Recommended Reading for Beginners

If you're new to Chinese medicine, I recommend the following books:

• The Web That Has No Weaver An excellent introduction to Chinese medicine for Westerners.
  
• Between Heaven and Earth A bit more emphasis on 五行学 Five Phase theory and constitutional types than the previous book.
  
• Fundamentals of Chinese Medicine This is a translation of the first year textbook used by students in China studying TCM. More technical than the previous two books. In addition to systematically covering the basic theory, it includes names and functions for all acupuncture points. Also includes a list of the most common Chinese herbs with their names in pinyin, Chinese characters, Latin and English names, with functions and dosage.
  
• Chinese Herbal Medicine: Materia Medica Probably a bit more money that most civilians will want to spend, but if you're interested in Chinese herbs, this is a great way to get started. Simply reading the introductory chapters will give you a good introduction to the world of Chinese herbology. The herb monographs also contain information on chemical composition of each herb. Also in this category: Chinese Medical Herbology & Pharmacology and Concise Chinese Materia Medica.

Also, the Blue Poppy blog is a great place for information on the internet. Blue Poppy is an herb company based in Colorado.

Book Review: Pulse Diagnosis

Here's another tribute to the Lakeside Master, Li Shi Zhen.

I've been on a book kick recently, and revisiting the Bin Hu Ma Xue, or Pulse Diagnosis book has been the best pick so far. It's so detailed! Reading this book makes me feel like I don't know anything, which is great. Makes me want to learn more.

For those who love charts, the appendix has charts of 32 different pulses (the 27 classic pulses developed by Li Shi Zhen, plus some variations) that describe the depth, strength, width, meaning behind the pulse, and explanation of the disease process for each of them. It also includes the English, Pin Yin, and Chinese characters for the pulses as well as a list of complicated diseases.

I've been using the book as a reference in clinic for the last month, and it's enriched my practice greatly. Did you know that there are seven different types of floating pulses, and five different types of sinking pulses? Based on that information alone, I've been much more observant of the pulse qualities when determining a diagnosis.

The Bin Hu Mai Xue was originally written in verse and is meant to be succinct. It does not describe in great detail what each of the pulses should feel like. For that, I would suggest referencing Bob Flaws' book, The Secret of Chinese Pulse Diagnosis for the standard TCM definitions, or for an extremely comprehensive exploration of the pulse, read Leon Hammer's Chinese Pulse Diagnosis: A Contemporary Approach.

Book Review: Keeping Your Child Healthy With Chinese Medicine

My sister had a baby last year, the first one in our lot to do so, and for the last year I have been pre-occupied with pediatrics. As we've noted in some of our past posts, Chinese medicine is very effective at treating most childhood illnesses with little to no side effects. Since we are focused on the physiology and not just the disease, we can help the little ones recover from their diseases at the same time as correct the physiological imbalance that brought on the symptoms in the first place.

I understand that when a child is sick, however, that a parent would want to do everything they can to make sure their child gets better. We are taught in the US that the only way to cure diseases is to take drugs prescribed by a medical doctor. What if we could save those medicines for when they are truly absolutely necessary, making them more effective in turn, and instead adopt a model of graduated care where parents can be consulted to treat their children naturally first and allopathically when needed.

This would require teaching consumers of medicine of all the things that Chinese medicine can successfully do for them and their kids. Being in school for the last four years, and surrounding myself with other students and doctors of the medicine by default, makes it easy to forget that we use a completely different language to describe the anatomy even though we're speaking English. People like my sister, who has little knowledge of health care let alone Chinese medicine, need information that is straightforward, easy to understand, and comprehensive. The book Keeping Your Child Healthy with Chinese Medicine: A Parent's Guide to the Care and Prevention of Common Childhood Diseases does just that.

The book starts with a nice introduction on TCM, and goes into comparing the benefits and drawbacks of both Chinese and Western allopathic medicine. Bob Flaws, the author, does a great job of describing each of the commonly encountered illnesses in pediatrics, including ones that are not in Chinese medicine textbooks from China. He explains that because our lifestyles are different from those in China, including our overuse of antibiotics, children suffer from different kinds of recurring illnesses here in the West. He also advises parents on when to trust the wisdom of Chinese medicine, and when it would be better to see a Western MD for the treatment of more severe cases.

As the title suggests, it is a parent's guide, and does not go into great detail about the actual treatment of illnesses or their protocol. It does provide readers with an understanding of how Chinese medicine would go about treating these diseases, and what to expect from a TCM physician. It has a great chapter on how to go about finding a TCM practitioner, and what kinds of questions to ask when looking for someone to treat your children.

