TCM in Crohn's disease

Chinese medicine helps the body re-exercise its immune function in Chron's disease

26/10/2013

The symptoms begin slowly and often months or even years pass before patients have a name for their condition. Crohn's disease is one of the chronic inflammatory bowel diseases. Those affected writhe under severe abdominal cramping, accompanied by sometimes violent diarrhea, frequent nausea and fever episodes.

Later, many patients are no longer able to participate in the normal life: Frequent painful bowel movements during the day, hardly to endure cramps and headaches finally lead to complete exhaustion and exhaustion. Especially young people between the ages of twenty and thirty get sick with Crohn's disease. Conventional therapy is usually symptom-oriented: during an acute episode of relapses, it relies on drugs such as cortisone or anti-inflammatory drugs. Later, from an orthodox medical point of view, there are only unsatisfactory solutions: chemotherapy and surgery with artificial bowel obstruction. Since, according to the Chinese view, Crohn's disease is based on a malfunction of the immune system, it pursues a cause-oriented approach to treatment.

„Causes of Crohn's disease are so-called inflammations in the wrong place '“, puts Dr. Christian Schmincke, TCM expert and head of the clinic at the Steigerwald, dar. „The patient's immune system has stored a wrong functional scheme. In the case of infections, poisoning or psychological stress, unhealed remnants, ie inflammatory potentials that burden the intestine, then remain in the body.“ If this wrong reaction takes place over many years, usually minimal infections suffice to trigger the next inflammatory thrust of Crohn's disease. „We must reorganize these misguided, habitual immune reactions in Chinese therapy, so that future emotional and physical burdens are adequately intercepted“, explains Dr. Schmincke. „Especially the Chinese drug therapy helps the body to re-exercise the immune behavior.“

Above all, the drug therapy requires an individually differentiating Chinese diagnosis. Thereafter, formulations are prescribed from plants and parts of plants, more rarely mineral natural substances or animal constituents. The most common form of preparation of medicines is decoction, the so-called decoction. For this purpose, the active ingredients are boiled for about half an hour, ie decoctivated, and taken by the patient throughout the day in small sips. Acupuncture and manual methods such as shiatsu, tuina massage, cranio-sacral therapy or psychotics are supportive. On the one hand, such methods help against the pain that often occurs in intestinal inflammation, on the other hand they also have an immunoregulatory effect. After acupuncture treatment, for example, the bowel function calms down and the number of defecation decreases. Qigong also has a positive effect on pain, inner states of tension and stabilizes the immune activity. The last pillar of therapy is nutritional science according to Chinese principles. In order to reduce inflammatory potentials, vegetable-rich foods are suitable with as little animal protein as possible. (Pm)