I thought it might be useful to read an actual practioner's point of view - a scientist with a good knowledge of and respect for the astoundingly old medical traditions of China.
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Merging Chinese Traditional Medicine into the American Health System
Charles Feng Human Biology, Stanford University feng at jyi.org
My grandmother, a frail 78-year-old woman who has spent her whole life in China and Taiwan, recently came to stay with my family in the San Francisco Bay area. At her age, health is of great concern - she takes four pills every morning for various ailments (such as chronic bronchitis and osteoporosis), and often spends a large portion of her days sleeping. All of her pills were prescribed by her doctors in Taiwan. To supplement her medications, she drinks various concoctions made from Chinese herbs and animal parts, also brought over from Taiwan. She doesn't have any desire to see a Western doctor, and even left the United States so she could go back for a physical check-up in Taiwan.
On the other hand, my mother - my grandmother's daughter - has been in the United States for more than 25 years. There is not a trace of an accent in her English, and she goes to American doctors for all her sicknesses. On occasion, she also visits a Chinese-trained doctor for a massage or herbal medicines. Indeed, she actively uses both Western and Chinese traditional medicine. In contrast, I was born a few years after my mother immigrated to the United States, and the only medicines I have ever taken have been prescribed by American-trained doctors. However, just as my grandmother is skeptical of Western medicine, I in turn doubt many aspects of Chinese medicine.
In the United States, both Chinese and Chinese-Americans are forced to confront a world in which they have medical options from two very different cultures; their decisions in response to these contrasting systems have serious consequences on the outcome of their health. Under the American health care system, diseases that are more prevalent within the Asian-American community, such as Hepatitis B, are often overlooked when Asians are getting check-ups, largely because those diseases have a low prevalence in communities of other cultures. Likewise, sometimes American doctors are not as familiar with Chinese culture, either - such as the taboo on HIV and AIDS; the Chinese condemn the virus and its resulting illness as a disgrace to the family of the afflicted individual. On the other hand, traditional Chinese medicine is more subjective, and is often based more on notions of spirituality than on proven scientific rigor. My grandmother, for example, went to two different Chinese doctors for the same ailment, and received two completely different treatments.
Should Chinese and Chinese-Americans choose either Chinese or Western medicine, or should they try to combine the two? Perhaps they can learn to adapt to a new medicinal culture, or maybe it is best to stay within the cultural contexts that are the most familiar.
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full -
<http://www.jyi.org/volumes/volume6/issue5/features/feng.html>
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.d.
I never liked you Rusty...you were always a smart alec, a sass mouth and a bit of a giggle puss.
Dr, Impossible
...................... http://monroelab.net/blog/