Medicine to Treat Stress

Medicine to Treat Stress

Western Medicine

Conventional wisdom has many different ways to help coping with stress.

Conventional Western medicine uses advance science and technology for diagnosis and treatment of symptoms of diseases or disorders related to stress

All remedies in Western medicine involve chemicals, some of which are even toxic to human health. In the beginning of the 20th century, Western medical science had dismissed even traditional Western plant remedies as folklore medicine—concoctions only for grandmothers but not for professionally trained doctors.

With the emergence of the pharmaceutical industry, Western scientists began to focus almost exclusively on chemical drugs to treat different diseases with different symptoms. A case in point is human cancer. In the early 20th century, cancer was relatively unknown, but the number of cancer cases soon began to explode exponentially. With the growth of the billion-dollar pharmaceutical industry and the need to validate the potency of these chemical drugs, more research studies have to be conducted. Given that Western medicine aims at treating the symptoms rather than eradicating the root causes of a disease, and that chemical drugs often generate many adverse side effects, more new chemical drugs have to be developed to treat those newly emerging symptoms.

The general approach of conventional Western medicine is to “cure-all.” Unfortunately, all pharmaceutical drugs, irrespective of their potency in suppressing symptoms of diseases and disorders, are toxic chemicals that ultimately create more stress in the body system.

Consider the pros and cons of conventional Western medicine in relieving stress symptoms. The wisdom is to think twice before you reach out for your sleep medications or antidepressants.

Traditional Chinese Medicine

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is based on the wisdom of more than 2,000 years of sophisticated techniques of observation and diagnosis of diseases and disorders. The medical system is founded on the concept of balance and harmony (yin and yang) with focus on diets, herbs, energy healing (acupuncture), and body massage, among others.

The fundamental concept underlying Chinese medicine is Tao wisdom, which essentially means that “all things develop naturally” or “one power underlying all.” That is to say, all things are what they are, and they come into being as well as decay for what they are.

The balance and harmony of yin and yang is also reflected in the Five Elements (wood, fire, earth, metal, and water) representing the five processes that are not only fundamental to the natural cycles of nature but also corresponding to the different organs of the human body.  To illustrate, wood feeds on fire to produce ashes (earth); without which there is no metal; the metal inside earth is heated, liquefied by fire to produce water through condensation; without water, there is no wood, and hence no fire, no earth, no metal, and no water. Each of the Five Elements is equally important, and each is responsible for the five processes of action and interaction in the cycle of nature, balancing and complementing one another for co-existence and harmony, which is the essence of overall health and wellness, including freedom from stress.

In addition, in the human body, wood relates to the liver (yin) and the gall bladder (yang); fire relates to the heart (yin) and the small intestines (yang); earth relates to the spleen (yin) and the stomach (yang); metal relates to the lungs (yin) and the large intestines (yang); and water relates to the kidneys (yin) and the urinary bladder (yang). They control and regulate each other for maintenance, sustenance, and survival.

Furthermore, Chinese medicine focuses on plants as remedies. Plants are essential to life. In fact, nearly all human food comes from plants or animals that eat plants. Accordingly, in Chinese medicine, the number of plants used as medicines is greater than the number of plants for food. In Chinese medicine, there is not much distinction between a food and a medicine. Even thousands of years before Christ, the Chinese believed that every single plant on earth has its specific function in the well-being of an individual.

Unlike conventional Western medicine, the ultimate objective of Chinese medicine is to “heal-all.”

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau