Treating Chronic Illness with Traditional Chinese Medicine
In an era where scientific achievements and modern medicine are advancing so quickly, where do ancient health practices such as Traditional Chinese Medicine stand?
Today, an increasing number of people are seeking alternative medicine to cure their chronic disease because conventional methods have failed to deliver the solution. The limitation of conventional medicine is not on technique or technology but on its localized approach to the medical condition.
Conventional medicine is built on the principle of “identifying the disease and finding a cure to eliminate the condition”. However, most diseases that are being identified are symptoms resulting from imbalances in our mind and body rather than the root cause of the problem. If we are unable to get to the source of the problem, then it is bound to re-occur.
From now on, I’ll refer to conventional medicine as “treatment based medicine”.
Not all alternative or non-traditional medicine deal with the source of the medical condition, so one should be very careful in selecting a modality that provides a proper solution for a complete health recovery.
- Characteristics and Limitations of Treatment Based Medicine.
Many conventional and alternative medicines belong to the treatment based category, since the focus is on the symptoms rather the root cause of the problem.
1.1 Characteristics of Treatment Based Medicine
The physician tends to play the active and dominant role, while the patient plays the passive role, i.e. the physician makes the decision and the patient simply follows the instructions. The treatment is largely based on external interventions such as surgery, medication, injections and other therapies. The focus is on how to eliminate the condition, improve it, and control it.
Surgery is very effective for treating physical injury and emergency situations of chronic diseases. Antibiotics and other medications for infectious and viral disease have made tremendous contribution to human health and saved many lives.
Drugs are normally absorbed through our digestive systems and injections directly enter our muscles and blood systems. They are absorbed by all cells whether they are sick and normal. If the sick cell is too weak to absorb the medication then the normal cells would absorb more than its share and became toxic.
1.2 Limitations of Treatment Based Medicine
The strict reliance on physical evidence and laboratory results for diagnoses by treatment based medicine has contributed to its own limitations in curing many diseases. It has neglected the psychological well-being of the patients. The principles of using laboratory results and scientific experiments to diagnose medical conditions and find cures have failed to recognize that:
- human beings have two parts: the material — physical body, and the non-material – mental, emotional and spiritual component
- these two parts need each other to co-exist and that they complement each other. Life cannot exist if any one part is missing.
The primary focus has been in the area where symptoms occur. Actually, illness is a warning signal and message from our body telling us that we need to adjust our lifestyle.
1.3 Problems with Treatment based medicine
There are numerous problems with treatment based medicine and we will highlight a few of them here:
1.3.1 Misdiagnosis and Mistreatment
In 1997, a study on misdiagnosis in China indicated that the average rate was one in three. For certain illness the rate is two in three. Even in more medically advanced countries autopsies showed that 50% of the patients who died in the hospital were due to misdiagnosis and wrong prescription.
An article in the US Healthy Life magazine titled “Regain my life and Give the Illness back to the Doctor” made reference that more people died of medical mistakes than people died from car accident and breast cancer combined each year.
1.3.2 Adverse Drug Reactions
According to the Journal of American Medical Association, adverse drug reactions have caused over 100,000 deaths in hospital treated patients. The same report indicated that, “In 1994, there were 2,216,000 cases of severe adverse drug reactions and 106,000 cases of deaths. Death from adverse drug reaction is the fourth leading cause of death in the US which is higher than diabetes, pneumonia and car accident.”
1.3.3 Rapid Growth of New Strength in Viruses
Extensive application of anti-viral and anti-bacteria drugs have promoted the rapid evolution of bacteria and virus and led to the emergence of new generations of drug resistant strains.
According to the United Syndicated News, during the world conference on pharmaceutical research held in Vienna, the attendees were pessimistic toward the negative impacts of genetic food and gene therapy. They pointed out that we must not work against nature; otherwise the human race will become the victim of its own anti-nature work. They also pointed out the abuse and over-use of antibiotics has resulted in the rapid emergence of drug resistant bacteria and viruses.
