Diagnostics:

“All illnesses appear according eight basic principles”

Every symptom can be classified amongst the 8 traditional categories

    This is called  the method of the «8 Assessment rules  »

        Yin /Yang

        Cold /Heat

        Lack/ Fullness

        Reverse = Deep =Internal /Obverse =Superficial =External

(4 qualities Yin and 4 qualities Yang )

Yin and Yang allow us to classify the cause of the illness.

Cold /Heat shows the character of the illness (the illness can be expressed by hyper function, acceleration or reduction, inflammation or circulatory disturbances).

External /Internal shows us the level of the pathology: the seat of the disease and its progression, the evolution of the illness.

These elements are causing a condition of Emptiness(Lack) or Fullness.

To determine the character and the seat of a pathology is a work about examining and realizing the energy assessment .This is the main act, which is the subject of the 4 steps diagnostics.

The energy balance leads the acupuncturist to determine the main reason casing the secondary effects and to distinguish the “root” from “the branches”.

The 4 steps of the diagnostics

The energy assessment contains 4 stages:

The everyday’s practice doesn’t separate clearly these four acts. Indeed, they are constantly combined an the practitioner  make the assessment passing from one step to another, or a few at a time.The practitioner is considering all the components of the behavior, the movements, the expressions and the overall aspect of the patient. The observation immediately notices the skin color, the bio typology, the expression, movements, the walking, the self security, the voice etc.A quote of a big master is often mentioned, when it is about diagnostics. He said:

“ Between the moment when the patient enters the room, until the moment when he is seated, I already know what he is suffering from”

There are two main methods according the classic texts. This is the palpation of the radial pulse and the observation of the face’s colors. They add that the perfect knowledge of one of these two methods exempts the practitioner of the other one, this much is the correlation between the two.

During the whole time of the assessment, the practitioner notes the symptoms and then he classifies them according the laws of traditional acupuncture ( Yin& Yang, The 5 Elements,, Cold/Heat, Lack/Fullness etc.)

Disease

Pathology expresses itself according the following scheme:

Energy Disbalance - Functional disorder - Reversible Lesion - Irreversible Lesion

The assessment, according the traditional acupunctural method will allow us to:

-to find out the rhythm , the quality , the quantity of the different energies in the organism.

-to find out he energy origin of the imbalance in the patient, thus the reason, that has degenerated into a functional trouble and damage .

A practitioner in traditional Chinese healing arts is always looking  for the origin of the imbalance, because every symptomatical disorder is secondary in comparison with the energetical origin of the disease. The acupuncture is preferably involved at the stage of the energetical imbalance and functional disorder, that’s why it is primarily a preventive medicine

Symptoms

The symptoms are a sign of what is happening in the organism, but they are not the disease itself. In a pathological condition, there are primary, then secondary...tertiary symptoms, according the complications, the condition, the chronicity of the disease, especially in the combination of a new sickness awakening an old latent pathology.

Roots and branches

The root is the intrinsic disorder of the energy balance, previous for every sickness.

The branches are the totality of the physical expressions shown by the patient, meaning the subjective and the objective symptoms.

The root has to be localized and treated before the branches, except in some particular cases when the branches are an imminent threat for the life energy by exhaustion ( a hemorrhage is a branch, but it gets priority because endangering directly life).

Dangers of the symptomatical approach

1. 1)Each individual has weak points and some of them are kind of "safety valves." To treat one symptom in a way to meet the patient in his suffering and the practitioner in his “knowledge” may often be dangerous, because if the valve disappears, how can we distinguish the evolution of the energy disorder, that became invisible, and how the body can decompress from the suffered by aggression?
   

It is advisable to treat the symptoms causing distress, but as an addition to the treatment of the energy root and with the confidence, that we attack it.

2. 2)In many pathologies there are signs resulting from the auto defense of the body, hence the importance of not preventing their expression, because this will allow the disease to develop freely, and it manifests itself less than the protective power of the body.
   

One symptom may be the expression of a Yin or of a Yang disorder.

For example, a joint inflammation can be classified as a primary cause of pathology and placed under the rubric Heat = Yang, but also as a thermal reaction of the body to an illness caused by Cold = Yin .

Each individual expresses his illness in his own way, two individuals affected by the same disorder will not obligatorily express the same symptoms. Everyone has their own weaknesses inherent to one's genetic structure or to one’s acquisitions.

In conclusion we can say that various disorders may cause one symptom and many symptoms may be caused one disorder.

Causes of disease

They are as follows:

- external ( 6 climatic perversities )

- internal ( 7 emotions )

- other ( lifestyle, trauma )

Among the causes of the disease have to be distinguished:

- reason that is aggressing and causing a disease due to a primary or a secondary cause .

- root cause - the real energy imbalance that allowed a potential cause to become aggressive .

The practitioner is looking to understand the aggressive reason, mainly why it is able to aggress, seeking the primary imbalance that has weakened the protection systems of the patient:

- either directly weakening the body's defense mechanisms

- or weakening the overall energy field of the patient