What Is Medicine?!

💊 Welcome to this week’s episode “What Is Medicine?!”. This week, Ben asks Gabriella questions around the broad concept of medicine, exploring its different forms and perspectives. They explore the holistic approach of Eastern medicine, highlighting the teamwork between nature, the practitioner, and the patient, particularly in the context of Five Element Acupuncture. The conversation contrasts Eastern and Western views on medicine, emphasising the interconnectedness of body, mind, and spirit.

They discuss the evolution of medicine over time, mentioning ancient practices like humorism and their eventual replacement by germ theory. The episode also covers complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), including acupuncture, and explores the variety of therapeutic approaches under CAM.

The hosts discuss preventative medicine, encouraging active participation in one's healthcare and making lifestyle choices that promote well-being. The episode concludes by emphasising the diverse tapestry of medicine and the importance of personal responsibility and awareness in the journey toward better health.

Transcript

Pt.1

Ben: So, Gabriella, What is Medicine?!

Gabriella: Well Ben, it’s fairly safe to say that every one of us has experienced medicine in one form or another during the course of our lives. Evolution has created healing systems in all living things, which are hugely effective for the most part, but we all know that a system can go down! Sometimes ‘medicine’ is the simplest of interventions. How powerful is the kiss of a mother when her child falls over and grazes its knee? The knee will heal itself in a few days, but we could view the love and tender care of the mother as a kind of medicine. Or how about a lion in the Serengeti licking the wound of a fellow pride member? Saliva contains enzymes that promote healing, so we could say that that lion is administering a form of medicine.

But there are unfortunately times when a little more intervention is required.

Ben: And I guess that’s when what we call ‘medicine’ comes into play?

Gabriella: Yes. Now The dictionary defines medicine as “the science or practice of the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease”. I particularly like Hippocrates’ description: ‘the art has three factors, the disease, the patient, the physician. The physician is the servant of the art. The patient must cooperate with the physician in combating the disease.’

Ben: That sounds like something you’d say to me!

Gabriella: Well, I may not be Hippocrates, Ben, but as I’ve learned and practiced the medicine I was taught, I’ve come to understand what he meant in this quote. In modern times, we seem to have developed this concept that healing is something that is ‘done’ to us. Personally, I don’t consider myself a healer, more like a middle man (or woman), acting on behalf of both nature (the real healer) and the patient - who should be actively engaged with the process. I see this as teamwork. We work together towards achieving your goals, whatever they may be. In other words, Team Ben!

Ben: Ooh can we get that on a t-shirt?

Gabriella: Now there’s an idea… To go back to the original question, ‘what is medicine?’, humans have practiced medicine in one form or another throughout time. Every culture practices some form of healing art.

In the West, Humorism ****was a system of medicine detailing a supposed makeup and workings of the human body, going back to the times of Ancient Greece and Rome.

Ben: Humorism? So, you just need to be funny and the patient will get better?

Gabriella: Very humorous Ben…And probably not massively funny. I don’t know much about it, but I understand it was based on what the ancients called the Four Humours. They saw the body as a system of four fluid “humours”: black bile, yellow bile, phlegm and blood. If the humours were in balance, then the body was in health. If the humours were out of balance, then the person was sick.

Ben: Balance and out of balance - sounds like you again!

Gabriella: There is wisdom in what the ancients observed that we can learn from. The ancient Chinese also developed a system of medicine that taps into the innate healing powers of our bodies and thus works in harmony with nature - acupuncture!

Ben: But that’s pseudoscience! I read it on Wikipedia!

Gabriella: Wikipedia isn’t the world authority on everything Ben! Millions of people have acupuncture treatment, why would that be if it wasn’t really helping them? I’d say that the majority within the western medical community hasn’t yet fully grasped what acupuncture is and what it can do even though there are scientific studies that have shown acupuncture is not pseudoscience. The Western medical angle tends to be, that anything that can’t be proved within it’s parameters isn’t science. I’m going to propose the question what if the western medical community listened to the patients who say this helps them and listen to the acupuncture community who can explain how it works and perhaps be more open and curious to see it from different angle. This is not placebo. One study, for example, has shown changes in the brain that occur at the same time that a point is needled and no brain activity when a placebo point is needled.

