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Patient Information Center |
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Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM)?
Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine offer safe, natural, drug-free and effective way to address a wide variety of health concerns. Treatments are based on pattern diagnosis and treatment. Modern Western medicine bases its treatment on a disease diagnosis. This means that two patients diagnosed as suffering from the same disease will get the same treatment. Traditional Chinese medicine also takes the patient's disease diagnosis into account. However, the choice of treatment is not based on the disease so much as it is on what is called the pattern discrimination. This translates into individualized approach to treating each patient.
What are Yin and Yang? The idea of harmony and balance are also the basis of yin and yang. The principle that each person is governed by the opposing, but complementary forces of yin and yang, is central to all Chinese thought. It is believed to affect everything in the universe. Yin and yang are the opposites that make the whole. They cannot exist without each other and nothing is ever completely one or the other. In the world, sun and fire are yang, while earth and water are yin. Life is possible only because of the interplay between these forces.
What are the five elements?
While observing the nature and seasonal change the monks created a relational system between seasons and organ relationship. Winter was consistent with Water Element, Spring with Wood, Summer with Fire and Fall with Metal. Late summer became the 5th Earth Element. Each element has a set of parameters such as taste, color, emotion, etc associated with it. All of the elements also have relationships among themselves that plays a role in diagnosis and treatment approach.
What is Acupuncture and How does it work? Acupuncture literally means 'needle piercing," the practice of inserting very fine needles into the skin to stimulate specific anatomic points in the body (called acupoints) for therapeutic purposes. Looking at the body as an integrated system of biomagnetic fields it was discovered that all parts and properties are interlinked through a living matrix that is mechanical and vibrational, creating a network throughout the human body. Acupuncture needles were believed to be the gateways to that matrix. A mean to redirect, increase, or decrease body's vital substance – Qi, thus correcting many of the physical symptoms that derive from an array of imbalances.
What are the other components of TCM? Acupuncture, Herbal medicine, Tai Chi (Tai Qi) and Eastern Nutrition are all in the scope of Chinese Medicine. The herbs are used in variety of forms to address patient’s individual needs. We carry ready to use pill and tablet forms of major classical formulas. Martial arts such as Tai Chi and Qi Gong are the most common practices recommended by TCM practitioners. Both of these modalities directed to cultivation and movement of Qi in the body. Eastern nutrition is a way of using properties of foods as medicinal by evaluating the properties such as tastes, temperatures and channel relationships.
First visit: Thorough evaluation of symptoms and health history Eastern diagnosis based on determination of Pattern and Elements involved Lifestyle and Diet evaluation Individualized treatment plan Next two weeks: Bi-weekly acupuncture sessions Herbal prescription Week three: Re-assessment* Next three months: Follow-up visits as needed** * All cases are different and more time maybe needed to see results.
Other Modalities:
Cupping Moxibation "Moxa," often used in conjunction with acupuncture, consists in burning of dried Chinese mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris) on acupoints. "Direct Moxa" involves the pinching of clumps of the herb into cones that are placed on acupoints and lit until warm. Typically the burning cone is removed before burning the skin and is thought, after repeated use, to warm the body and increase circulation. Moxa can also be rolled into a cigar-shaped tube, lit, and held over an acupuncture point, or rolled into a ball and stuck onto the back end of an inserted needle for warming effect.
Electro-acupuncture, the application of a pulsating electrical current to acupuncture needles as a means of stimulating the acupoints, was developed in China as an extension of hand manipulation of acupuncture needles around 1934
Bodywork Tuina (Tui Na) methods include the use of hand techniques to massage the soft tissue (muscles and tendons) of the body, acupressure techniques to directly affect the flow of Qi , and manipulation techniques to realign the musculoskeletal and ligamentous relationships (bone-setting). External herbal poultices, compresses and liniments are also used to enhance the other therapeutic methods. |
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Phone: 203.524.3411 |
