Traditional Chinese Medicine : A Holistic Approach

Traditional Chinese medicine has a “macro” or holistic view of disease. For example, one modern interpretation is that well-balanced human bodies can resist most everyday bacteria and viruses, which are ubiquitous and quickly changing. Infection, while having a proximal cause of a microorganism, would have an underlying cause of an imbalance of some kind. The traditional treatment would target the imbalance, not the infectious organism.[citation needed] There is a popular saying in China as follows: Chinese medicine treats humans while western medicine treats diseases.

A practitioner might give very different herbal prescriptions to patients affected by the same type of infection, because the different symptoms reported by the patients would indicate a different type of imbalance, in a traditional diagnostic system.

Western medicine treats infections by targeting the microorganisms directly, whether preventively (through sterilization of instruments, handwashing, and covering bandages), with antibiotics, or making use of the immune system through vaccines. While conventional medicine recognizes the importance of nutrition, exercise and reducing stress in maintaining a healthy immune system (and thus preventing infection), it also faces problems with antibiotic resistance caused by overuse of chemical agents and the high mutation rate of microorganisms. Pharmaceutical treatments also sometimes have side effects, the most severe of which are seen in regimens used to treat otherwise fatal illnesses, such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy for cancer, and antiretroviral drugs for HIV/AIDS.

The holistic approach of traditional Chinese medicine makes all practitioners generalists. Western medicine has general practitioners who dispense primary care, but increasing reliance is placed on specialists who have expertise in treating only certain types of diseases. Primary care physicians often refer patients to specialists. Emergency departments are located in large hospitals where many specialists are available.