One of the things that makes acupuncture so difficult to measure is that the medicine actually does contain some esoteric aspects. There have been numerous studies that demonstrate the neurochemical reasoning behind why acupuncture points stimulate the autonomic nervous system to enact change.16 However, not all the benefits of TCM can easily be measured by randomized, controlled trials. But does that make them fundamentally and definitively untrue?
To think that our understanding of science is fixed and inert is to assume a godlike perfection to humankind as it exists right now at this very moment that has somehow simply eluded all who came before us. In some senses, the effective utilization of TCM is reliant on a body’s ability to heal itself, with the practitioner working as a conduit who uses a variety of tools to stimulate the body to initiate that healing process. And some of that healing process is currently kind of mysterious, but I suspect that this self-healing process is in part why TCM is often so effective at treating conditions that are considered inscrutable, even untreatable with allopathic medication.
No one is arguing that someone should get acupuncture instead of going to the emergency room when an appendix bursts, but countless people suffering from conditions dismissed as incurable or psychosomatic have found relief with this medicine.
Instead of solely relying on biomedical standards of testing to determine the efficacy of TCM, what if we opened ourselves up to broader views of perception and reality? Neuroscientist and professor of cognitive computational science, Anil Seth, contends that our understanding of reality is less fixed and objective than many of us believe. He says:
“Instead of perception depending largely on signals coming into the brain from the outside world, it depends as much, if not more, on perceptual predictions flowing in the opposite direction. We don’t just passively perceive the world. We actively generate it. The world we experience comes as much, if not more, from the inside out as from the outside in.”17
Our understanding of all kinds of perception is currently in flux. With that in mind, what might happen if Westerners – just for a second – deigned to consider cultural traditions outside of our own with anything other than paternalistic superiority? What might happen if we stepped outside of our Eurocentric paradigms and considered a different lens? Might we possibly find something that could be of use to us?
In China, TCM is integrated into the health care system, with entire hospitals dedicated to the medicine (e.g. Beijing Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine.) According to Xu and Yang (2008),18 90% of regular hospitals have a dedicated TCM department, and prior to the development of the vaccines, TCM herbal medicine was utilized prophylactically against Covid-19 in China in hospital settings, seemingly with positive results.19
Is this kind of utilization of a traditional medicine based wholly on magical thinking? Does it not seem Eurocentric or even xenophobic to dismiss this medicine as “pseudoscience” when so many non-Western people are choosing to use it?
With the inclusion of TCM within the ICD-11 codes, and the WHO’s Traditional Medicine Strategy, modest steps in the right direction are being made.20 However, just because the WHO recommends something doesn’t mean it will be implemented in the United States. One has only to look at the disparity between WHO recommendations regarding herbal supplements and the FDA’s laissez-faire attitude toward them to see that this is the case.21
But even if TCM is integrated into the U.S. health care system, who is to say what that might look like? In the 1990s, after a research trip to Samoa, an American researcher “discovered” a plant that he used to isolate the chemical compound prostratin. This compound is an antiviral of significant interest in the treatment of AIDS and HIV, but in its original mamala tree bark form, it has been used by Samoans for ages as an antipyretic.
According to Cornell researcher Dr. Giulia Friso, following this discovery, “derivatives of the organic compound were patented and the Samoans were excluded from using and producing their heritable knowledge.”22 Steps have since been taken to correct this, but it’s a lesson in cultural imperialism that shouldn’t be ignored.
Traditional East Asian medicine works. And because it works, eventually it will be integrated into our own health care system. We’re already seeing this happen. But will it be integrated in a way that is respectful to the history of the medicine and to the cultures that created it; or will it be colonized, repackaged, and sold to you with a Western name and smiling white faces who claim to have “discovered” it? The answer remains to be seen.
References
Chronic pain afflicts over 20% of the adult population. Sadly, most MDs have essentially no education in treating pain, beyond offering a few toxic medications. Then they tend to steer people with pain away from those health practitioners who are trained. This puts the acupuncture community on the front lines for addressing this epidemic.
When the body is going through a stressful event, the sympathetic system is activated. This activation will help the body with a life-threatening situation. If this state is activated for prolonged periods of time, it starts to consume energy. These traumatic events that generate stressors in the autonomic nervous system (ANS) will eventually become internalized.
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