I didn't know Acupuncture could treat that...

A frequent occurrence in my clinic is observing how one dimensional people think forms of medicine have become. We're so used seeing a different Doctor for each area of our health and body, that its hard to comprehend one modality can treat so many different ailments.  You give a patient acupuncture for a sore ankle, but it never occurs to them that it could also be used to treat their anxiety, and vice versa.  I covered the fundamental differences between Eastern and Western Medicine in an earlier post.   The reason Chinese Medicine can effectively treat so many different problems is because of its strong foundation.  Think of it this way, if your car breaks down, no matter what is wrong with it you take it to a mechanic. Why? Because he knows how every part of the car works and interconnects, so he should be able to treat any problem. The human body though in Western Medicine is treated the opposite. They were given the car, and decided to chop it up and study each individual part, they know a lot about each part, but not how they work together.  Chinese Medicine went the other way, don't disassemble the car, its given to us complete for a reason, lets work out what everything does by seeing how the parts work as a whole.  So like the mechanic who knows how the car works as a whole and therefore traces the fault by working backwards, so does Chinese Medicine.  This is what allows it to diagnosis and explain the pathogenesis from something as common as a cold or flu, to eczema or infertility.  While this does mean we can therefore formulate a treatment plan, it doesn't unfortunately mean we can fix everything, even though we have the framework to explain it.