Customized Diagnosis, Instant Verification and Personalized Modality
Yin Lo, PhD
Currently, the practice of Chinese medicine is a medical modality that has personalized diagnosis, herbs and treatment. I think it's possible for Chinese medicine to skip the mass, dehumanizing health care stage and go directly to custom-made products and personalized service, with the backing of the highest level of scientific evidence.
I have been pioneering this kind of research on personalized modality for the past several years. I regard each patient as different and unique. Everyone deserves personalized treatment.
Let me illustrate an example. A woman in her 50s with multiple sclerosis came to see me. She had been taking standard Western drugs to combat the disease, but it was getting worse. She wanted to prevent that and looked toward alternative medicine.
Her set of infrared images are shown in Fig. 1. On the left are pictures before healing, and on the right are pictures after healing. The woman's illness was inside the brain, and the skull does not transmit infrared. So how could infrared images help us? The predictive power of meridian theory came to our rescue. The six yang meridians that reached the head served as an infrared optical fiber that carried a temperature signal from the brain out to the surface. The white hot spots on her face and neck were probable indications of the multiple sclerosis. The effect of external qi heated up the maximum temperature of her face from 91.33 F to 92.09 F. A much larger area on her face and upper back were also white in color after the healing session. Heating up is an indication that the woman had a serious disease, and the body absorbed the external qi to increase its biochemical reactions to combat the disease.
As a control, we chose the legs as a healthy part of the patient, where the maximum temperature decreased from 88.07 F to 87.48 F, compatible with statistical fluctuation. Hence the heating of other parts of the body could be attributed to the healing method with more certainty because the unknown factors were measured by the variation in the healthy part.
Six weeks later, with healing sessions twice a week, her condition improved. A set of infrared images before (left) and after (right) the healing session are shown in Fig. 2. The most important feature was that the face also cooled down from healing, instead of heating up. This was interpreted to mean that the multiple sclerosis was under control and was reduced by each healing. The patient subjectively felt she was improving all this time. She did not have anymore migraines and could sleep through the night. More healing sessions over a longer period will tell whether the improvement will continue, and to what degree.
The advantage of this personalized modality is that it is less expensive than MRIs or CTs, and has no harmful side effects.
Fig. 1. Three sets of infrared images before (left) and after (right) a healing session with external qi. The maximum temperatures before and after healing for the face were 91.33 F and 92.09 F; for the upper back were 91.26 F and 91.14 F; and for the legs were 88.07 F and 87.48 F.Fig 2. Six weeks later, another set of infrared images was taken before (left) and after (right) healing session with external qi. The maximum temperatures, before and after healing for the face, were 91.5 F and 90.31 F.
As modern medical standardization continues, the field of traditional Chinese medicine has the advantage of comprehensive personalization. For rare or complex cases, deeper consideration of constitution is invaluable. Proper constitutional assessment, especially with first-time clients, can guide desirable and predictable outcomes. This leads to a higher rate of return, and greater trust between you and your patient.
Though the creation of a financially sustainable, health-promoting model feels far away today, we are casting a vision for a full return on health, believing that this compels us to keep one foot firmly rooted in caring for the sick and the other foot firmly founded in maintaining health. Shifting from a fee-for-service model to value-based care using a phased approach is paramount.
Laser therapy has emerged as a powerful tool in the realm of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). This new modality fits beautifully into the toolbox of the modern acupuncturist, as it can be used as a hybrid form of stimulation to acupuncture points, meridians, organs, nerves, and symptomatic areas in a new way that blends both moxa and energetic needle-like responses.
