Deepest Health Chinese Medicine Podcast : Interview with Dr. Arnaud Versluys LAc, PhD (Part 2 of 3)
I’m glad so many people enjoyed the first episode of this podcast interview with Dr. Arnaud Versluys LAc, PhD. The second part finds Dr. Versluys expanding on his definition of Classical Chinese medicine by discussing how one uses the Shang Han Lun in contemporary clinical practice, particularly concerning complex diseases typically seen in modern times. He also discusses the importance of specializing in a particular style of Chinese medicine and gives some advice to those of us seeking knowledge in this profession. I think you’ll really enjoy the information AND the audio quality - I think I finally got it right. :) Check it out at the bottom of this article!
If you missed the first part of the interview with Dr. Versluys you can find it here. For more background on the six conformations read the article linked here. I also encourage you to check out Dr. Versluys’ website, particularly the forums - a great place for discussing Canonical Chinese Medicine.
Dr. Versluys uses a few names that may be unfamiliar to listeners - I want to clarify these things for you. Li Dong Yuan is the author of The Treatise on the Spleen and Stomach (Pi Wei Lun)
and Jin Gui Yao Lue
I’ll release the final part of the interview early next week - it’s a short piece focusing specifically on the issue of herb substitution and the possibility of growing Chinese herbs in the United States. I hope you enjoy today’s podcast! As always, feel free to leave any comments - discussion is a great thing! :)
Eric
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Tags: arnaud versluys, ccm, herbs, interview, Learning, Podcast, six conformations, tcm, versluys, Zhang Zhong JingRelated posts
Deepest Health Chinese Medicine podcast : Episode 9 : Interview with Dr. Heiner Fruehauf, Part II
Here’s the second part of Friday’s podcast interview with Heiner Fruehauf. If you missed the first portion, you can access it by following the link to Deepest Health Classical Chinese Medicine podcast, Episode 8. There you can also find links to Heiner’s various web presences and learn about what he’s doing now. I hope to offer more information on the Classical Pearls product he recently released, as well as offering Deepest Health readers a great option for signing up with the Associates Forum at Classicalchinesemedicine.org.
Thanks for listening!
Eric
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Tags: ccm, classical-chinese-medicine, heiner fruehauf, interview, Learning, Podcast, tcmRelated posts
Deepest Health Chinese Medicine Podcast : Episode 8 : Interview with Dr. Heiner Fruehauf
Hello everyone -
I’m happy to offer an interview for this edition of the podcast. Dr. Heiner Fruehauf, founding professor of the school of Classical Chinese Medicine at National College of Natural Medicine in Portland, OR, agreed to talk with Deepest Health readers about the nature of Classical Chinese Medicine. I’m incredibly grateful to Heiner for offering his time and wisdom - I think it will be a treat for all of you.
Dr. Fruehauf has been a great inspiration to me as I navigate the deep waters of this discipline, and he is beloved by students of Chinese medicine all over the world. He currently practices at his clinic in Corbett, OR as well as teaching classes at NCNM. He runs the incredible website, Classicalchinesemedicine.org, which is an excellent resource for anyone interested in learning more about the roots of Chinese medicine. In fact, I have an exciting proposition for folks concerning a discounted membership to the site that I will talk about in a separate post sometime this coming week. Stay tuned. If you haven’t perused the great free content Heiner has put up on the site, do visit and check it out.
I want to mention that Dr. Fruehauf also recently launched a line of high quality, professional grade herbal capsules based on Classical principles for a variety of common conditions. Check out the site and see what you think. Every effort has been made to ensure that this is a high quality product. This product is unrivaled by anything on the market of which I am aware.
This podcast was split into two parts - the first of which you can access below. The second part will be released on Monday or Tuesday. Each section is around 30 minutes long. Enjoy!
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Tags: ccm, classical-chinese-medicine, heiner fruehauf, inspiration, interview, Learning, Podcast, Portland, tcmRelated posts
What is Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM)?
Preliminary note: If you are really looking for a definition of TCM and want to learn more about Chinese medicine in general, please check out this page of articles written especially for folks who are new to the world of Chinese medicine and want to learn more.
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I was just reading over some old journal entries from when Deepest Health began last year. One of the blogging techniques that I was taught by Yaro Starak during the Blog Mastermind training program was creating definition posts. I did use that format to define various things, including Qigong, acupuncture and herbal medicine. However, because I started to get interested in a lot of more complicated things and attracted some fairly sophisticated readers, I moved away from those basic types of posts.
I found a note that I should write a post about TCM - which really got me thinking. There’s a fundamental problem with my blogging purpose. I am interested in getting good information out there about Chinese medicine, it’s practice, power and philosophical foundation. I’ve been putting that information out as I learn it, revising points as I’m able and hoping that my good intentions and transparency will make sure that the good information overcomes the bad.
But, I’m trying to do too many things at once. How so? Well, consider terminology. When most people think about Chinese medicine, they think about acupuncture. This is so much the case that most people simply call all of Chinese medicine “acupuncture,” even some practitioners. One of my mentors even names his business using the word acupuncture and says nothing about herbs. Why does he do this? Because when most people think about contacting a Chinese medicine physician, the word that comes into their mind is “acupuncture.” It just makes good business and marketing sense.
Which, apparently, I don’t have. :) By talking constantly about Classical Chinese Medicine on this blog, I end up missing out on picking up on a lot of folks who are searching for information about this medicine. What do they search for if they are little more savvy? Maybe “Chinese herbs” or even “traditional Chinese medicine,” and if they’re REALLY on it, “TCM.” Those words appear very few times in any of my content. :D So, while I’m sitting here pumping out quality content, fighting the good fight, I’m missing probably half of my intended audience. In some way, I’m hoping to change the language around Chinese medicine. I honestly don’t care if the word “classical” makes it in there - simply calling it Chinese medicine would be fine.
