How traditional Chinese medicine is being adopted by the West – The Age

Stick your tongue out, he gestured, before recoiling in horror. “Now let me feel your pulse.” He took my hands and gasped. “Have you been drinking cold water?” he asked with a scathing look. The temperature was nudging 36°C, so surely I could be forgiven for indulging in a little cool drink? Clearly not.

I was living in China’s north-west and my insomnia had reached a peak, causing me serious distress. “If you try anything health-wise in China, it has to be acupuncture,” many people advised me. Given I was desperate, and I was in the land where Chinese medicine had been practised for thousands of years, I gave it a try.

A week later, I found myself lying flat on my back with dozens of needles, much thicker than the ones I’d experienced in the West, inserted into various body parts. Not only that, I also had two heat lamps bearing down on me, along with the wafting smoke of what looked like a smouldering cigar. (It’s called moxibustion, a form of Chinese therapy claimed to stimulate circulation.)

When a dozen pouches of blood-red liquidised herbs arrived at my front door, one sip of the potent, ashy tasting medicine had me dry retching. The smell seemed to ooze from my pores for days. I finished them – just – after a week and my insomnia eased up … for a while.