Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) means a holistic preventive treatment system tested for thousands of years, based on Taoist principles, whose central theory is the opposing forces of yin and yang. It is individual, holistic and takes into account a person's constitution, health history, lifestyle and emotional burden.
Traditional Chinese medicine is a system that was gradually created over a very long period of time. The oldest written records date back to 400 years BC. These include the classic manual of the Yellow Emperor's Inner Book or documents from the tomb in Mawangdui and others. Around every hundred years, some of the flagship works were published in China that enriched certain aspects of Chinese medicine, but not all of them have survived.
Chinese medicine includes, for example, acupuncture, phytotherapy (the use of food and herbs), massage and exercise (qigong). All of this is connected by Taoist philosophy and its paradigms, which form the backbone of the whole system.
TCM perceives a person in connection with their surroundings, relationships, seasons, climatic factors, lifestyle and so on. In preventing and supporting the maintenance of dynamic health (homeostasis), it takes into account not only imbalances or disease, but also physical constitution. With a holistic approach, it helps to restore the state of the body's internal dynamic balance and cannot only restore physical and mental well-being, but also help maintain it in the long term.
Based on traditional approaches, it can offer completely individualized help through methods which are unused elsewhere, which can be considered one of the main benefits of traditional Chinese medicine to the palette of available health care.
TCM can mainly be used as a preventive method to support the maintenance of dynamic health at a time when the disease is not yet diagnosed according to Western medical practices. It is also a gentle method suitable for children and the elderly. At the same time, TCM, in cooperation with conventional interventional medicine, i.e. Western medicine, has a significant potential benefit for complementary constitutional assistance to therapy in already developed disorders and diseases.
Dietary and regimen counseling can go hand in hand with the application of TCM to provide interested parties with instructions on how to maintain and deepen their dynamic health (homeostasis) in the long term.
Today there are 129 practitioners of TCM in the Czech Republic guaranteed by the Chamber of Traditional Chinese Medicine.
In particular, TCM includes support through methods such as:
- Acupuncture including acupressure
- Tuina massage, including acupressure
- Moxing and cupping
- Dietetics, nutritional counseling
- Phytotherapy, the use of herbs, worldwide proven natural products
- Qigong, physical energy health exercises
NOTE: The term “traditional Chinese medicine” can be somewhat confusing because it has several meanings today. In the original sense, it refers to ancient classical Chinese medicine. Another variant is the medical system, which was created due to the emergence of a university method of studying Chinese medicine and also the lack of modern medicines and doctors in the time of the Maoist cultural revolution, by selection from various earlier streams of thought. The spiritual aspects of the Chinese version of TCM were partially suppressed and the materialistic view was emphasized. In Western countries, the meaning of TCM has been narrowed even further and in practice this term has become synonymous with acupuncture in some places.