Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is often defined as an ancient healing system dating back nearly five thousand years that recognizes a relationship between the body and the mind process as a whole integrated system.

In TCM, different aspects of life such as our environment, our mental and emotional state, our diet and lifestyle, are equally important for a person’s well being; when balanced, these aspects lead to a consistent state of wellness, both physical and emotional. In Chinese medical terms, all organs and vital functions are seen as one constant continuum, influencing, controlling and restraining one another. This means that harmony (intended as a healthy absence of pain and disease) depends on the proper functioning of the whole body. If just one part isn't working well, the whole organism will suffer from it.

The difference between this approach and the one in western medicine is evident: while modern Western medicine sees body and mind as separate entities (therefore treating specific diseases with particular drugs, and searching for certain micro-organisms to be wiped out of our bodies), Traditional Chinese Medicine uses natural approaches to restore balance, never separating the person from the mind or the environment. While western medicine often denies the interaction and reciprocal impact of the body and the mind, TCM aims to restore balance between the two.

We all know how specialised western medicine has become in the past decades: we now have doctors, therapies, cures and prescriptions for literally every little part of our body. For every single issue, we need to see a different specialist, and buy drugs that often cause adverse reactions between each other.

This approach derives from a concept that prevailed in the Western World during the 17th and 18th Centuries: a view of the body as a machine, whereby a single component can be taken out, analyzed, repaired or replaced to achieve good function of the whole system.

The TCM approach to our health is based in an opposite view: the only way to restore health is not by treating the parts but by treating the body as a whole entity. The interaction between all body parts is crucial in understanding why TCM works and why it is so different from western medicine. TCM treats the whole person, not simply the disease or a part of it; its focus is on prevention rather than letting problems arise and then having to find a cure. A health assessment in Traditional Chinese Medicine can detect subtle imbalances in the body before they reach the disease stage, long before Western medical tests can detect any abnormalities.