We return to Chinese Pseudoscience! Because there's simply no end to stupidity in this world that somehow manages to perpetuate itself into multi-billion dollar industries.
In what probably should have been the very first episode, today will be a dive into the very premise that Chinese Traditional Medicine is built on, from the philosophy of yin and yang to the bunk model of the human body. I won't go too deeply into each part since they would need a post each to cover, but instead the focus is going to be on why it's stupid. Enjoy!
Yin Yang
This will definitely save your life. Credit: DonkeyHotey CC BY 2.0
Probably the most common symbol to come out of China, yin and yang is overblown in all aspects of life to represent how contrasting things work together, like how punching somebody's face works well with the receiver of said punch.
Ok maybe that's not quite accurate, but in very basic terms, it does describe how opposite forces may in fact complement each other; light and dark is one that perpetuates all fiction across all genres, but I find many of these to be circumstantial resulting from our use of language and our brains lack of fondness for complexity, always on the lookout for 'black and white' results, so to speak.
A psychopath is bad, A buddhist is good. A psychopath is dark, a buddhist is light.
...What about the psychopathic buddhist?
Anyway, this concept of opposites is forcefully applied to everything; boy and girl, sun and moon, wet and dry, up and down and so on. In medicine, much of the concept seems to refer to hot and cold.
Yin generally refers to things that are 'hot' within the body, so if you have a fever, this is a 'yin' condition, and hypothermia will be a 'yang' condition, but it can get a bit shady when referring to dry mouth, diarrhea and so forth. I'm guessing it was arbitrarily thrown into one or the other category; adding a third would be blasphemy.
Wu Xing
Known to us as 'the five elements', this refers to a very wrong concept of five elements being intrinsically related; wood, fire, earth, metal and water. In a kind of rock-paper-scissors scenario, each one interacts with the others in various ways:
Credit: Parnassus, CC BY-SA 3.0
- Wood slices Earth
- Earth dams water
- Water extinguishes fire
- Fire melts metal
- Metal chops wood
...and together, go about explaining pretty much everything in the cosmos, from chinese medicine to planetary motion, political domination and of course, martial arts.
It can also refer to phases of time; growth, harvest, death and so on, and anything in life that happens to be groupedd into fives:
The five fingers
The five 'tastes'
The five emotions
The five senses
The five animals (the arrogance of this one; scaly, feathered, furry, shelled or human. Get over yourselves)
And so on.
Basically, it's people looking for patterns in nature and applying them to an established idea to help make sense of an unknown world - after all, this was all created as early as the 14th century BCE, around the Shang dynasty. A scary time.
Medicine?
So with that very brief introduction, how on earth does it relate to effective medicine?
Well, if you've been following this series you know that it doesn't, and even historical scholars of China dismissed it, with emperors actually banning it as a practice, but since it's come back (Thanks Mao), let's look into it.
The overall idea here is that the complementary nature of yin & yang create balance, and when that balance is off, you get sick, called 'vacuity'. Each organ has been arbitrarily assigned a place in either yin or yang, also known as Zang-fu:
Yin Organs: Heart, Liver, Spleen, Lungs and Kidney
Yang Organs: Small Intestine, Large Intestine, Gall Bladder, Urinary Bladder and Stomach
The creators of this concept also added another part of the body we can't actually detect called San Jiao, meaning 'triple heater' and is more of a metaphorical organ, but is still definitely an actual organ. Historically, it was sometimes thought of as a membrane that encased the human body in three parts; the chest cavity and two halves of the abdomen.
In fact in TCM, all these organs have two definition: The actual organ and the metaphorical organ; the description of its function without form. San Jiao is one that only has a functional existence, but no form.
Please don't forget that this is a post about medicine and its application in saving lives.
Principal Meridians
From my understanding, each Yin (zang) organ is paired with a Yang (fu) organ, and together are grouped into one of the five elements. To make things more complicated, the good old meridian pathways come into play. There are 12 standard meridian lines, and these also fall into Yin & Yang categories.
