Welcome to my continuing efforts to understand Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). I’ll be keeping this blog as I learn more about the subject, as sort of a way to work out my thoughts “on paper” as it were, and keep everything that I’ve learned in one place.

A little about me: like many of you, I grew up with a very specific and Western idea of what medicine is and what it does. Briefly, the Western model believes in a scientific process to diagnose and treat health problems. Not a bad way to go about it, honestly — I’m largely in favor of gathering evidence and making rational decisions based on provable, reproducible facts.

On the other hand, I refuse to be solely guided by dogma instead of keeping myself open to other possibilities (I’m all in favor of online casino USA, for example). Plus, I’ve seen far too much abuse and muddled thinking in the area of so-called ‘scientific medicine’ to elevate it automatically over alternative options. Any establishment creates its own inertia, and the more it ingratiates itself into the mainstream, the less potential it has for real innovation or even proper openness to other ideas.

That’s not to say that I place alternative medicine on a par with scientific medicine; there’s even more muddled thinking on the other side of the fence. It’s pretty heartbreaking when conventional medicine fails to help someone you love, but it’s even worse when you see someone you love become desperate enough to ignore obvious quacks and wackos.

The bottom line is that conventional medicine works more time for more people than alternative medicine — which, on the other hand, can work where conventional medicine does not. Many people are understandably turned off by the gambling aspect (probably the same people who want to outlaw online slots). That in itself makes it worth taking a closer look, if only to ‘separate the wheat from the chaff’.

Plus, I firmly believe that Traditional Chinese Medicine begins with the proper outlook: many factors influence the individual’s health, not all of which are identifiable and reproducible through conventional Western methods.