|
||||||||
|
When East Meets West in Medicine by Youn-Kwon Hong "Hold still, let me heal it," my mother said confidently after she had examined the wound on my forehead. I was ten. She brought over a jar of fermented bean paste, which we Koreans enjoy as a vegetable dip. She applied a teaspoonful on the wound and spread it around. Afraid that my friends would make fun of me with the dip on my head, I protested. She argued patiently and finally applied a piece of clean cheesecloth to cover the "cure." "Don't even think of removing it," she said. "Otherwise, bad germs will eat your brain." I did my best not to touch the patch—to keep my young brain from being eaten. My mother was not a doctor, nor did she have a clue about any antibiotic action of the paste. Like thousands of mothers, however, she had a list of how-tos for responding to common illnesses and wounds. Most of the cures have never been clinically tested and would not even be considered therapies by mainstream practitioners. But these traditional home remedies are easily obtainable and often seem to show a magic healing power. As one TV commercial on a pain reliever illustrates, people choose a medication not because they are convinced by lab results, but because their own experience has shown it works. Interestingly, fermented bean paste recently has been shown to be rich in a certain species of fungus that produces antibiotics. Conference on CAMThe article in the July 16 Focus about the conference in Korea on complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) reminded me of the home remedies I grew up with. Many Eastern countries, like Korea, have their own traditional cures that are hundreds of years old. For a long time, many of these cures have been labeled as unscientific due to the lack of scientific evidence supporting their efficacy. As a result, they are often shunned by people who have grown up with modern medicine. Despite this situation, the conference on CAM, cosponsored by Harvard Medical International, gave a boost to the competing trend of appreciating CAM as an avenue for further exploration.I could not agree more with Kenneth Shine, the president of the National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine, who said, "There is only one medicine," which includes all the possible range of effective therapeutic techniques. When it comes to saving lives and benefiting human health, there should be no distinction between mainstream and alternative. Who or what can possibly draw a clear line between the two? Often centuries-old traditional medicines that were once dismissed have later proven their value by giving new insight into medical investigations. Integrating MedicineIt really is exciting for me to know that CAM therapies—acupuncture, herbal treatments, meditation, chiropractic, and others—which conceive of the human being as a whole entity, are being increasingly acknowledged by Western medicine even though the Western approach is to dissect everything into pieces and molecules in order to attain a correct understanding. This seemingly incompatible coalition of two very different ways of pursuing knowledge became possible only when advanced molecular biology techniques began revealing the mechanisms of certain traditional therapies.The role of basic science researchers in studying CAM has become more important than ever, because understanding the relevant molecular mechanisms is the best way for CAM therapies to prove their value. I would urge more clinical investigators, too, to test and understand the value of various CAM therapies. Finally, while CAM is mainly market driven, governments should be more proactive in providing a variety of support for CAM. Occasionally, I suffer from indigestion after a heavy meal with a lot of meat. I learned that when I prick the tip of my thumb with a sterilized needle, the uncomfortable feeling in my stomach slowly disappears. A friend of mine who graduated from a college for oriental medicine once explained to me that the tip of the thumb is an important spot for the flow of chi (translated as force or energy) that is responsible for digestion. So by stimulating the flow of chi, my digestive system may be activated to perform better. Some may say that my response is due only to the placebo effect. All I know is, it always works for me, and I am encouraged that more healing experiences like this may be explored by Western science. —Young-Kwon Hong, a research fellow in medicine at Beth |