This will become a global problem which is more severe than any political, economical or social issue. The chairman indicated that since there is no international boundary for these diseases, then we need to have a global strategy to defeat the problem.
In fact the World Health Organization (WHO) in the United Nations had reported in July, 2000 that many nations have failed to curb the continuing emergence of drug-resistant bacteria. So WHO has created an international committee to investigate this problem, and try to come up with an effective strategy to cope with it. Otherwise the future of the entire human race is at risk.
The above information showed that the problem brought by treatment based medicine lies not only in the realm of chronic diseases, but also create a situation in the future that the body may not be able to deal with diseases that are caused by drug-resistant bacteria and virus.
1.3.4 Drug Suppresses and destroys human body’s self-healing system
In addition to serious side effects, long term use of drug will greatly pollute the internal environment of the human body and inhibit its self-healing function. Drugs, enhancements, vitamins and anti-inflammatory agents tend to suppress and disturb the proper functioning of our natural immune function and self-healing capabilities. Extended use of these elements will destroy our internal health system.
AIDS, the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome has caused a lot of panic in the entire human race. It demonstrates that the treatment based medicine is powerless when it comes to deficiency of the human immune system. If our conventional medicine still persists on repeating the same mistakes by encouraging people to consume more drugs for their disease, it will severely reduce our innate capability to fight against diseases. Again, this will be disastrous to the human race.
- The Principles of Self-healing Based Health Recovery Medicine
Human beings know for a long time that all living things have their own homeostasis system and self-healing capabilities. In 1940’s, there was an emergence of holistic medicine which created the beginning of scientific research on this non-material approach. Furthermore, this has continued to evolve into a new health recovery medicine. Health recovery medicine is based on encouraging patients to maintain a calm emotional state and strengthen the homeostasis system.
Two years ago, the Chinese Health publication reported the research findings that among all the factors or elements contributing to human health, self-healing has accounted for 60% while modern pharmaceutical intervention had only about 8%. This suggests that self-healing and self adjustment is more important to the human health than any medical establishment.
Thousands of years ago, the ancient Zen founder Budi-Darmo pointed out that “Drug therapy is not the solution for curing illness, because there are effective and ineffective medicines, and they also have negative side effects. If the side effects remain in your body they can transform into other illness when the body become weak. Therefore, it is advisable for qigong practitioners not to take medication. “
According to “Neijing,” the well known medical book from 2500 years ago, “when pure good energy exist, bad energy can not interfere, so bad energy is present where pure good energy is weak.” This means that a persons immune function is normal when the energy is strong and the immune function is abnormal when the energy is weak.
- The Characteristics of Health Recovery System
3.1. Reverse the roles of patient and doctors
If you accept the fact that many diseases are the results of emotions and behaviour, then you will agree that one must take an active role in changing the unhealthy behaviors to the healthy ones for his recovery. In the future, Qigong Health Recovery medicine will become the primary medical care where the patients learn how to be calm their emotions and change their behaviour from the unhealthy ones to the healthy ones. Whereas, doctors will play the supporting role and the modern medicine types of treatment will become the complementary medicine for emergency situations and selective applications.
3.2. Focus on activating the self-healing power
Many diseases are closely related to human behavior. The behavior is the cause and the disease is the result. Even in cases of injuries from accidents or virus infections, they are closely tied to human’s improper behavior and imbalance in their internal environment. There has to be a deficiency in human’s internal defense system before the external disease causing agent can do harm. The fact that there are people who can remain healthy despite living in an area of rampant contagious disease is the very proves of the above point.
Self-healing based qigong medicine emphasizes on practicing medical qigong forms that are genuine and effective. This would exclude some popular health maintenance qigong or some fake qigong, which are merely physical exercises. Genuine medical qigong can quickly activate many latent abilities of the patient. It improves the internal environment of the patient such that it will no longer be a breeding ground for disease. Through practice, the patient can fully restore his or her self-healing power which has been suppressed by drug or other physical and psychological factors.
