|
Integrative medicine can include the practice of traditional systems of medicine, such as Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), Ayurveda (the ancient medicine of India), Native American and other indigenous cultures' systems that usually are based on different ways of understanding and treating disease from the Western medical approach. These systems have their own forms of diagnosis that are consistent with their overall view of health and disease. For example in TCM a history is taken including careful inquiry about the patient's own experience of the problem, what makes the pain change, what makes it better or worse, the evaluation of lifestyle habits, what is eaten and when it is eaten, and a person's activity or inactivity, among other things. Practitioners use observation of the tongue, pulse, skin color, hair, nails, urine and stool, and palpation of areas of pain to help with diagnosis. All this information is used to determine an "associative pattern" or pattern of disharmony, and it is this identified pattern that manifests as the pain or problem that will be treated.
|