Cross-Cultural Research On Traditional Medicine In Europe And China

Traditional forms of medicine are present in all cultures. While the traditional medicine in China has been preserved and developed, in Europe it has been undergoing many changes and changed into a complimentary kind of medicine. Chinese medicine also has been introduced to Europe and its application and popularity is increasing. Since some voices have criticized, that medical systems from different cultures can not simply be transferred without changes according to the different population, it was our goal to compare the historical background of European and Chinese medical systems and their mutual relation, the differences in the patient populations in regard to the parameters leading to disease, their symptoms, disease manifestations and occurrence of TCM-patterns as well as to compare the difference in expression and 1CM-Patterns of the biomedical defined diseases hypertension and hyperlipidemia.1.Our results show that both medical systems had a strong mutual impact throughout their developments during the last two millennia and were in fact rather similar until the 16th century, after which western medicine changed its vieiv from a systemic view of the disease and a specific view of the patient to a general approach to the patient and a specific approach to the disease.2.The comparison of the two patient populations of 200 persons each has shown, that our Germany patients tended to Qi and Yang deficiency, while their Chinese counterparts, rather had an inclination to Qi and Yin deficiencies. In nutrition we found that Germans eat less fish and more diary products, while Chinese drink more soup and less coffee, soft drinks and herbal teas.3.In the comparison of biomedical defined diseases, the two subpopulations of the hypertension group have shown, that hypertension in Chinese patients had typical symptoms like vertigo, tinnitus, weakness of the limbs, oppressed feeling in the chest and were rather related to fullness while German patients have shown less obvious hypertensive symptoms like 搕iredness after eating?which were related to a deficient background, with spleen and yang deficiencies.In the comparison of hyperlipidemia, the highest occurrence in Chinese patients was 搊ppression of the chest? while in German patients had the highest occurrence of the symptom 損rofuse urination and night urine? In regard to tongue and pulse diagnosis in both diseases the Germans had a pale-red tongue with dental imprints and weak pulses related to deficiency.The latter findings show that although the preliminary conditions were the same in both groups and classified by laboratory parameters to the same biomedical defined disease, their symptomatic expression is not necessarily the same. This emphasizes3again the advantage of a syndrome differentiation by TCM which relies strongly on individual expression and evaluation of patterns of these expressions.4.Of special interest in TCM is, that in the Western population the stress level and the consumption of high-caloric foods like diary and sugar are higher, as well as the long-term uncontrolled use of immune suppressive and antibiotic medication, which might be responsible for the high rate of allergic skin diseases, mycotic infections, which again is exactly confirm with the occurrence of their TCM-pattems: If kidney and spleen yang are deflcient, phlegm and dampness can accumulate, and the presence of these Yin pathogens harms the Yang even more, creating a vicious circle biomedically defined as microbiological and hormonal imbalance.After the application of Chinese medical theory and the resulting treatment with fragrant drying, dampness draining bland herbs and formulas like Huo Xiang Zheng Qi San the effects were immediate and very efficient, confirming by treatment, again the findings of the patterns.Therefore we recommend to adjust treatment, even of the same biomedically defined diseases always to the cultural, geomedical, and social backgrounds of the patients in order to achieve more precise and...