Ben: Yeah and plenty more studies along those lines to be found online. So, going back to how acupuncture works in harmony with nature…

Gabriella: We carefully observe the balance of the flow of energy in our patients and correct any imbalances, so it is perhaps a similar principle to humorism. Whereas the approach of modern medicine is more like ‘us versus them’ and we tend to use words like ‘combatting’ or ‘fighting’. As we talk more about Five Element Acupuncture, you’ll hear me mention ‘harmony’ and ‘balance’ as opposed to ‘the war against x,’ or ‘battling y’, but let’s explore the broader world of medicine a little more before we move on to talk more specifically about Five Element Acupuncture.

Ben: So what happened to humorism then?

Gabriella: The joke got old…No, seriously, it lasted a long time. Humorism was practiced from ancient times right though to the 17th century, when it began to fall out of favour. it was disproved in the 1850s with the advent of germ theory, which was able to show that many diseases previously thought to be humoral were in fact caused by microbes, things like good old bacteria and viruses, that we’ve come to know and er…

Ben: Viruses sure have gone viral in recent years!

Gabriella: They certainly have! Proved quite lucrative for some…

Ben: cough Hancock *cough …*sorry something in my throat…

Gabriella: And of course there are many conditions that aren’t caused by an exterior factor but by a malfunctioning of some system within a person. This could be congenital, so inherited from a parent, or it could have developed at some point during their life.

Now, there are many forms of medicine in use all over the world nowadays but by far the most widely practiced is what is known as allopathic medicine - which is the general term for what most people understand as modern, Western medicine. The one we go to the doctor for. A definition of allopathic medicine is ’a method of treating disease with remedies (such as surgery or drugs) that produce different effects from those caused by the disease.’

Ben: With the goal that the ‘different effects’ are an improvement…

Gabriella: Precisely. You may also have heard of both ‘complementary’ and ‘alternative’ medicine, or CAM.

Ben: Are they different then?

Gabriella: They’re not necessarily different practices, but it depends on how they’re used. Complementary medicine is used alongside conventional, or allopathic medicine whereas alternative medicine is used in place of conventional medicine.

Ben: So where does Five Element Acupuncture fit in?

Gabriella: Well that depends on the patient. Many use it as a complementary medicine alongside conventional treatments. People also ask if acupuncture can help them to come off conventional medicines, and in many cases this is possible (in conjunction with their allopathic practitioner or doctor), so acupuncture then becomes an alternative medicine and can even become preventative, i.e. the patient no longer has that disease or symptom and ongoing treatment can prevent it from reoccurring.

Ben: So Five Element Acupuncture acts differently to allopathic or Western medicine?

Gabriella: Yes, a crucial feature of Five Element Acupuncture is that it goes to the root cause of disease, allowing symptoms to disappear. Whereas Western medicine tends to take an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth approach, ie targeting one symptom at a time with one medicine, rarely acknowledging or addressing the interconnectedness of the whole. So, that one symptom or condition hopefully gets better, but what can happen as a result of the medication used, is that a new symptom will appear. Five Element Acupuncture teaches us to view the original symptom not as the illness itself but as a distress signal from the body, mind & spirit saying, “Help! Something is wrong”. That ‘something’ may be causing multiple symptoms that a Western doctor would only address one by one, in effect chopping that person up into little fragments of things that are wrong. But, we can’t go out to dinner and leave our liver at home so why would we just look at a liver without the context of the whole world that particular liver lives in. The one medicine, ie Five Element Acupuncture, sees the patient as a whole AND as a unique individual, and so gives a very personalised approach that addresses all their issues simultaneously, leading to overall improvement. If you fix the underlying cause, the symptom or symptoms start to disappear.

