Bridging Eastern and Western Medicine

Having been trained in Western medicine as a nurse, I am now learning about Eastern medicine by taking acupuncture courses in Chinese Medicine. I am trying to bridge and connect the dots between Eastern and Western medicine and I came across a wonderful book called “Power of the Five Elements”, written by a physician, Dr. Charles A Moss. He also went through a similar process of trying to bridge the concepts together after he embraced acupuncture after becoming a physician.

When the author, Dr. Moss, started to share what changes go on in the brain during an acupuncture treatment, the light went off for me and I thought, "aahhhh...that makes sense!" Here are some excerpts from his book that helped me relate and bridge these two worlds:

“By using MRI and PET scans, researchers have been able to identify the effects on the brain of stress and poor adaptation. The main hormones of the stress response are adrenalin (epinephrine) and cortisol. When a person responds to any long-term stressful situation, they first ramp up production of epinephrine, then cortisol to cope with that life challenge. If the stress continues and they are unable to disengage from that trigger, the elevated cortisol continues and they develop chronic disease and chronic inflammation (heart disease, cancer, autoimmune disease, premature aging. diabetes, obesity). Studies show that people with these problems have lower cortisol than normal.

Cortisol and other stress hormones, which are essential for survival and adaptation, become dangerous when chronically elevated and maladapted. Cortisol imbalance can lead to fatigue, weight gain, immune suppression, and susceptibility to colds, flu, joint pains, mood swings, anxiety, depression, insomnia, and digestive symptoms. These symptoms are a message of poor adaptation. The person needs to learn how to disengage from the stress. This can be done with

Acupuncture reduces the activity in the amygdale and increases the hippocampus activity which is the areas in the brain that control the production of stress hormones and regulate the activity of the adrenal glands. The affect of acupuncture on this part of the brain was the link between the ancient concept of regaining aliveness and newness and improved adoption."

The author also is able to takes the five elements that are used in Chinese Medicine (wood, fire, earth, metal, and water) and uses the information to group people into different buckets or categories of behavior. He goes on to talk about these behaviors as the core to helping these patients "adapt" so they can decrease their cortical levels and become balanced, thereby managing their disease and stress.

Here are the categories of behavior he identifies and associates with the five elements:

	WOOD	FIRE	EARTH	METAL	WATER
Expectation	Get my way	True Love	Get needs met	Purify/meaning	Safety
Perception	Blocked	Hurt	Ignored	Dismissed	Danger
Stress Response	Anger/Frustration	Loss of Joy	Search for understanding	Depression	Fear

What I also enjoyed about his method of using the five elements to identify the adaptation behaviors, he also uses that information to identify what type of acupuncture each of those five element types of patients will best respond to, along with meditations and behavior modifications.

The book was helpful to me in starting that bridge between Eastern and Western medicine.

Bridging Eastern and Western Medicine