As an example, if the patient were a 46-year-old woman with lower back pain, the White Pine Clinic report would put the client’s condition into context, using time-tested Chinese medical theory to explain the various roles constitution, age, gender, and diet and lifestyle play in creating the problem.  Using this approach, the C.H.A. for this client would answer the following questions:

• Why am I having lower back now when it has never been a problem before?
• What aspects of my diet and lifestyle might be aggravating my pain?
• How can I make better choices with my diet or exercise program to reduce or eliminate the discomfort?
• Is there any relationship between my lower back pain and the other symptoms I experience?
• Left untreated, what other problems might develop out of the root cause of this ailment?

Knowledge is power, and gaining a deeper understanding of why and how we develop medical conditions is often the crucial first step towards true resolution of an issue.  Your C.H.A. puts your in the driver’s seat of your own health care management.  This is a significant departure from conventional medical care where, more often than not, the patient is alienated from the healing process by medical jargon and the complexity and technicality of diagnosis and treatment.  At White Pine Clinic, our approach to medicine puts each patient center stage.  In every case, your health and well-being is our number one priority, and we are eager to have you actively participate in the journey to feeling great.

Your White Pine Clinic C.H.A. does much more than discuss a single health care issue.  Through our intensive study of Chinese medicine over the last 15 years, we have realized that the true value of Chinese medicine exceeds its ability to treat our current medical complaints:  good, complete Chinese medical diagnosis and analysis paints a broad, detailed picture of how all of the systems in a patient’s body are in or out of balance.  Once the patterns of imbalance are determined in Chinese medicine, the treatment strategies follow naturally.  Your White Pine C.H.A. becomes a game plan for long-term wellness, providing a practical road map to making the optimal choices for improving both quantity and quality of life.  If you are interested in receiving a formal, written report to chart your map to a future of exceptionall health, please ask your practitioner to begin the process of preparing your own individual  Comprehensive Health Assessment today.

Before Your Treatment

Some clinics incorporate computer programs, muscle testing, energy scans, or Western lab testing to establish a diagnosis.  At our clinic, however, we make our diagnoses using the traditional diagnostic methods.  In order to accurately read the tongue, do not forget that is essential that you do not brush or scrape the surface for at least 48 hours.  Regarding the pulse, stress and physical exertion may alter the pulse image, so please allow adequate travel time to our office so that you arrive in a calm and relaxed state.  For an acupuncture session, appropriate dress is loose fitting clothing but please do not wear short skirts.  Finally, we discourage receiving acupuncture when you are fasting or immediately after a large meal, and sexual activity prior to or following acupuncture is not recommended.  Taking these simple steps prior to treatment will assist us in making each session the best it can be.

We Will Provide You with a Treatment Plan

In all medical systems, the resolution of more complex or chronic issues demands more intensive treatment.  In Western medicine, many conditions require long and aggressive courses of treatment, including surgery with lengthy recovery time, treatment with medications often lasting for years, or months of physical therapy.  Although Chinese medicine does not usually require long or open-ended treatment, it is difficult to solve chronic problems with only one or two short treatment sessions.   Committing to a series of treatments from the beginning allows your practitioner to design a realistic plan aimed at achieving your health care goals.

The Extra Effort is Worth It

Pharmaceutical sales, hospital care, imaging and laboratory testing, and other forms of medical care constitute enormous slice of the American economy.  The profit-driven companies involved in health care aim to attract and satisfy their consumers with simple, convenient treatments.  Chinese treatments, however, do not have a history of trying to appeal to a large consumer market and are only designed to improve health and promote well-being.  As a result, Chinese treatment often demands a bit more involvement from the patient.  Your White Pine Clinic practitioner may ask you if you would be willing to make herbal teas at home, perform simple exercises, or consider some minor lifestyle shifts.  Although you may have to work a bit harder as a member of a cooperative team, the reward of a lasting solution for your medical issues without the dangers of pharmaceutical drugs or surgery is certainly worth the extra effort.

Diseases and Patterns

Almost all forms of medicine treat diseases.  Headache is a good example of a disease identified and treated in many medical systems.  Although the understanding of the cause of the headache differs from one medical model to another, the majority of remedies set relief of the head pain as the basic goal of treatment.

TCM style Chinese medicine, however, does not focus on the headache itself.  Instead, it sees the headache as the main manifestation of a complex of disharmony and aims not for the symptomatic branches but instead targets the root of the disharmony.  The symptomatic manifestations, including the headache, are treated at the same time as the root but are given less attention in the treatment strategy.  The Chinese term for this approach is bian zheng lun zhi or ‘treatment according to pattern differentiation’.

