Cultural Lecture: Traditional Medicine

Chen Laoshi, a professor of traditional medicine with a focus on sports medicine gave the third cultural lecture of the exploration seminar. Throughout his career, Chen Laoshi has focused on and taught courses in massage, physical therapy, and sports medicine. He has written textbooks on sports injury recovery through traditional medicine and injury prevention and diagnosis through traditional methods.

Today’s lecture will focus on Chinese medicine and massage because Chinese medicine is quite complicated, with 36 mandatory subjects and four years of required classes prior to rotations and internships. Students are also required to learn the history of traditional medicine, must read ancient literary works on this topic, and must learn how to perform diagnoses the Chinese way, as well as learning how to perform Western medicine.

The classifications of doctors are almost exactly as they are in the West, with pediatricians, obstetricians, internal medicine doctors, etc. But the most popular classification both within China and internationally is Acupuncturist/Masseuse. Chen Laoshi has lectured on these subjects in America, Holland and Vietnam.

There are three categories of traditional medicine treatments: herbs, animals (snakes, crabs, leeches, and scorpions are examples shown in today’s lecture), and minerals, which are mostly used in external application only and are rarely used today.

There are many common herbs used in today’s medicine applications that have been used in Chinese medicine for millennia. Ginseng or “Renshen”, looks like a human being and is used when one is feeling weak. This herb is too “hot” for a strong, healthy person. “Dangwei” looks like ginseng and is generally used in women’s health applications. “Goji” berries are good for skin and especially for women; you make a tea from them. Dates are good for the brain, the heart and good for women because of loosing blood each month. “Chuifengteng” looks like a small length of wood from a slender tree. It is used by minority cultures, along with “Huangqi” and “Shouwu” for back pain. These three ingredients boiled together will cure chronic back pain. “Jue Mingzi” and “Ludou” (green beans), when boiled together are a good medicine for reducing high blood pressure. “Shouwu” has also been known to turn gray hair “black” again, according to Chen Laoshi, though he emphasized that it will only work in young people whose hair has turned white quickly due to shock; it won’t work for older people.

Chen Laoshi emphasizes using healthy, natural remedies instead of man-made solutions to health problems. He especially comments to the women in the class that makeup and hair dye are no good. Also, he tells the women that the position that the body is forced into when wearing high heels actually changes the shape of the uterus making it more difficult for women to give birth.

Continuing with the herb lecture, Chen Laoshi introduces “Baiguo”, which are a Guilin specialty product. These are Ginkoba tree nuts and are good for dizziness, vertigo. The nuts are peeled and a small black seed, which is poisonous, is removed from the center. The remaining nutmeat is mixed with rock candy, crushed together and mixed with hot water to make a drink. “Tainqi” is an herb used for boosting blood supply and is very useful for those with anemia.

Though many animals and animal parts have a long tradition of use in Chinese medicine, Chen Laoshi only brought a few examples for today’s lecture. For stomach problems, the hard, shell-like piece inside of a squid is crushed into a powder. “Zhebeimu” is a root that looks like a snail’s shell. These are ground together with the squid powder and made into a drink by mixing hot water. Leeches are used in China for sports injuries, especially to reduce swelling. Also, one dried leech and a human placenta taken together are good for stroke victims, to bring back movement. Bear’s gall bladder is used to treat Hepatitis A, fever, pimples and itchy skin. Microwave three small scorpions for hand or foot joint pain.

“Anmo” or massage has a long history in China, examples of application dating back thousands of years. The three uses in today’s application are for curing diseases, preventative massage and sports massage. Because of doping and drugging fears during the Olympics, sports massage was used to cure injuries.

Chen Laoshi showed the students several ways to cure various chronic body pains with massage: neck pain, headaches, back pain, and leg and joint pain. He was also able to tell what students were suffering from by looking at their ears, a technique widely used in traditional medicine. Chen Laoshi emphasized that while Western medicine relies on expensive, complicated machinery, all Chinese doctors are required to know how to diagnose by looking at a patient’s ears.

The final portion of Chen Laoshi’s lecture touched on acupuncture, which is a complicated art form in itself. He showed students the various kinds of needles used and explained that there are two kinds of acupuncture: using needles alone in pressure points, and using needles combined with heat in pressure points. Although he had been using students to demonstrate massage on, he refrained from demonstrating acupuncture, as it is a serious remedy and is only applied when really needed.

Chen Laoshi reiterated to students that almost anything that ails a person has the potential to be cured naturally. He told students that his number one favorite method for curing anything is massage and he asked students to look for natural remedies before subscribing to more complicated methods. He finished the lecture by telling students what was bothering them by looking at their ears. He was correct in every instance.