Exploring the Environment of China 2011

Experiencing the Culture of Traditional Chinese Pharmacy

by Matthew Orlowski

As a pharmacy student, I am in my fourth out of six years of the schooling required to become a board accredited pharmacist. These past years my learning has been in a variety of focuses related to the practice of pharmacy. I've learned of the countless safety regulations and tests enforced by the FDA, NIH, and CDC in order for drugs to be deemed "safe" and "available for public use" in the United States. I've learned in great detail the biochemical pathways and targets which numerous drugs target. I've learned to quantify the effects and actions of a drug using pharmacodynamic and pharmacokinetic principles. I've learned to break the action of drugs down and examine their effects, side effects, interactions, and mechanisms of action on a molecular level. In summation, scientific proof and quantification have been interwoven with medicinal therapy throughout my academic career. Without definitive scientific backing and proof I have been trained to believe that pharmaceutical therapies are "unsafe and ineffective". Therefore, you can understand how total my culture shock was the first time I visited a pharmacy which dispensed traditional Chinese pharmaceutical therapies. In that pharmacy, therapy was based on what seemed to be a completely foreign set of principles where all my training was for not.

Even on the most basic level traditional Chinese pharmaceuticals are very different. These herbal remedies are mixed in ratios specific to the needs of every patient based on a prescription order from a doctor. Once mixed the herbs a placed in a large cloth sack and may either be boiled by the patient or boiled and packaged in hospital. The boiling process creates a tea in which the extracts from the various insects, roots, plant leaves, fungi, etc., are contained and this tea is then consumed in the amounts and frequencies prescribed by the physician.

Chinese technician preparing herbal remedy to be brewed.

It is usually the case that the therapeutic benefits of these preparations cannot be related to or directly linked to any chemical compounds because these compounds are largely unresearched and defined. While there is no knowledge of the ingredients which actually produce a therapeutic effect or of whether or not each individual preparation is safe, it is generally excepted that the product is safe and effective by those who prescribe to such herbal remedies. Perhaps there is such trust because herbal remedies and traditional Chinese medicine has been in use for thousands of years and therefore has been "tested" countless times on past patients. To someone so dependent on scientific and quantitative accuracy in order to produce measureable and expected therapeutic benefits the inaccuracy of the entire process was staggering to me. Contrasting this method of preparation with those which exist in pharmacy in the U.S. is a large enough cultural difference alone with the variety of strictly related pills, capsules, patches, inhalers, nebulizers, injectables, and topicals that exist all containing very well defined well studied excipients and active ingredients.

At first glance, I as I am sure most Westerners do, immediately wrote of Chinese medicine as an ineffective hoax, more a tradition than a valid medical practice. Yet, after further reflection I my stance on the matter shifted. There are approximately 1.33 billion people currently living in China, many of whom believe in and practice traditional Chinese medicine and pharmacy. These people experience the same ailments we do here in America yet many studies suggest those prescribing to traditional Chinese treatments have been shown to live longer healthier life styles. So if that many people believe in something and practice it to what seems to be good effect, how bad can it actually be? Also, when this type of pharmacy is viewed in light of the Chinese philosophy of medicine and wellbeing it makes much more sense. While we in America are concerned with examining drugs on increasingly smaller levels to accurately detail their actions the Chinese view illness not on biochemical levels but on the level of the total wellbeing of the person. It is more about properly distributing the qi, the life energy that drives us, and living a lifestyle prone to health than it is about waiting until one is ill and then using drugs to treat symptoms.

In closing, there is something to learn from Chinese pharmacy. While I believe it is important to test drugs for safety and efficacy and to know as much as possible about the things we are putting into our bodies I also believe that is important to sometimes step back and view a condition and a holistic level in which every part of the whole is examined to develop a complete picture. Furthermore, after visiting not only a traditional Chinese pharmacy but also observing the people of China during my time there we can learn much from the lifestyles and habits which the Chinese live. In this way we may be able to more accurately administer preventative measures to improve our own healthcare and lower the costs associated with pharmaceutical therapy in our country.