Traditional Chinese medicine TCM or alternative treatment are being used by about half the population of the Western world. Most of our schooled doctors don’t like that and they do not understand it either. Research is being done in a few Western places as to what this is all about, and the big question is: Does it work?
The University of Tromsø has a research facility looking into it, and they are making progress. They have mapped in detail more than 300 exceptional stories of people and their illnesses with the aim of finding what works – and a few that did not work.
Standard thinking is that the healing effect of traditional medicine – it has been used for 5000 years – is due to the placebo effect or the self-healing properties of the body. Or is there something involved that we have not understood?
So research is needed – unbiased, scientific research and good hypothesizing too.
It seems the most important aspect of traditional medicine is that you see somebody – you receive attention and care. The question then arises: is this about physical illnesses with a psychological root cause?
Treatment of most illnesses are well taken care of in modern medicine, but illnesses with complex, psychological causes are often hard to crack with drugs, surgery. In Chinese hospitals modern and traditional medicine work together with good results.
So is there new knowledge to be found? Can we improve or accelerate the self-healing properties of the body? Are there effects of spiritism, yoga, meditation? Acupuncture has been shown to work in relation to many illnesses, and has even been used to reduce pain during surgery. TCM has given cancer patients a better life with better appetite, sleeping well too.
And hypnosis where does that fit in? The old Greeks went into dark places to find healing – we don’t seem to know exactly what that was – but it must have worked as it was perpetuated for thousands of years.
To move forward we must have an open mind – we must make the old new by finding how it works. So we need more research for a better future. Humanity will never know all there is, but we must move on.
See: National Information Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, Norway (NIFAB)