How Can Chinese Medicine Help Me Live A Better Life?

Chinese medicine is founded on major prevention and health promoting principals:

• It’s the practitioners job to keep you healthy, rather than just focus on the health problem you have now
• Chinese medicine sees more inter-connections in the body than mainstream medicine (biomedicine or western medicine). A practitioner looks for how
• Chinese medicine follows ancient wisdom from practitioners who are tried, tested and true…there is thousand years old literature which was just as useful back then as it has been in the centuries proceeding. Practitioners today have the benefit of centuries of clinical practice to see time and time again the outworking of acupuncture and herbal medicine formulas.
• Chinese medicine promotes lifestyle and diet changes first, then use treatment (herbs and/or acupuncture)

Famous doctor from the Tang Dynasty, Sun Si Miao said “Dietary therapy should be the first step when one treats a disease. Only when this is unsuccessful should one try medicine”

Diet therapy is actually very easy to apply and it makes a lot of sense when you understand the why behind the what. Chinese medicine is based on observing our body’s interaction with nature and the enviornment we live in, so it is lodgical.

Marie’s practice centers around optimising patients health via diet and lifestyle. Increasing health by optimising your digestion helps you to recover quicker from illness (colds, flus and viruses etc), helps your body to perform at it’s best, promotes good mental health, helps you look better as you grow older and increase your stamina to last longer and be more resillent in stressful times.

As Hippocrates said “let food be thy medicine”

Could you use more Energy?

Energy is a central focus of Chinese Medicine. In the clinic it’s common to hear people say they feel tired, or even just that they could use some more energy. Energy is called Qi (pronounced Chee) in Chinese medicine. Although Qi is more than the ideas that the English word Energy contains. Its a lifeforce, the force which provides movement, flow, and at the same time nourishment to the body.

Qi is more of a Yang quality. There are more than 10 different kinds of Qi in the body – Defensive Qi – or the energy that protects us from getting sick from exposure to external pathogens, is just one example. Food Qi, know as Gu Qi is another.

How do we make Qi? Food and Air are the two main ingredients. We can breathe in Qi. This is why breathing is so important and exercise therapies in Oriental cultures are centered around breathing (Qi Gong, Yoga, Tai Chi etc).

The second way to make Qi is from food. “Gu Qi” literally means “food Qi” – which is the energy our bodies get from nutrients extracted from our diet.

Making energy essentially depends on 2 things:

1) The source – having fresh air and nutrient appropriate food to begin with

2) The machine – Our body is essentially a machine to make energy. The bodies ability to process the air – the techniques we use to breathe, our posture, our habits and the bodies digestion are essential to extracting good Gu Qi from food and fluids. If you tune up your car to make it run better, doesn’t it makes sense to tune up your body from time to time?

Chinese Medicine practitioners are very concerned with your digestion as it’s the essential way for the body to make the energy it needs to heal itself. Even if you’ve come in with a sprained ankle or a headache, good digestion is important to the long term healing of your body.

Practitioners will often ask about bowel movements, appetite and the in’s and out’s of what you eat on a regular basis.

Good digestion means you will recover quicker from injury, react better to stressful and unforeseen events and generally be able to eat a wide variety of foods without too many side effects.

If you experience bloating, gas, diarrhoea or loose stools or constipation (not going every day) on a frequent/normal basis then your body could probably do with a tune up.

When you have acupuncture, there are many ways an acupuncturist can “boost your energy”. One common way is throught strengthening the organs in the processes above – the Spleen and Stomach are central to healthy diegestion. The Lungs are essential to breathing and getting Air Qi into into your body.

THIS ARTICLE IS WRITTEN BY CHINESE MEDICINE PRACTITIONER MARIE HOPKINSON. THERE ARE MORE ARTICLES ON MARIE’S BLOG ABOUT WHAT TO EAT TO OPTIMISE YOUR DIGESTION ACCORDING TO CHINESE MEDICINE.