Ben: What is the underlying cause?

Gabriella: Woah, Ben, you’re skipping way ahead! Patience, patience!

Ben: Yes I know acupuncturists have patients…But acupuncture can also be used to treat symptoms directly right?

Gabriella: Symptoms are most definitely treated, it’s just a different approach and hard to get out of the mindset that’s ingrained in us - ‘in order to treat migraines you need migraine medication’. Whereas in the medicine I practice, it’s more like ‘in order to treat migraines I need to determine and address the imbalance that created the migraines in this person’. So I’m treating the person, not the disease per se. There are some very direct acupuncture treatments that can be done, you may have seen film footage of acupuncture being used in place of medicated anaesthesia in open heart surgery?

Ben: I certainly have. Incredible!

Gabriella: Absolutely. But, to clarify, because I’ve often heard it said that Five Element Acupuncture doesn’t treat symptoms. This is wrong. We just don’t treat them via a direct means. If it didn’t treat symptoms, would I even have a practice? Strangely, people don’t pay me just because I’m a nice person, Ben!

Ben: I can’t understand why, Gabriella!

Gabriella: Hey ho, such is life…. but just in case… all ‘nice person’ contributions gratefully received… Anyway, it’s the way we go about treating symptoms that can lead to this misunderstanding and we’ll be talking a lot more about Five Element Acupuncture as a medicine in the coming episodes.

Pt.2

Ben: So what other therapies or medicines come under the bracket of complementary or alternative?

Gabriella: There’s a whole range of medical therapies that are not regarded as orthodox by the medical profession, such as osteopathy, homeopathy or chiropractic. I don’t think there’s an official consensus on what is or isn’t regarded as orthodox, and opinions vary according to the individual person or culture. When I started in practice 20 years ago, a patient would sometimes tell their doctor that they were seeing me. The doctor’s response was often dismissive, with mention of words like ‘quack’. or ‘charlatan’. Whereas now, new patients often tell me that their doctor suggested they try acupuncture and it’s listed on the NHS website as a Complementary or Alternative medicine. So the attitude towards acupuncture has changed a lot even in the time I’ve been in practice, even though some still refuse to change their rigid stance. For those determined to remain sceptical, perhaps a little more open-mindedness might end up in a pleasant surprise. My acupuncturist originally trained in and practiced Western medicine before he decided to train in Five Element Acupuncture and has now been in practice for well over 30 years!

Acupuncture is now one of the most widely respected forms of ‘CAM’. Let’s take a look at some of the other complementary and alternative medicines:

Traditional alternative medicine includes the more mainstream and accepted forms of therapy, such as acupuncture, Ayurveda, reflexology and homeopathy.

Ben: Body Therapy, which includes : Chiropractic and osteopathic medicine, massage and exercise disciplines such as Tai chi, Qi Gong and Yoga.

Gabriella: Diet and herbs. Dietary and herbal methods include the use of dietary supplements, Herbal medicine and attention to nutrition and diet

Ben: External energy. Some say external energies emanating from objects or various sources can directly impact an individual's well-being. Therapies based on external energy include: Electromagnetic therapy and Reiki

Gabriella: Mind. The connection between mind and body is now widely recognised. Studies have found that people heal better if they have good emotional and mental health. Therapies using the mind include: Psychotherapy & psychoanalysis, Meditation, CBT, or Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, TIR (or Traumatic Incident Reduction) and Hypnosis.

Ben: The Senses.That is: touch, sight, hearing, smell and taste. Examples of therapies using the senses include: art, dance, music, visualisation and guided imagery

Gabriella: Wow! When we list them like this it makes you realise just how many different forms of medicine there really are. And then within each of them there are different disciplines. Acupuncture itself has a number of different forms, five element being only one of them!

Ben: So I’ve heard of the term preventative medicine, what’s that?

