As practitioners of life cultivation, when we are sick, we may visit a herbal medicine doctor to seek professional help. Learning some basic theories of herbal medicine and some technical terms of herbal medicine will help us to choose a herbal medicine doctor, understand what the herbal doctor said, understand the disease, and cooperate with the doctor to find faster and better recovery under the guidance of the herbal doctor.
Herbal medicine and Western medicine are two different systems of medicine. In layman’s terms, herbal and Western doctors use their own set of skills, and the methods are different, but the purpose and effect are the same. Western doctors use a method of meticulously analyzing the human body layer by layer to check for lesions, so various checkups are performed, and the more inspections become more detailed.
The method of herbal medicine practitioners is just the opposite. It cannot analyze layer by layer, but uses the method of observing the external manifestations of the patient’s whole body (such as changes in expression, tongue, pulse, etc.) to infer the patient’s internal lesions.
Therefore, herbal medicine practitioners need to look at the patient’s external systemic comprehensive reaction. This is called a syndrome in herbal medicine, and it will be treated. This is what traditional herbal medicine doctors often say about syndrome differentiation and treatment. Facts have proved that as long as the symptoms of the systemic reaction are cured, those local diseases will also be cured to varying degrees.
01 Herbal medicine treatment process (continued)
02 Eight-compendium Dialectical
The above procedures of looking, listening, asking and pulse feeling are called the four-diagnoses. The doctor of traditional herbal medicine makes a comprehensive analysis of the data obtained from these four diagnoses and draws a conclusion: Does the patient have a Yang syndrome or a Yin syndrome? Is it a superficial or an internal syndrome? Is it a cold syndrome or a heat syndrome? Is it a deficiency syndrome or an excess syndrome?
These eight characteristics of yin, yang, superficial, internal, cold, heat, deficient, excess, and the associated eight categories are called the eight-compendium of syndrome differentiation, which together are called the four-diagnoses and eight-compendium.
So far the herbal doctor has a preliminary understanding of the disease. It is necessary to go further into more detailed visceral syndrome differentiation, etc., to establish the final diagnosis and then carry out treatment.
For example, if a patient suffers from insomnia, after the above-mentioned four-diagnoses and eight-compendium syndrome differentiation process, the final diagnosis is heart-yin deficiency syndrome, and the doctor will prescribe a traditional herbal medicine prescription called nourishing heart-yin. The patient can take this prescription to the pharmacy for the herbs.
The patient only sits in front of the herbal medicine doctor for a while, and many things will flash through and connect with the above things in the herbal medicine doctor’s mind. The herbal medicine doctor must use his knowledge, experience, and especially his kindness to come up with a prescription to cure the disease.
Therefore, it looks like the herbal medicine practitioner just sits still and looks relaxed, but the demand on him is huge. To be a fully qualified herbal medicine doctor, he must be serious and responsible, and it is not an easy task.
03 Doctor’s Advice
However, the treatment still needs the cooperation of many parties, such as pharmacies, families, etc., in order to achieve a comprehensive effect.
For example, the insomnia patient mentioned above has a chronic disease, and the doctor of traditional herbal medicine will tell him some daily precautions, which are called doctor’s advice.
For example, the doctor will tell him to pay attention to physical and mental rest, but don’t be impatient, and avoid eating spicy stimulants such as tobacco and alcohol.
04 Follow-up consultation and prescription modification
In addition, some of the patients usually need to make follow-up visits (that is, repeated viewing, commonly known as prescription modification). The herbal medicine practitioners will continue to modify prescriptions according to changes in the condition.
For example, if the first prescription is too cold, the patient will have weak taste and loss of appetite. If it is too hot, the patient will have dry mouth and tongue, constipation, etc.
The doctor will then add or subtract some herbs in the prescription during the follow-up consultation to respond to the situation.
In this way, the follow-up visits will be repeated. The doctor will go through the same treatment procedures mentioned before and prescriptions will be changed again and again until the recovery is complete.
During the follow-up consultation, the patient should not only tell the better side of the condition, but also tell the doctor about the bad reaction. Only in this way can his disease be completely and comprehensively cured.
A conscientious herbal medicine practitioner also welcomes this kind of patient’s opinion, because in this way he can go further and gain a comprehensive experience. Because in the final analysis, treatment is a matter of multi-party cooperation between herbal medicine practitioners and patients. Only when the two sides cooperate closely can comprehensive results be achieved.
In the old days, some patients deliberately withheld the condition to test the doctor. This is not advisable, doing so will only delay the treatment.
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