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Traditional Chinese Medicine

TCM, or Traditional Chinese Medicine, can be traced as far back as 1000 BC, where stone acupuncture needles were believed to be used. Texts from that period also talked of Yin and Yang and other concepts. The first written work on TCM is titled the Yellow Emperor's Inner Classic, Huangdi Newijing (Gascoigne 11). This book was written in 300 BC, but entries date back to the early 2700's BC. The book is still used in universities of Chinese Medicine around the world and is often called the bible of TCM. Today, TCM is still thriving in China and all of Asia. In recent years, information on TCM has become available to people in the United States. The United States has several schools of TCM, and it is now much easier to buy the necessary supplies needed for correct practice of TCM (Gascoigne 11-7).
During some time about 1000 years ago in the Song Dynasty, a man named Chen Yan classified the causes of disease into three different categories (Gao 31). Chinese medicine does not believe that bacteria and viruses are the cause of disease. Instead, it talks about influences that cause "disharmony" in Yin and Yang, the Essential Substances, the Organ System, the Channels, and the Five Phases (Cohen 37). "The Six Pernicious Influences-Heat, Cold, Wind, Dampness, Dryness and Summer Heat-are external climatic forces that can invade the body and create disharmony in the mind/body/spirit" (Cohen 37). With symptoms relating to heat, you can either have an excess of heat or a deficiency of it. Excess heat usually lasts for short periods of time and has symptoms such as high fevers, irritability and restlessness, thirst, little or no sweat or urine, and a flushed face. Heat rises in nature, as it also does in your body. That is why the upper areas of your body are the ones that suffer from excess heat. If you have an insufficient amount of heat you might suffer from hot hands and feet, fevers that occur in the afternoon, sore throat, inability to fall asleep, and...