Gabriella: We’re so used to medicine being something that we seek when things have gone wrong. And medicine is indeed a good thing to seek when that happens. But it’s a passive approach to one’s health - handing it over to someone to ‘fix’ when things have gone wrong. How many times have I heard a patient say ‘they put me on this medicine’. … this mysterious ‘they’ who seem to hold a lot of power in people’s lives. How about we take action before the situation has gone that far? But let’s face it, remaining in good health isn’t quite such an earner as ‘illness’, which is a multi-billion pound industry. If everyone was going round preventing more of their ‘diseases’, what would poor Big Pharma do to earn money?

Ben: Start manufacturing acupuncture needles?

Gabriella: Genius! Who’s going to make the phone call Ben?

Ben: Very funny Gabriella! What about vitamin supplements and all that stuff that’s out there?

Gabriella: A lot of money is made from the supplements industry too, which markets itself as providing products that keep us well, but that’s a passive approach too. Someone else makes the pill - and importantly, does this billion pound industry actually keep us well? Really, most of us should be able to get our vitamin and mineral needs from eating a well-balanced diet, and adding or eliminating foods that contain nutrients that we personally need less or more of. Or address why the body isn’t absorbing a particular nutrient because often that’s the problem.

Ben: What about dentists? They tell us to have regular check-ups, that’s preventative so to speak.

Gabriella: Well, exactly. The dentistry industry has got it right, educating us of the need to look after our teeth, to prevent dental problems. Most of us go for a 6-monthly check up to make sure our teeth are in good health and to catch any problems early. Why do we not as a matter of course do something on a regular basis to keep our whole self in good shape?

Ben: My Grandad used to talk about how we maintained our cars better than ourselves!

Gabriella: Yes, and how true is that? ‘Gotta take the car in for a service.’ And it’s illegal not to have an MOT every year! Why does it not occur to most of us to MOT ourselves? We just carry on, running ourselves down until at some point, something gives somewhere.

Ben: Sounds like the ancient Chinese were way ahead of our game!

Gabriella: I’m sure of it Ben. At acupuncture school, I was told that back in ancient China, you’d pay the doctor (well, acupuncturist of course!) to keep you well and didn’t pay when you were sick! Now I don’t know if that’s true or not, but let’s think about that for a moment. It implies that it is possible to prevent illness. By investing time and money in visiting the physician to rebalance your energies, you are actively taking part in your healthcare.

Now, a potential downside of this approach is that the practitioner may be doing their very best but the patient is making poor choices. I’ll rephrase that, because it’s not for me to judge my patients’ choices, I am simply there to advise. The rest is up to the patient. So, let’s say the person is making choices that aren’t compatible with the level of health that they want.

Ben: You mean I can’t do anything I want to?

Gabriella: Well Ben, you can, but, well let’s share an example relating to you, if that’s ok?

Ben: Go for it!

Gabriella: We both know you love cheese.

Ben: Mmmm…Cheese!

Gabriella: And I am pretty sure I know you’ve had some when I get a text from you asking if I have any appointments today, by any chance, even though our next one was scheduled in two weeks.

Ben: Woopsies…

Gabriella: I mean, have cheese if you want to Ben, but in the knowledge that your body responds in protest.

Ben: Oh, the heartbreak of unrequited love… (sad violin music)

Gabriella: Good job I brought my violin with me, folks!

Ben: Is it just food that affects us?

Gabriella: Oh no, there’s way more than that!

Our stressful lifestyles as well as environmental factors, our diet, pathogenic diseases, or the genetic potential each of us is born with, the ageing process etc all have a bearing on our health. I am not a subscriber to the idea that there is one way and one way only for every single 9 billion or so unique individual people in the world. That just doesn’t make sense. I believe it’s about finding what’s best for oneself and owning our choices. Choice is of course to a certain extent dependent on circumstances. But often we can supercede our circumstances. Falling back on excuses is also a possibility.

