Traditional Chinese Medicine and Your Personal Wellness Program

As our society becomes more health conscious, people are interested in taking proactive steps to maintain wellness. Many terms are thrown around in an effort to describe wellness medicine, creating confusion in people trying to develop their own wellness best practices.

Two Views of Wellness Medicine

Conventionally trained Western doctors often see wellness only in terms of preventative medicine, which manifests predominantly as cancer screenings (mammograms, pap smears, colonoscopies, etc). The idea with this approach is to find the underlying causes of symptoms and, with pharmaceuticals or surgical procedures, treat those causes directly.

Eastern doctors, on the other hand, see wellness through the lens of holistic medicine, which refers to a philosophy that takes a person’s mind, body, and social structure into account when diagnosing disease, and when developing therapies to treat disease.

A quick way to understand the difference is to think about Western conventional medicine as “what is broken? fix it” and Eastern holistic medicine as “what is out of balance? balance it”.

The Better Choice For Holistic Wellness

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is often seen, by those who don’t understand its foreign terminology and internal logic, as if it were something not rooted in facts. But the reality is TCM comes from observing the outcomes of billions of patients to holistic health remedies applied over the course of 3000 years.

To put it simply, TCM has been a system of medicine so long that it has seen everything.

The Strengths of Western and Eastern Medicine

Some issues are, indeed, more easily and quickly dealt with using the Western medical way. For example, Western medicine excels at treatments for situations where time is a critical factor, like cardiac arrest, acute infections, or traumatic injury.

But if the patient has a long standing illness that tends to affect many systems (like autoimmune diseases or autonomic dysfunction for example), the experience of TCM is that these medical issues are the result of one or more imbalances of mind and body. Without definitive symptoms, it can be difficult for the Western doctors who are untrained in the holistic health approach to notice such imbalances. And this is especially true when corporate-controlled medical care pushes these doctors to see as many patients per hour as possible.

Because TCM practitioners have spent centuries observing and documenting imbalances in human health, TCM excels at identifying these imbalances. Eastern doctors can easily spot small or growing issues that may not necessarily be bubbling to the surface of a patient’s attention.

Complementary Approaches to a Holistic Health Lifestyle

Eastern and Western medicine are often pitted against one another. But they need not be mutually exclusive. They can be complimentary medical approaches to an overall wellness program.

So, how does one get started on the path to their own holistic wellness journey?

The Yi Guan Holistic Wellness Program

At Yi Guan Acupuncture and Chinese Herbalism, we have put together a wellness program designed around the best practices of traditional Chinese medicine.

Our program takes a three pronged approach:

1.) Checking Your Balance

The first step is to get a holistic assessment. This is accomplished by what we call a mind-body balance check, which has two parts: a medical interview and a physical exam.

2.) Regaining Your Balance

Once we understand your state of balance, called your constitutional pattern in TCM, we can strategize what we need to do in order to get things to pull back to their natural healthy centers.

It might not take much to regain balance. Maybe an acupuncture treatment, a custom-prepared herbal formula or medicinal tea, or a qigong routine or meditation method. But whatever you need, we will work together to figure out where you are, where you want to be, and the best ways to get you there.

3.) Maintaining Your Balance

The body knows how to run and heal itself. Sometimes though, the body forgets and needs a little reminder. This is where proper lifestyle, diet (including morning supplements if needed), exercise, and meditation habits become important.

Together we work to determine the best routines for you. We create a plan that will resonate with you, making it easy, and even enjoyable, for you to follow.

Coming in for mind-body balance checks periodically will help make sure that everything is holding, and that everything remains in balance.

If you are interested in learning more about these services, or starting your journey, contact us today.

 Common Questions About Holistic Health

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Dr. Dan Perez is both a Western-trained physician and a graduate of the AOMA Graduate School of Integrative Medicine. Based in Austin, Texas, AOMA is recognized as one of the leading schools in Chinese Medicine. Being both an expert in Western medicine and Chinese medicine, Dr. Perez offers his patients natural, minimally invasive and integrative medical options for treating a variety of chronic medical conditions. If you would like to know more about how Dr. Perez can help with your health and well being, contact him today. You can contact Dr. Perez at his office, located just off of Bee Cave Road in northwest Austin (near Lakeway), for more information or to book an appointment.