by meta-analysis or systematic reviews of well-designed randomized controlled trials. However, this is not easy. For example, in acupuncture trials, the therapist always know if the patient is in intervention or in the control group. The problem with that is this can produce bias.

Second, there are several publications from Chinese Medical Journals with almost all with positive results for Acupuncture. However, this is not what you find if you search other Journals. The most majority of studies of high quality does not show a benefit over placebo.
If you want to more comments on those studies, I suggest you to look in Edzard Ernst website. He was a dedicated CAM researcher.

2) Even if Systematic Reviews of high quality studies show acupuncture or other TCM practice works above placebo for specific condictions that does not means that it works in the way TCM says it works.

TCM claims that there is a Qi, or that human body has energetic points, and that disease is caused by imbalance in such points.

This ideas are pseudoscientific, not scientific, since there is no evidence to support them.

Take a loot in the following quote from the paper Acupuncture Analgesia: I. The Scientific Basis, written by Wang et al and published in 2008 in the scientific journal Anesthesia Analgesia:

The traditional Chinese perspective is not based on anatomical, physiological, or biochemical evidence, and thus cannot form the basis of a mechanistic understanding of acupuncture

We have absolutely no evidence that meridians, Qi, enegertic chanels exist in human body and that disease is caused by imbalaces in energy. The problems is that despite several advances from science, TCM keeps claming such things.

It"s possible that some TCM techniques works above placebo. But the explanationary mechanisms will not be based on these old and pseudoscientific notions.

30、 Ask the archives:

Journal of Chinese Medicine

看標題，你是想問外國人，這個應該上 Quora去問。

據我所知，國外的現代醫學體系是很包容的。比如美國，FDA只要驗證安全有效，無須弄懂原理也可納入醫療體系。只不過很遺憾目前為止還沒有一款中藥通過驗證。

類比西方的理論在中國人眼中的地位，現代醫學就好比化學，中醫好比鍊金術。