Acupuncture

Acupuncture is an ancient system of natural healing used for the past 4,000 years in China, Which is rapidly taking its legitimate place as a valuable therapeutic technique in modern medicine today. Mythology holds that acupuncture was discovered when ancient Chinese warriors wounded by arrows in battle, recovered from illness and pain that affected them for years. These experiences evolved the idea that puncturing certain sites on the body promotes a natural healing process. In the early days, some 50 centuries ago, sharp thin stones were used at "acu-points", evolving to thorns, slivers of bamboo, bone, or horn needles. Much later, bronze or iron needles were fashioned.
Interestingly, it was discovered that different metals elicited different
effects. Gold was used to stimulate and silver to sedate.

In the world, the popular interest in acupuncture motivated by alternative medicine is becoming a fashion. A trend of treatment modality in the healthcare field is combining western medicine and alternative medicine. In USA, acupuncture is now licensed or regulated in over 40 states. In UK, France, Germany, Russia, Japan, and China, acupuncture is utilized in many hospitals. In Canada, the use of acupuncture has also spread into almost every province. There is an estimated 1.5 million practitioners throughout the world! These statistics provide strong testimony that people all over the globe are getting relief through acupuncture.

Acupuncture is a complex system of examination, diagnosis, and treatment. It is preventive medicine; it creates and maintains health and is often used as an analgesic first-aid technique that brings relief from pain. Acupuncture is also employed for anaesthetic purposes. Traditional Chinese Medicine is based upon the principle that any symptom is the result of an imbalance in the body's organic, energetic and natural activity. Acupuncture works by opening up the flow of vital energy, also known as "Chi", thereby restoring health to the body. When "Chi" is flowing properly throughout our meridian pathways, all of our processes operate in a rhythmic and harmonious way.

Meridian Pathways and Acu-Points

Chinese Herbal Medicine (CHM) 
Chinese herbal medicine is a powerful branch of TCM.

For thousands of years, the Chinese have documented more than 7,000 kind herbs that possess healing benefits. The written records (Shen Nong Ben Cao) started from Shen Nong Dynasty (3494 B.C.), Shen Nong, the emperor, and his administration examined all kinds of herbs to ascertain their healing properties. Later the government of Song Dynasty (1,000 years ago) reviewed thousands of herbal combinations and published approximately 2,000 nontoxic herbal combinations for public use.

Herbs are more effective when used in a formula. Although each herb has its own healing property and nutritional benefit, understanding an individual herb is necessary. The foundation of TCM is "balance". Herbs need to be combined in order to harmonize the entire body systematically. This is the only way to correct the imbalance and strengthen the entire body. There is no such single herb that can fulfill this goal.

The formation of a prescription is neither simply to pile up drugs with similar functions and effects nor "to treat the head when the headaches and to treat the foot when the foot hurts", that is to say, only to treat the symptoms but not the syndrome (zheng) in TCM or the disease. It is on
the basis of the differentiation of syndromes and establishment of therapeutic methods, to pick up proper drugs and organically constitute them in the light of the principles of forming a prescription.

CHM practitioners prescribe herbal formulas based the TCM theory of diagnostic methods and differentiation of syndromes. Diagnostic methods consist of interrogation, inspection, auscultation and olfaction, pulse-feeling and palpation. All these methods aim mainly at providing objective basis for differentiation of syndromes by collecting symptoms and sighs from the patient. Differentiation of syndromes refers to the process in which analysis and inference are made on the basis of clinical materials acquired through various diagnostic methods to determine the type of a disease.

Combination of logical thinking, inference and judgement are adopted in the differentiation of syndromes. The type of a disease is drawn from a large amount of perceptual materials. As a pathological generalization of a disease in its certain stage, syndromes in TCM reflect the nature of a disease, serving as a basis for TCM treatment.