2020/12/15

How Western Medicine Defines Health

How do Chinese and Western medicine define whether or not a person is healthy? Let's start with Western medicine. Western medicine relies heavily upon statistics to calculate the median or average value of a data point about the human body. These numbers define healthy height and weight, body temperature, blood pressure and blood sugar, and counts of red and white blood cells. Therefore, Western medicine upholds the idea that median or average value signifies health. That is, to be like most people is healthy. Western medicine does not define what health is in easily understandable terms. It only defines health relative to numbers observed in a population.

How Traditional Chinese Medicine Defines Health

As Chinese medicine does not rely on instruments, numbers and statistics are mostly absent. The pulse is checked during diagnosis, but the four main components of diagnosis are "seeing, smelling, asking, and cutting." Seeing is comprised of observing a person's appearance and vitality. Smelling is assessing the sounds and smells of the person. Asking is verbal inquiry. Cutting is palpation of the patient's body and pulse.

This article deals with the method of "inquiry" of Chinese medicine. This method is something ordinary people can use to examine and assess their own health.

Six Signs of Health According to Traditional Chinese Medicine

The quotes below are from Dr. Haixia Ni’s "How to Know Your Body Is Normal":

1. With a normal appetite, one does not overeat or lose appetite. One eats with relish, partaking in three meals a day. One feels both hunger and fullness.

A normal body feels hungry when it requires nourishment and has the desire to eat. Both the absense of appetite and excessive appetite are abnormal.

2. The first thing one does after waking up is to defecate.

The twelve meridians of Chinese medicine all have associated times. The large intestine meridian is associated with 5-7 a.m. Therefore, the first thing to one does in the morning is defecate. The stomach meridian is associated with 7-9 a.m., so one feels hungry and eats breakfast. If you wake up in the morning without feeling like making a bowel movement and also don't want to eat breakfast, beware.

3. One urinates 5-7 times a day. In the summer, one sweats more so urination is naturally less frequent. In the winter, one sweats less so urination is naturally more frequent. The color of urine is pale yellow.

As we do not urinate while asleep, there are 24-8=16 hours per waking day. To urinate 5-7 times in 16 hours means one urinates once every 3-4 hours. If one urinates too frequently, or suddenly has no urge to urinate for a whole morning or afternoon (more than 4-5 hours), one's body is pointing out a problem. 

4. One sleeps until dawn everyday. One does not experience insomnia nor wakes up in the middle of the night for no reason.

Good quality sleep is one of the basic elements of health. Traditional Chinese medicine emphasizes that during the times associated with the gall bladder meridian (11 p.m. to 1 a.m.) and the liver meridian (1-3 a.m.), one must be in deep sleep as these are important times for the body to produce blood and detoxify.

5. No matter if one lives in the north or the south, he keeps his feet uncovered every night while sleeping. If covered, one cannot stand the heat. The head and face are cold while the hands and feet are warm.

The soles of the feet must be warm, while the back of the feet should be cold. The soles of the feet are the starting points of the Shaoyin kidney meridians of the feet. Warm soles indicate sufficient energy for the kidneys and small intestine, which are related to the human urinary and digestive system. The palms of the hands should also be kept at room temperature. Palm temperature indicates sufiicient energy in the heart. In Chinese medicine theory, a cool head and face coupled with warm soles indicates that heat can travel down within the body. Heat naturally rises, so the human body must actively transport heat downwards to sustain life. If heat rushes to the head and face, resulting in a hot head and cool feet, a dangerous imbalance in yin and yang is evident.

6. Every morning when one gets up, a yang reaction is apparent. Men have an erection while women have sensitive breasts.

In the early morning, yang is abundant and both men and women should display the signs indicated by Dr. Ni. These signs show that the body is functional and energetic.

The six signs listed by Dr. Ni above are the signs of a healthy person. No special tools or training are required to observe and evaluate them. If any of them are not met, then one has room for improvement. If one finds that any of the above can not be achieved, then one should try to remember when the sign was first lost. You can adjust your life to restore your health.

Self-diagnosing Health Using Chinese Medicine

From Dr. Ni's text, we can see that Chinese medicine has strict standards for human health. There are clear indicators, and these indicators are perceivable by laymen. At one time, you may have been able to fall asleep immediately upon lying down. Later, you may toss and turn for tens of minutes to fall asleep, wake up in the middle of the night after falling asleep, or wake up in the morning still feeling tired. These phenomena are your body telling you that there are some health problems that need your attention.

Western medicine rules our modern society. Although people are trained to look for warning signs of disease, they are also taught to blindly trust instruments to tell them the actual health of their bodies. This is like the story behind the Chinese idiom "a man from Zheng buys shoes" (鄭人買履). A man from Zheng planned to go to the market to buy shoes. He measured his feet and wrote the measurements down on paper. He went all the way to the market and picked out a pair of shoes only to discover he had forgotten to bring the paper. He went back home to get the measurements, but the market closed before he could get back. Today, we are trained to be like this man from Zheng. He forgot that his feet are a part of him and instead trusted the measurements on a piece of paper. We forget our connections with our bodies and instead trust instruments to tell us about ourselves.

Even if you have regular health checkups, do not forget that you are the master of your body. You know your physical condition the best and you are responsible for taking care of your health.