Complementary Alternative Cardiovascular Medicine

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