Human Body User Manual (Traditional Chinese Medicine)

This is a Chinese book that discusses some basic principles of TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) in a revolutionary and scientific way that is easily understood by the layman. Most of time the author uses the analogy of a computer system to explain TCM concerpts. Here are just a few points which I gathered from this book.

* The Human body is an extremely intelligent system, many times more powerful than the computer system, especially in the management of resources and it's ability to transform one type of resouces to another type to meet the daily needs of our body system. For example, the book explains why people with diabetes lose a lot of weight during the initial period. It is a tranformation of one kind of resource inside the body to another in order to meet the deficiency of resouces in other areas. More detailed info are contained in the book.

* Sometimes, in coping with the heavy energy / resource needs of the body (eg stressful lifestyles), the body does not have the enough resources to clean up the waste and other toxic substances residing in the body. When one goes on a long vacation with plenty of rest, the body now have the resources to start a major 'spring cleaning' and a lot of waste and other toxic substances start discharging out of the body through the blood streams. If one goes for health screening (eg. blood test) during this period, the blood results may show 'unhealthy' signs. As such, it is important to take into account which period of time when one goes for a health check. Hence normal blood test results do not necessary mean that a person is healthy and vice versa. More detailed info are contained in the book.

* The illnesses in the internal main organs often manifest as symptoms in other external organs. Every often, people took Western medicines to relieve and suppress the symptoms instead of finding the exact causes. In the long run, this may harm the body. In TCM, it is essential to identify the exact cause of the an illness and the treatment of this illness may not be at the location where the symptoms occur after the cause of illness is identified. More interesting examples and info are found in the book.

* The book also discusses the different approach between Western Medicine and TCM.

* The book also provides simple tips / exercises in maintaining a healthy body.

You can download the book at :

http://www.54md.com/book/catalog_5.html

Not to worry, there are no copyright issues with downloading the book. As mentioned in the last few pages of the book under the Interview section, the author made the softcopy of the book freely available on the web for quite some time before the hardcopy prints were out. His intention was pure as he wished to benefit more people. He was indeed surprised that the circulation of his softcopy book created a surge in the sales of the hardcopy prints!

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Here is something I heard about (not from the book) and which I like to share. In Western culture, terms like 消毒，消灭，杀菌 etc are often used. In ancient Chinese culture, terms like 解毒，化解 are often used. From this you can see two different approaches towards the treatment of diseases and in a broader sense, attitudes towards Life. Very often, as we seen throughout history, the more human attempt to kill viruses, pests etc, the more resistant the viruses, pests etc behave towards the antibiotics. The viruses may also mutate in such a way that antibiotics become ineffective in such situations. If you watch Chinese films, you will come across the word 解毒药，but certainly not the word 消毒药or 杀毒药. Being able to neutralize the poison / viruses is the approach in ancient Chinese culture.

In the resolution of human conflicts around the world, the use of vengeful means usually lead to more disastrous results in the future. Hope that all conflicts can be resolved using peaceful means.