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What can Chinese medicine actually do?

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The WHO made a rough assessment

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of the human population:

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people who are basically fully healthy

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are only about 5%.

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Those clearly confirmed to be ill are 20%.

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And the in-between? The in-between state is called

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sub-health: 75%.

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Ask yourself: how much do you really know about yourself?

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Do you fully understand yourself?

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Honestly, many people don't really know themselves.

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Thank you so much for your contribution

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to TCM in cancer care.

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Could you tell us a bit about yourself?

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In my early years I learned under my master.

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After learning under my master, I went on to study

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a bachelor's in medicine. After that,

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I went to Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine

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for a master's in integrative treatment

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of malignant tumours, and then

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a doctorate in Chinese medicine.

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So this field, plus

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my own practice here in Vancouver, in Chinese medicine,

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in clinical practice, adds up to

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more than thirty years of experience.

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Because in Canada,

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the treatment of cancer patients is mainly Western medicine,

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following the Western medical system.

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So on the treatment side,

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we basically don't

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intervene; we stay out of it. So you focus on prevention?

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We work on prevention, or

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recovery after treatment. These two are,

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so to speak, around the main treatment,

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one before, one after. Those two areas.

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I was with my supervisor, Professor Chen Ruisheng,

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in clinic, and we found that in China

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it was mostly like this: some

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tumour patients who had been through

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some Western-medicine treatment,

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and had then reached a certain stage,

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would be referred to Chinese medicine

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for treatment. So in treating tumours,

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what role can Chinese medicine play?

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First, when used alongside Western

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chemotherapy and radiotherapy,

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herbal medicine and acupuncture

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can reduce toxicity and enhance efficacy:

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that is, cut down the toxic side effects

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and at the same time boost its efficacy.

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In Chinese medicine, we break it down a bit further.

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Those 75% of people, we

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can divide into three or four stages.

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For example, there's one kind of person

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who is about to fall ill.

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They're already right at the edge.

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But people in this state, as long as

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no sudden illness has struck yet,

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look just like a normal person.

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Then after a while, suddenly,

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you find many people suddenly have a brain hemorrhage,

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a sudden heart attack, that kind of sudden event.

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That's a portion of people who

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are already close to the edge of illness.

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That's one kind. Another kind already has

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minor ailments, all sorts of little problems,

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one or several of them. For example,

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a chronic stomach problem, a chronic cough.

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Those are minor ailments. Another kind: the body

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has hidden problems. For example,

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look at this lawn here. It seems

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the lawn is lush and green,

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but if you dig down,

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there may be all kinds of

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weed roots in the soil. If you

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leave it untended for a while, say

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you go back to China for a few months,

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it may come up overgrown with weeds.

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So how to dig out

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those hidden problems:

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that's another part of it.

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From the Western angle of treating disease,

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say someone has E. coli diarrhea.

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They take a Western drug, it's cured at once. That's treating.

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Relatively speaking, I think for bacterial

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and other externally caused problems, it

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can stop them. That kind of thing

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is treatment. Now, TCM's conditioning:

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generally we say conditioning. Why use

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that word? Because the way we in TCM see it,

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people, from the TCM perspective,

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are divided into nine types. Say you

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are the balanced type, normal,

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very healthy, that's one. Others

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may lean toward qi deficiency, some

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toward yin deficiency. Some, like us

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here in a place like Vancouver,

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many are the cold-damp type. In Guangdong

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and other hotter places, the damp-heat type

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is common. Here there are also many

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damp-heat people. So once we've sorted people

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into these constitution types, as we

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condition them, we hope

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they can move from their original, skewed

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constitution toward a normal one.

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Step by small step, conditioning like that,

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and then the big step is treating disease.

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What do you think of moxibustion?

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Moxibustion is very effective,

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because it's a yang-warming method.

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because nowadays a large number,

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quite a few patients, have problems tied to the body's

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lack of heat, not enough energy in the meridians.

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TCM especially stresses two words:

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one is 'warm', one is 'flow'.

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So in detox, in acupuncture,

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in tuina, that's the 'flow' at work.

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But add moxibustion, or some electric

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warming heat, and then

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that provides the 'warm'. It

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can promote free flow in the meridians.

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Promoting flow in the meridians also promotes

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blood circulation. That is to say,

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from the TCM angle, it raises

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your own healing capacity; from the Western

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angle, it boosts your immunity.