In order to clarify the concept of treatment according to pattern differentiation, let use compare the biomedical and Chinese approaches to a headache case.  Both Western and Chinese doctors begin by collecting data regarding the condition.  The M.D. will ask questions and employ testing and imaging when appropriate to form a differential diagnosis.  Signs and symptoms such as nausea, one-sided loss of vision, disorientation, lethargy, and occipital headache might point to a brain tumor, demanding further investigation such as an MRI, while a history of visual distortion that gives rise to a  severe, one-sided headache lasting for several days suggests migraine headache.  Once all of the other possibilities have been systematically eliminated, a differential disease diagnosis will allow the physician to select an appropriate treatment for the condition.  Correct disease diagnosis is the sine qua non of skillful biomedical practice.

The Difference Between Eastern and Western Diseases

Once an allopathic doctor has ruled out the diagnoses of cancer and other critical ailments, the Chinese doctor can offer a different point-of-view.  Instead of using modern technology to assess the case, the TCM practitioner relies on the traditional methods of tongue inspection, inquiry, and pulse palpation to identify the pattern.  He or she will utilize the Chinese disease of tou tong or headache as a guiding factor but is most interested in the underlying imbalances in the body.  The background is determined according to a broad constellation of signs and symptoms.  For example, a headache that is associated with a traumatic injury and manifests with fixed, stabbing pain, pain worse with pressure, a purple tongue body, and a rough pulse indicates a blood stasis pattern.  On the other hand, a headache with a feeling of tight pressure and distention, nausea and vomiting, profuse phlegm, a slimy tongue fur, and a slippery pulse suggests a phlegm-damp pattern.  For each case, after the primary pattern is identified, additional relevant patterns are isolated and prioritized.  Through this procedure,  a complex picture of an individual case is created.  This is a more patient-centered approach than the methodology used by the M.D.

The biomedical disease diagnosis is crucial for determining prognosis.  Obviously, expected outcomes for the brain tumor patient can be markedly different from the patient with migraine headaches.  The traditional Chinese disease of tou tong headache does nothing to shed light on this difference.  On the other hand, once the headache has been identified as a migraine headache, functional headache, or tension headache by your M.D., the Western medical treatment is determined according to the disease, with little attention paid to distinctions from patient to patient, and options for treatments are limited.  The biomedical treatment for all three of these types of headache, for example, will likely include nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs.  In the case of migraines, research suggests that this approach may actually cause more frequent and more severe pain.  Additionally, NSAID’s are understood only as temporary, analgesic relief, and long-term use of some of the drugs may damage organ function.

Using Chinese Patterns in the Clinic

On the other hand, once the Chinese doctor has identified phlegm-damp as the primary pattern associated with the issue of headache and has determined, for example, that there is a spleen-kidney vacuity and liver depression qi stagnation,  a specific treatment can be designed to restore normal function.  The treatment, whether acupuncture or herbal, will target the main complaint, the primary pattern, and any other important patterns of disharmony.  This forms a very individualized response with a low risk of adverse effects.  As it is the ‘one-size-fits-all’ model in biomedicine that accounts for a wide variety of responses to medication, using the Chinese medical approach one can generally expect few side effects.  In addition, Chinese treatments are only used until the condition resolves satisfactorily, so patients do not have to be concerned with developing habituation to or dependency on Chinese medications.

Obviously, the public benefits from having access to both professional biomedical and Chinese health care.  Your M.D. will always be your primary health care provider and is the best place to start.  Many conditions, however, are not well-treated with Western medicine alone, and biomedical treatments are often costly and involve risk.  The less expensive, noninvasive, patient-specific Chinese approach may be the best option for your case.  We look forward to helping you make good decisions regarding your choice of treatments so that you can realize your human right to optimal health and well-being.

*The use of pattern differentiation in Chinese medicine has a very long history, dating back as far as the renowned Han dynasty physician Zhang Zhong-Jing (150 CE-219 CE).  According to the translators of this doctor’s famous work, On Cold Damage or the Shang Han Lun, ‘The Shang Han Lun is regarded as the basis of the approach to diagnosis and treatment that in the Qing dynasty came to be called ‘determining treatment on the basis of patterns identified’ which is now considered to be the quintessence of Chinese medical genius‘.