Traditional Chinese medicine: potential approaches from modern dynamical complexity theories

Department

Health Promotion

Document Type

Article

Publication Source

Frontiers of Medicine

Publication Date

2016-01-01

Volume

10

Issue

1

First Page

28

Last Page

32

Abstract

© 2016, Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg. Despite the widespread use of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) in clinical settings, proving its effectiveness via scientific trials is still a challenge. TCM views the human body as a complex dynamical system, and focuses on the balance of the human body, both internally and with its external environment. Such fundamental concepts require investigations using system-level quantification approaches, which are beyond conventional reductionism. Only methods that quantify dynamical complexity can bring new insights into the evaluation of TCM. In a previous article, we briefly introduced the potential value of Multiscale Entropy (MSE) analysis in TCM. This article aims to explain the existing challenges in TCM quantification, to introduce the consistency of dynamical complexity theories and TCM theories, and to inspire future system-level research on health and disease.

Keywords

balance, dynamical complexity, modern sciences, quantification, system level, traditional Chinese medicine

DOI

10.1007/s11684-016-0434-2

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11684-016-0434-2

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