by Dr. Alexander Kanevsky, MD
In spite of the in depth biochemical and pathophysiological understanding of diabetes attained by Western medical science, the chronic disease still afflicts millions of people around the globe.
Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) adds to Western knowledge the understanding of how the body, afflicted with diabetes, functions as a whole and how different organs and systems interrelate, usurped by the vicissitude of syndromes of this illness.
For example, Traditional Chinese Medicine holds that there are three organs primarily affected by diabetes: lungs, stomach, and kidneys.
Correspondingly there are also three main symptoms that develop: polydipsia, polyphagia, and polyuria.
The main pathogenic mechanism of the development of the disease is internal overhearing of the three aforementioned organs in a realm of qualitative blood and body fluid supply deficiency, steaming from different sources.
Thereof the initial stages are oftentimes marked by predominance of hot energy over the blood, while over later stages the energy drops as well, leaving the three aforementioned organs and the whole body deficient of both qualities.
Thus syndromes of diabetes are divided in TCM into two main categories — excess and deficiencies, based upon the immediacy of blood and energy manifestations.
Examples of the excess syndromes include excessive internal heating of stomach, leading to an incessant desire to eat; the other example is heat in the lungs that consumes body fluid.
Examples of deficiencies usually lay within the kidneys, manifesting themselves either as deficient fluids or both fluids and kidney energy. The treatment for all these syndromes is utilizing different medicinal herbs in accordance with the particularity of a syndrome.
Examples of foods helpful in diabetes include cow’s milk when the lungs are primarily affected despite a growing belief in the Western Hemisphere that milk is “not good for you.”
Alexander Kanevsky MD practices at the Center of Eastern Medicine, Western Medicine, Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis, 366 Nassau Street, Princeton. 609-613-0225.
To find out more about Dr. Kanevsky visit www.DrAlexanderKanevskyMD.com or www.DrAlexanderKanevskyMDNaturalHealer.com.