For those who don't know, the meridian pathways allow life energy known as 'Qi' to pass through the body, all of which definitely exists despite there being no dirty western evidence for it.
These effectively connect the hands and feet to the organs and depending on their position in the yin-yang system determines which organs get assigned to which limb. For example, in the case of the 'Taiyin Lung Channel of Hand' meridian, the lung is connected to the hand, has the metal element and is very Yin. The 'Taiyin Spleen Channel of Foot' meridian goes from the spleen to the foot and is attached to the small intestine, its element is earth and is also very 'Yin'.
There's a lot more to it all, but I suppose that's the point. Keep it simple and people won't buy it; too obviously fraudulent.
So... how does this save my life?
Well, together all this and more builds up a Chinese model of the body that involves Qi, Jing (essence), Shen (mind), blood and the meridian pathways. The idea is to use these to determine how much imbalance between yin and yang exists in your body and why.
This generally means if you have, say, a stomach ache, you don't just look at the stomach, you look at its related organ in the aforementioned 'Zang Fu' system, as well as its connections to your hands and feet.
So let's look at the heart as an example.
The heart, like all others, is both an actual organ and a description of a function. Basically a spiritual term metaphorically defined as the heart. The heart has been grouped into 'Zang' or Yin and gets paired with the small intestine. They both have the element of fire.
If there is a yin-yang imbalance, you might experience heart palpitations, unsettled sleep and insomnia, restlessness and poor memory. Because that's what doctors say, after all.
The heart houses 'Shen' or 'Essence' which can be described best as the soul combined with our mental activity. I thought that was the brain but what do I know, eh?
(shen) is the source of thought processes, mental focus, planning, intelligence, any thought, idea and the will to carry it out can be seen as a manifestation of shen
You know, the shen, that's housed in your metaphorical heart.
The heart is also known to 'open to the tongue', which is the root of the heart. So if you have a speech impediment, for example, you have a yin-yang imbalance in your heart. This is proven because many cultures around the world ask you to 'speak from the heart'. So it's not just China, the evidence is everywhere.
Your sense of taste is therefore also affected and a weak sense of taste, and which tastes are weak determine what imbalance is occurring in your heart.
What is my prescription??
Well, if you have heart problems there's an easy solution. You see, the heart is red. If you are imbalanced in the heart, it would become less red, and the goal is to make it more red. Eating red coloured food should fix this according to Chinese medicine. Things like cherries, red beans, red apples (note: NOT green), strawberries and so on.
Credit: Wellcome images, CC BY 4.0
Because the meridian connected to the heart begins at the armpit and ends at your pinky finger, you should stretch your arms to get those meridian pathways refreshed. Numerous related and specific exercises like breathing evenly and making fists will cure all heart-related ailments. Lifting your arms over your head can't hurt, either.
Remember the groups of five I mentioned? Well the five emotional groups are:
Anger/Kindness
Hate/Resolve
Anxiety/Joy
Grief/Braverey
Fear/Gentleness
For the heart, it fits into the 'Joy' category. If you don't get enough joy in your life, the metaphorical heart is affected and this affects the actual heart:
When heart energy is depleted, we can suffer from insomnia and dream disturbed sleep, an inability to think clearly, forgetfulness, concentration problems and poor memory. In extreme cases we see manic behaviour or even comaSource
So you better be happy
OR ELSE
I want to once again remind you that literally millions of people pay a collective billions upon billions of dollars in hope for their lives to be saved on the above premise. Think about that next time you go for some acupuncture.
If all the above fails, you have to turn to medicine. How does that work? You'll have to wait until the next part, where I'll also look into the 'evidence'.
It's all very stupid.
References: TCM | Chinese Medicine Living | Blue Buddha Acupuncture | Wu Xing | Heart (Chinese medicine) | San Jiao | Triple Burner (San Jian) - ITM Online | Zang-Fu
