Chinese Herbal medicine and acupuncture are the main modalities or treatment method within Traditional Chinese Medicine or TCM. TCM is the World's oldest, continually practised, professional medicine. Its written history stretches back not less than 2,500 years and its practice is undoubtedly much older than that.
Although acupuncture was the first Chinese modality to gain wide acceptance in the West, Chinese herbal medicine is quickly establishing itself as one of the most popular and effective alternative therapies in the Western world.
The aim of Traditional Chinese Medicine is to restore health rather than simply eliminating symptoms; since the treatment focuses on the constitutional health, more than the illness, the patient, feeling much stronger may sees all the symptoms disappear quickly, and the possibility of relapses are less likely.
Chinese herbal medicine, when practised as part of TCM, is based on an individualized pattern diagnosis as well as a disease diagnosis.
This means the TCM patient receives a custom written herbal prescription designed to treat both the symptom or disease and also their individual pattern.
Such a TCM pattern is made up of a person's signs and symptoms as well as their emotional temperament and bodily constitution.
TCM practitioners use ingredients from all three kingdoms, i.e., vegetable, animal, and mineral. However, in my practice, I only use ingredients from vegetable sources. Leaves, flowers, twigs, stems, roots, tubers, rhizomes, and barks are some of the vegetable parts used.
Most of the medicines in the Chinese materia medica have a very low toxicity compared to even common, over the counter Western drugs. When they are prescribed according to a correct TCM pattern diagnosis, they should have virtually no side effects besides beneficial healing results.
In acute conditions, sometimes results can be expected in a matter of minutes.