Part of my role is about bringing awareness to my patients, but it is not about dictating what I think they should or shouldn’t do. Be aware, realise that you’re in the driving seat of your life, and choose. And perhaps don’t complain if your choice leads to unwanted effects!

Ben: Right. So now I choose to eat cheese very rarely because I know how I feel when my body reacts to it.

Gabriella: Exactly, that’s a lifestyle choice you’ve made that has a positive effect on your health, and has drastically reduced the need to needle those points just by your nose…

Ben: Thank f*** (beep!) for that!

Gabriella: Haha yes well ummm they can be quite strong! So, I am an advocate for awareness alongside personal cheese, I mean choice.

Ben: (groans)

Gabriella: Hard cheese if you don’t like my umm ‘Caerphilly’ selected jokes Ben!

Ben: Gabriella, can you please take this podcast seriously for a Brie-f moment?

Gabriella: I suppose I Feta had… Now, let’s for a moment take quite a controversial opinion on another lifestyle choice: if giving up smoking would affect a person’s quality of life so much that it has a detrimental effect say on their mental health, then why should they give up? As long as they accept the consequences that it is very likely that smoking either will cause a harmful effect, or already has. So, choose to smoke, however, accept the limitations of what medicine can do to counteract any harmful effects - that’s how I look at it.

I had a wonderful friend and colleague, Jan, who worked for the charity whose offices were in the same place where I first set up my practice. She smoked like a chimney, and absolutely owned it. She had a hacking cough, but nothing in her being had any desire to give up smoking. She was in her 60s when she was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. She knew she had made her bed and gracefully accepted that it was her time to lie in it. I sat with her in her garden on a bright summer’s day just weeks before she died. She told me she wouldn’t have done anything differently, she’d had a good life and had enjoyed every cigarette she’d smoked. Oh it was heartbreaking that we lost a wonderful and inspiring friend and colleague so soon, but she lived how she wanted to and that was no one else’s choice but hers.

Conclusion

Ben: So, what’s the Point?! What is medicine really? And how is medicine viewed differently in the East versus the West?

Gabriella: Well, Ben, the point is that medicine is a vast and varied tapestry, woven through the threads of time, culture, and individual experiences. From the kiss of a mother to the precision of surgical procedures, from ancient humorism…

Ben: lol

Gabriella: …to modern allopathic medicine, the definition of medicine has evolved. It encompasses not only the treatment of disease but also the promotion of well-being, prevention, and the understanding of the interconnectedness of our body, mind, and spirit.

Ben: Yes, we learnt that in the East, there's a holistic approach that sees the individual as a unique whole, emphasising harmony and balance. Five Element Acupuncture, as Gabriella practices, delves into the root causes of imbalance, treating the person as an individual rather than merely addressing isolated symptoms. It's about teamwork between the practitioner, nature, and the patient, working towards overall improvement.

Gabriella: We touched on how the Western approach tends to focus on targeted treatments, sometimes adopting a confrontational stance against diseases. The contrast between Eastern and Western perspectives reveals the broader spectrum of medicinal practices available to us.

Ben: Medicine is not just about interventions when things go wrong; it's about choices we make for our well-being, whether it's in the form of lifestyle, diet, or seeking professional help.

Gabriella: Ultimately, there is a place for all medicine and we’re not discounting the validity of any modality of medicine. Awareness and personal responsibility and being an active participant in your own health journey is an important part of the equation when it comes to medicine.

Ben: We hope you enjoyed this brief introduction to medicine, we invite you, whether you’re a seasoned acupuncture enthusiast, or a skeptic, to join us on this journey of exploration and discovery.

Gabriella: Stay tuned for our upcoming episodes and please consider subscribing or becoming a patron via our Patreon page to gain access to all the goodies!

Ben:And with that, we'll say goodbye for now. We look forward to having you join us in the next episode, where we'll be exploring what is disease? Until then, take care!

Gabriella: Bye for now!