So, if in the coming months and years, you see me using TCM or Traditional Chinese Medicine or Acupuncture a little bit more in the way that I write - do forgive me. I’m simply using the common vernacular to try and get the information out to the people who are looking for it.
All that aside, I’m interested to know how terminology plays into your life around Chinese Medicine. If you have a business or work at a school, how is Chinese medicine discussed in your marketing materials? Do you think there is some value in trying to change the language through marketing, or is that just dooming one to failure? Do you find that your patients/students are confused about the language used to describe what we do? Please leave your thoughts in the comments and, as always, thanks for reading.
Eric
Tags: Blogging, Business, ccm, classical-chinese-medicine, language, tcm, traditional-chinese-medicineRelated posts
Book review: Clinical Handbook of Internal Medicine (Vol 1)
I have been using the first two volumes of Maclean’s Clinical Handbook of Internal Medicine for a couple of years, now. I find them to be the most useful basic TCM pathology texts available and want to share, briefly, my reasons.
General Information
This text is part of a series that, apparently, will include more volumes in the future. The first volume, pictured at left, covers the Lung, Kidney, Liver and Heart organ systems. The second volume, with blue lettering but a similar cover, looks solely at the Spleen and Stomach. I’ll focus on the first volume for this review, but the majority of what I say applies to both of them.
The authors, in their introduction, explain that their aim was to develop a workable clinical manual of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) that “at least [begins] to take our cultural and social differences into account.” They seem to feel that because Chinese medicine was created and developed in a particular social and geographic location, it will be significantly different when practiced in other locations with differing social and natural environments. The book, then, is a clinical manual intended to make the basic information of TCM more accessible and relevant to Western readers.
The book is created primarily with herbalists in mind, thus the formula suggestions are extensive while the acupuncture suggestions are more sparse. The book is organized by organ system and then by basic TCM symptom picture - for instance the Lung section starts with external diseases (cold and warm) then moves into coughing, wheezing, etc… The Chinese names for the symptom pictures are provided, along with characters. This is helpful since people learn them using different English translations depending on where they study and I found it much easier to simply work with the Chinese. They provide Chinese for herbs, formulas, patents and acupuncture points - though the points have only pinyin, no characters. The general organization of the book is intuitive and the overall quality of the text is reasonable for the price.
Looking Deeper
Let’s investigate a single section. Consider Gan Mao - the “common cold” or external invasion. The book begins with a concise and readable description of the disease in general, providing some historical background and discussion of the severity of the illnesses in question. This moves on to a page on etiology and a fine mindmap of the most common causes. Following this is the section on specific causative factors and their treatment. Fortunately, they begin the discussion in this chapter with Wind Cold. Shang Han Lun fans will be snickering, now. ;) But, not for long - as the first prescription suggested is Jing Fang Bai Du San. Thus begins my basic problem with the text - which is predictable given my trepidation about non-classical formulas.
That being said, the layout of the various treatment options (with confounding symptoms, etc) is clear and descriptive enough without being confusing. Several formula suggestions are followed by standard acupuncture protocols (LI4, GB20, BL12, BL13, GV14) and modifications based on presenting symptoms. The section is completed by other advise to the physician such as, “Acupuncture treatment can be applied 2-3 times in severe cases,” and a list of biomedical (Western) conditions that might fit this picture. In general, all of the sections flow in this way. Some have more extensive descriptions or finer distinctions between symptom patterns, but the basic flow is similar.
My assessment
Positive: I have looked at quite a few books trying to find one that would helpfully and concisely explain syndrome differentiation from a TCM perspective - in good English. I found it in these texts. It could be helpful as a clinical manual, I suppose, but I found it more helpful in my TCM studies as a way to understand the way that your average TCM doctor treats any particular condition. Its breadth, completeness and pleasing layout, as well as inclusion of Chinese characters and pinyin puts it heads above anything else I’ve found. It’s also fantastic as a way to quickly see the basic TCM treatment protocol for a given disease with points AND formulas included.
Negative: The authors seem allergic to Classical formulas. Gui Zhi Tang and Ma Huang Tang are not even mentioned in the Wind-cold section. Um…? I suppose this has to do with the oft repeated refrain that “Westerners are too deficient for such strong formulas.” I must be a strange Westerner, indeed. My daughter, too. Oh, and the rest of my family. Oh, and a big chunk of the patients I’ve seen treated in clinic. Ok, ok - sorry. My point is this - I think it’s a dramatic oversight to leave out Classical formulas. I understand if you want to include others, perhaps put a caveat on the “too strong” formulas - but… honestly?
There are some holes in the texts - I understand future volumes may address this. For instance - no women’s diseases as far as I can see. Also, the organization according to “diseases” (gan mao, yi jing, etc…) sometimes made it difficult to find a formula or point protocol for some simple set of symptoms that doesn’t necessarily fit into one of those categories. That’s not so much a problem of the book, but a problem of that system of categorization. All things being equal, I think this is a relatively minor problem.
Should you buy it?
If you’re interested in having a basic, clear manual for understanding TCM syndrome differentiation and the way that a large majority of TCM physicians treat patients - these books are indispensible. I sold all of my other TCM texts - all my Maciocia included. There is enough theory in here to do the job, and in combination with all the treatment advice it’s just a fantastic resource.
Click here to buy the Clinical Handbook of Internal Medicine Volume 1 from Amazon.com
Thanks for reading,
Eric
Tags: book-review, books, ccm, external invasion, formulas, internal medicine, tcm
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