Complementary Alternative Cardiovascular Medicine
Complementary Alternative Cardiovascular Medicine
Complementary Alternative Cardiovascular Medicine
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Chapter 11 / Acupuncture and CVD 169<br />
puncture and dietary instructions and was required to do gymnastic and<br />
breathing exercises and take various herbs.<br />
To understand how acupuncture can be used to treat an illness in its<br />
early stages, we must assume that the Chinese diagnostic system is sensitive<br />
and picks up signals early in the illness progression. Therefore, the<br />
body must emit signals at an early stage. The signals that the Chinese<br />
discovered were sore points, which developed on the skin in connection<br />
with certain illnesses.<br />
We also have to assume that the body has a healing system—a system<br />
that, when stimulated, can lead to healing the patient’s illness and that<br />
sticking a needle in the skin’s sore points, the acupuncture points, activates<br />
and stimulates such a healing process.<br />
Classical Chinese Medical Theory<br />
When you begin to talk about classical Chinese medical theory, you<br />
run into words such as Tao, yin, yang, and the five elements: wood, fire,<br />
earth, metal, and water. It is important to understand that these concepts<br />
belong to a philosophical model, which the Chinese constructed to explain<br />
the natural phenomena they saw around them. The Chinese worldview is<br />
characterized by a holistic understanding in which all phenomena in the<br />
universe are a part of the same ultimate reality—Tao. Tao can never<br />
become demonstrable knowledge or be described adequately with words,<br />
because it lies in that region between the senses and the intellect (3).<br />
Tao, which is unity, reality, and harmony in the universe, is divided<br />
into two opposing forces, yin and yang. The relationship between them<br />
is described as “the law of the unity of opposites.” They shape, consume,<br />
support, and transform into one another.<br />
The idea that they shape one another shows that they don’t exist in<br />
isolation but only in their interaction with their opposite part. Yin and<br />
yang respectively symbolize minus and plus, cold and warm, woman and<br />
man, inward and outward, downward and upward, darkness and light,<br />
passive and active, and earth and heaven.<br />
Something that is yin in one situation can be yang in another, because<br />
they are relative concepts. For example, the skin on the back is yin (back)<br />
relative to the skin on the chest, which is yang (front). At the same time,<br />
the skin on the back is yang (outward) relative to the inner organs, which<br />
are yin (inward).<br />
Because of their relationship of mutual opposition, the weakening or<br />
loss of one will automatically influence the other. Therefore, weakening<br />
of yin leads to the relative strengthening of yang, and a strengthening of<br />
yin will lead to a relative weakening of yang and vice-versa. The balance<br />
between them is not static but always dynamic. Under normal conditions