The three main components of self-healing system are:
- Immune System
- Self recovery System
- Self-regeneration System
The immune system is our first line of defense against illness. If a person has a healthy immune system then he can easily fend off external intrusions. A healthy self recovery system can help to restore health quickly. A strong regeneration system can help to repair damaged body parts and even regenerate new ones like those we observed in nature. The essence of Medical Qigong is to build up these inherent capabilities of self-healing system to overcome the so-called incurable and chronic conditions.
3.3 Holistic Adjustment to Heal the Mind and the Body at Symptoms and Causes
By body we mean the physical body. By mind we mean the phyche, consciousness or soul. From the perspective of self-healing based medical qigong, we classify all diseases into two categories:
The first category includes injuries of the material domain, such as physical injury, car accident, external wound, or sport injury. Infections of bacteria also belong to this domain. Treatment based medicine has many successes in treating this type of disease because the causes of these diseases is very easy to define
The second category includes injuries of the non-material or metaphysical domain. For example, a person with unhealthy mental attitude and emotion can develop certain physical disease. Since the cause of such disease cannot be clearly identified, the lack of effective treatment makes this disease become a chronic condition. In fact, most chronic diseases belong to this category. Treatment based medicine can only work at the symptom of such disease. However, due to the lack of total understanding of the cause of disease, it can not provide total healing to restore wellness.
Holistic adjustment comes from practicing an effective medical qigong that will quickly develop a person’s true qi. True qi can open the blockages in the meridian system and help the physical body to recover from diseases. Furthermore, it can also relax the distorted mental condition such that the true cause of many chronic illnesses can be resolved and the patient can then gain complete recovery.
3.4 Change the attitude and use positive consciousness to control the disease.
Human consciousness has energy. This has been proven in many scientific experiments. Clinical experience from self-healing based medical qigong clearly proved that positive consciousness can help a patient to recover. Whereas, negative and destructive consciousness can worsen the patient’s condition, and even cause death.
Self-healing based medical qigong put a lot of emphasizes on cultivating and improving the quality of consciousness power. The student can use positive consciousness to influence the development of their disease for a health recovery.
In order to achieve this goal, one has to first change his attitude. One must abandon the old concept and belief system. This includes removing the beliefs created by modern medicines. For example, modern medicine considers that late-stage cancer cannot be overcome, it also declared that heart disease and diabetes are not recoverable, and that the patient must take medication for life. Such beliefs must be eliminated.
- Recovery Results from Medical Qigong
Nianli Qigong has been practiced in China for more than ten years. I have organized many intensive workshops and helped over a hundred thousand people recover from many different kinds of chronic and incurable diseases. The most common ones being: heart disease, hypertension, diabetics, cancer of various kinds, and others incurable and unusual diseases. The health recovery rate of students at the intensive workshop was 95%. Through training, these students have activated their self-healing capabilities and were able to free themselves from the burden and risks of medication for life.
Over five thousand late-stage cancer patients who have exhausted all traditional treatment participated in the Nianli Qigong intensive anti-cancer workshops. These patients have stopped all medication and treatment. They purely concentrated on practicing Qigong, participated in the Bigu program and were treated with external qi adjustments by the qigong master. The success rate was 90%, i.e. a 50% reduction in tumor size, based on conventional test according to international standards taken before and after the workshop. Some of them have fully recovered and lived a healthy life for over nine years. They include: serous recurrent liver cancer patient Mr. Maoxun Shen, vice principal of Shantou University; recurrent breast cancer metastasize to bone patient Mrs. Yun Liao, senior high school teacher from Liuzhou; stage 4 brain cancer, employee of Shantou Electrical Power Co.; advanced stage esophagus cancer metastasize to stomach patient Ms. Hung, a housewife from White Pagoda Village; colorectal cancer metastasize to the abdomen area patient Ms Chen, a retired employee of the Shantou Beverage Co.; just to name a few.
Conclusion
I truly believe that self-healing based qigong medicine will revolutionize the way human beings cope with disease, because I have witnessed it in helping many patients who suffered chronic diseases to regain their health, and this method has no side effects. We should introduce this new medicine to more people, encourage them to adopt it and give mankind a happy healthy future.
