In China, there's nothing alternative about using herbal potions or having acupuncture to treat physical and mental ailments. Clifford Coonanreports from Beijing
The prospect of swallowing tortoise shell, earthworm, centipede, sea horse or scorpion, or sticking needles under your skin, to help cure your ailments, may sound odd to Irish sensibilities, but these are fairly standard treatments in Traditional Chinese Medicine.
Many Chinese people, particularly older residents, swear by the ancient system of beliefs about how the human body works known as TCM. It's holistic, and some of its cures sound unpalatable, but they believe it can cure all kinds of ailments.
Currently, about 3,000 hospitals in China provide TCM treatments, with patient visits amounting to nearly 234 million each year.
The traditional Chinese medicine industry is worth around €95 billion a year, accounting for around one quarter of China's medical business, and revenues are growing by 20 per cent a year.
Some of the most questionable practices of TCM have come in for strong criticism - such as the belief that tiger paw can cure all kinds of ailments - but most respected practitioners are quick to sing the praises of artificial substitutes for the limbs of endangered species.
Earlier this month, China's Vice Premier Wu Yi attended a TCM promotion campaign, which is aimed at increasing the knowledge of the Chinese people on traditional medicines and encourage hospitals to boost traditional medical services.
A Chinese medicine practitioner's office is a consulting room not unlike a Western doctor's, but the difference becomes apparent as soon as the check up starts - it's about using sight, sound, hearing and smell to make a diagnosis.
Changes in the body come out as emotions, or can be seen on the tongue, in your complexion or felt in your pulse.
Examining your pulse is a central part of the assessment process. Your pulse is governed by your heart and commanded by the "qi" and is believed to reflect any abnormalities. Understanding "qi" (pronounced "chi"), basically your life energy, is central to comprehending Chinese medicine.
The theory is relatively straightforward, if esoteric to western ears used to less poetic medicine. The body has a web of meridians, channels of information connecting all the bodily organs and tissue along invisible lines, a bit like radio waves.
The meridians transport the "qi" life force throughout the body. If you are feeling weak or lethargic, this is seen as a sign that your "qi" needs boosting. The practitioner asks you have you had a cold recently, are you sleeping properly, are you in pain, as well as detailed questions about your sweat, your stool and urine, do you have pain anywhere.
Guoyi Tang is one of the most famous TCM hospitals in Beijing. Built in traditional Chinese style, the hospital is connected to the university designated to the study of Chinese medicine.
The first floor corridor is lined with people awaiting consultations and for pharmacists to make up their prescriptions. Huang Zhaohe, 35, who owns a clothes shop in a Beijing shopping mall, is waiting her turn.
"I come here to get acupuncture to lose weight. I've been doing this twice a week for a month. One of my friends introduced this therapy - she's lost five kilograms in two months," says Huang.
"It's really effective. My body is not only slimmer but better proportioned. It was uncomfortable at the beginning but that was the effect of acupuncture speeding up my metabolism. Now I've gotten used to it, and feel much better. And it's not expensive, just 300 yuan (around €30)," she says.
Acupuncture is an essential part of Chinese medicine and has a clinical history going back over 3,000 years.
Stroke patients are routinely given acupuncture as part of their treatment and the practice of inserting the needles under the skin has now become common practice in western treatments.
Acupuncture stimulates the meridians using special needles to help keep that all-essential "qi" flowing.
The pharmacists' office is amazing - walls are lined with hundreds of small wooden boxes, holding various herbs and medicines, while pharmacists weigh the ingredients on scales. Chinese medicine is based on a belief in "yin" and "yang", which describes the balance in nature, but also describes all the parts of the body. You need to keep your "yin" and "yang" balanced, otherwise you get sick.
Tortoise shell reinforces a "yin" deficiency by reinforcing the body fluid and nourishing the blood, earthworm and centipede helps to make swellings go down. Scorpion is used to deal with migraine and rheumatism. TCM is considered particularly effective for some chronic illnesses, such as rheumatoid arthritis, asthma and diabetes.
Zhang Xiaoting is in her 20s and studying in Shanghai. She first started using Chinese medicine to regulate her menstrual cycle as a teenager and described a consultation.
"An old doctor asked me to sit down, put his two fingers on the inner side of my right wrist. About 10 seconds later, he took away his fingers, and asked me some questions about my dietary habits and how I felt during my period," says Zhang.
"He said my body was a bit cold, which caused the ache, and the endocrine imbalance caused spots," she says.
The prescription was pretty bitter medicine, she says, and it was hard to get down at first. "My mum boiled it at home in the evening. The bitter taste made it very difficult to drink. But the ache went away, my skin cleared up. I actually got to like the smell," she says.
"One time I saw what went into the medicine, I felt sick. But now I'm used to it. There are always some strange things in Chinese medicine," she says. The colour of your skin corresponds to the internal organs - green for the liver, red for the heart, yellow for the spleen, white for the lungs and black for the kidneys. Any changes in your skin colour are said to reflect internal changes.
The tongue is also important, as different parts of the tongue correspond to different internal organs the tip of your tongue reflects the heart and lungs, the middle, the spleen and stomach; the base corresponds to the kidneys and each side reflects the liver and gall bladder.
Your tongue is normal if it is soft, can move about, is pale-red in colour with a white coating.
There are many western hospitals in Beijing but the Chinese tend to combine treatments, picking and choosing the different healing traditions to fit their illnesses.
Many practitioners see it as complementary to western medicine. Bian Tonghua, one of the top practitioners at Guoyi Tang, is famous for his work with tumours and has patients from all over the world.
"Chemotherapy is very effective, but it also has large toxicity, which is very bad for the body. Chinese medicine puts the emphasis on nature, on balancing yin and yang and on regulating the internal systems of the human body," says Bian.
His colleague Mao Yuze, an expert on acupuncture, says the difference between TCM and western medicine is that in the west, medical science focuses on the disease, while TCM focuses on the person themselves. "The traditional practitioners of TCM see individual patients and suit the remedy to the individual case. Different people, different weathers, different places can affect the remedy," says Mao.
A recent survey by the China Youth Daily shows that 87 per cent of respondents in China said they had faith in TCM, while only 28 per cent of the 14,677 respondents say they'd use traditional medicine first.
China's governing State Council set up a national board to monitor TCM in 1988, which has done much to help Chinese medicine thrive. But even as it grows in the west, TCM faces challenges in its place of origin, ironically from the forces which are helping transform China into a huge world power.
Rampant economic growth has pushed industry and the search for natural resources into the forests and countryside where the cures were traditionally located. The ongoing destruction of nature and the wilderness means fewer resources are available for medicine. And tough laws, and the advent of Viagra, means that bear paw, tiger's tail and rhino horn are no longer as popular as they used to be to boost potency.