Book Review: The Face Reader

I highly recommend Patrician McCarthy's The Face Reader for anyone interested in what our faces say about our innate gifts and misgivings. It is a very quick read, especially if you already have an understanding of Chinese medical theory, but is also easy enough to follow if you don't. The book includes a summary of personalities based on the five elements, with a full-color insert of each of the types of faces and combinations of those types. It has pictures and descriptions throughout, highlighting the major differences between facial features. My only criticism of the book would be that it is too short!

A really fun thing about the book is that a handful of the models are former Yo San students. Patrician McCarthy used to teach a course on Mien Shiang here at Yo San, but now does lectures and seminars all over. It's too bad I missed it; the class had been described to me as "life-changing."

Here are excerpts from the book that describe some of my features:

The little wispy hairs that some people have along their hairline are what I call the Veil of Tears. Those delicate hairs act as a veil, hiding the true shape of the hairline, just as these people hide their true feelings when they are hurt.

A rounded nose belongs to the material girls or boys. They are not greedy, but they appreciate things of quality. They would rather go without than put up with an inferior substitute.

If you love good-quality food and drink, you most likely have a gourmand's nose, one with a fleshy tip. If you don't have one yourself, these are the people to dine with.

Book Review: Molecules of Emotion

I first read this book during my former life as a researcher in endocrinology. Back then it inspired me and gave me hope that unadulterated science and a sincere search for truth could really benefit the world and its inhabitants. After four years of early mornings, late nights, and weekends spent in a laboratory, I emerged from that valuable experience feeling like money, and the marriage of money to politics, will always win out in the end.

I just finished reading this book again, now in my final year of studies in a completely different paradigm, and I have to say that it remains a very inspirational book. It is accessible to those without prior knowledge of science, but still presents enough information to learn from it and understand the scientific community. If you can get past some of the writing in the first chapter (Jonah's a pretty harsh literary critic), this book on science turns into a really engaging story.

The author, Candace B. Pert, goes through several transformations in her career, from graduate student to Principal Investigator with tenure at the National Institutes Health to the private sector and back to a professorship at a university, all the while delving deeper into the world of holistic health care. She eventually becomes the token scientist at events like the annual National Wellness Conference, and explores her own health and healing through yogic breathing and stretches, meditation, touch therapies, and emotional release.

The most interesting part about the book is how science confirms everything we know in Chinese medicine about qi, emotions and health. The author doesn't talk much about Chinese medicine, but I think that if she learned more about the theory, she'd discover more connections between that understanding of the human body and her research.

For instance, I recently had a talk with my friend Prathap, a fellow science geek and current medical student, about how Chinese medicine views the human body and physiology versus the dominant allopathic biomedical design. One topic lead to another, and we got to talking about ADH or anti-diuretic hormone. ADH is released by the posterior pituitary and acts on the collecting ducts of the kidneys. The exact same molecule is also referred to as vasopressin. ADH is the moniker used in regards to the renal system, whereas vasopressin is used when discussing constriction of the arteries in the cardiovascular system, with the regulatory receptors in the brain. The two systems are rarely discussed together.

In Chinese medicine, the brain is considered a "sea of marrow," containing the thick yin essences of the body under the governance of the Kidney system. The Kidneys are also responsible for the movement and distribution of fluids in the body, serving as the "water" that controls the "fire" of the Heart. When blood pressure is low, or the fire of the Heart is relatively subdued, the Kidneys then control the reabsorption of fluids, thereby increasing blood pressure. The blood vessels also constrict in response to the same chemical signaling, and the fire of the Heart is relatively enhanced.

ADH is currently being studied for its role in social behavior. ADH is increased in the body during sexual activity, and is thought to induce male-on-male aggression in response to the threat of another encroaching upon "his" female. In Chinese medicine, the Kidneys govern both the yin and yang of sex: the sexual fluids, eggs/sperm, libido and activity. The Kidneys are also the house of Will, the drive to live, and is associated with the emotion of fear. The same chemical messenger that regulates water and blood pressure is also involved in sexuality and survival, and the emotion of fear is a direct stimulus for aggression and possessiveness. It is possible to see the connections between the emotions, sexuality, and survival in the context of the biochemical reactions going on in the body when viewed under the Chinese medical metaphor. All of these processes belong to different departments of science under the allopathic model, but in Chinese medicine they all belong to one system that is unified with all the other systems of the body to create one functioning vessel.

Since the overwhelming majority of scientific experiments require the formation of a provable hypothesis, study of the Chinese medical theory may give the new-era science researchers some insight as to how to direct their holistic medical research. New "discoveries" can then be made to further elucidate just how much Chinese medicine makes sense.

Going back to Molecules of Emotion, the take home message that I got from Candace Pert was that free flow of emotions is the most important aspect of wellness, and that expression of emotions is the key to healing: be it anger, fear or sadness; joy, courage or hope.