Healthy Eating Guide

Healthy eating guide is important in life as we all want to be healthy, live long and look young. I think Chinese medicine is particularly suited to provide the know-how to achieve this, based on thousands of years of experience. I decided to study Chinese medicine because after almost ten years of my own problems with health it was the only medicine that could help me. Today I would like to talk about this ancient Chinese medicine so everyone can benefit from it. After all, it is the most widely used natural medicine in the world.

I would like to welcome Prof. Charlie Xue, a Discipline Head for Chinese Medicine and Director of the Traditional and Complementary Medicine Research Program at the RMIT Health Innovations Research Institute in Melbourne, Australia.

Q: Professor Xue, thank you for allowing us to interview you today, I know how busy you are. Please tell us more about yourself. How did you get interested in Chinese medicine, where did you study and is there a specific area you specialize in?

Prof Xue: Thank you for the question. I was a very sick child when I was young and I received a lot of herbal medicine treatment during my early schooling years. So when I finished secondary education I decided to do Chinese medicine.

I initially completed a five year program in Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine in China. After that I became an academic at the university and worked in a teaching hospital for six years before I came to Australia to do my post-graduate research. My post-graduate research was supervised by RMIT and an associate professor from Monash University in the area of respiratory medicine.

Since then I have been working towards evaluating the clinical efficacy and safety of acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine for the treatment of chronic respiratory diseases. My other major responsibility at RMIT is as a Discipline Head to provide leadership for educational programs as well as building a strong …. In the community.

Q: That’s a lot of responsibility. Please tell us what challenges does Chinese medicine face in the Western society?

Prof Xue: In the Western society the major challenges are getting people to understand the philosophical differences of Chinese medicine versus Western medicine. The second area would be producing clinical evidence that can support the use of Chinese medicine for clinical conditions.

Q: Can you please tell our readers how Chinese medicine can help them improve their health?

Prof Xue: Chinese medicine is based on the philosophy that good health is based on a very good balance between what we call yin and yang, like organ function and substances. And any deficiencies or excess will result in an unhealthy state. So Chinese medicine is taking much more holistic approach, which looks at overall health and wellbeing and is based on a more subjective feeling and symptoms and also more individual expression of state of health.

Q: Some of our readers may be intrigued by the idea of using Chinese medicine but may not know where to begin. What general advice would you give someone who was interested in Chinese medicine?

Prof Xue: My general advice would be seeking a general consultation, to talk about their health issues and then to look into options of Chinese medicine. That would include acupuncture, herbal medicine, or it could be advice on dietary changes or exercise or tea. We are qualified Chinese medicine practitioners. This general advice could help people start looking at a very broad range of different approaches, then may be incorporating them as part of the treatment.

Q: Chinese medicine is becoming increasingly popular in the West. What do you think is the reason?

Prof Xue: There are a number of reasons. Firstly, many chronic clinical conditions receive very limited benefit from Western medicine so people always look for new therapeutic approaches. In the field of complementary medicine, Chinese medicine has a long history. There is also an increasing amount of scientific evidence in clinical studies and a very large number of people who have used Chinese medicine, particularly in the Western world of the last two, three decades.

I think the benefit of the patients who have received Chinese medicine is becoming a powerful message .

Q: Diet plays very important role in Chinese medicine. Would you like to elaborate on that, please.

Prof Xue: Diet is seen as an adjunct to Chinese medicine almost for every patient because Chinese medicine classifies all the food, similar to herbal medicine, as having different therapeutic properties. For example for a patient with a condition of chronic loose bowel Chinese medicine practitioner would advice not to eat anything with what we believe has ‘cold properties’ like cabbage or parsnip, because that would contribute to deterioration of the condition.

From Chinese medicine point of view, food is medicine and medicine can be food. There is a common area which you need to consider - the property of each food staff you eat.

Q: What would be one advice you could give regarding healthy lifestyle.

Prof Xue: Healthy lifestyle is the responsibility of each individual. Each person would have to have a good assessment of their own health, would need to be very vigilant about what they eat, exercise… for example going to bed on a regular basis, also get up early in the morning… that’s what we consider in Chinese medicine healthy lifestyle. Obviously there will be some modifications for individuals based on health condition.

Q: Many are interested in healthy eating for healthy weight loss. What advice would you like to give our readers?

Prof Xue: Again I think they would need to have some advice from a qualified Chinese medicine practitioner to start with but if you’re looking for a general advice, from Chinese medicine point of view I would advice people to eat a good balance and a broad range of food rather than to have any preference.

Number two: not to eat anything that we consider cold and greasy. This is very different to Western culture, where people like to have a cold drink. Also, do not eat too much meat. This is a general advice for people who already have digestive problems. Another advice is to have a regular intake of food with appropriate quantity.

Q: In contrast with the Western countries, there aren’t many obese people in China. What is the reason in your opinion for such a massive obesity problem in the West?

Prof Xue: I don’t have a comprehensive data but being educated in China and also I grew up in China, I can say that many factors contribute to the current situation, particularly to the younger generation. In China one child policy could be a problem because they have been over supported, over fed by the parents. Access to quality food, high energy food is another problem.

When access to food was limited, you had a limited option, which helped you not to over consume food staff. And that’s the common problem in Australia now. We have access to too much food. People who used to have very limited access to food, suddenly they have access to so much food that they are just not being wise not to overeat.

The third thing I observe is a cultural thing. Whenever I visit China my colleagues and my friends would try to provide the best and a lot of good food. If you observe the eating pattern, it’s scary because people consume so much food. In the dining room you would have 10 or 15 dishes in one meal. Even if you eat tiny bit from each dish, you still eat too much.

Finally, the recent developments allow people to do much less physical exercise. For example twenty years ago in China the main transportation was bicycle. When you moved from one place to the other you used the bicycle and that actually was a very good routine exercise. Now lots of people have their own car, and sitting behind the wheel is very different to riding a bicycle.

So many things we didn’t have when I was young, in China, now things changed radically. Another thing – so many people eat junk food… There are so many factors, it is not a simple question to answer but certainly the change in the economic status, the change in the lifestyle routine contributed to the problem. Which is very scary because the number of people who are potential diabetic patients is big in China.

Q: So health is deteriorating in China as well…

Prof Xue: I wouldn’t use the term deteriorating. It’s a “common problem”, which the developed world have been experiencing already. And in the developing country, like China, we are facing such a huge change in the health care system…

Q: Is there anything else that you’d like to say on this subject that hasn’t been covered yet?

Prof Xue: I think it’s important to say that Australia as a Western and developed country has been leading the development of Chinese medicine in the Western world. Obviously Australia has taken a very comprehensive approach to medicine regulation including herbal medicine, practitioner regulation, education development and community education. Being involved in all this in Australia over the last fifteen years I see Australia is providing a very effective practice of Chinese medicine in the Western world. And it is recognized widely.

Q: We are very lucky in Australia, Chinese medicine is very popular here. In Europe for example very few people know anything about Chinese medicine and finding a Chinese medicine practitioner is very difficult. And in some countries impossible.

Prof Xue: This, I think has a lot to do with a long and close relationship between China and Australia. Chinese medicine arrived here in 1840s and 50s when people came during gold rush, particularly to Melbourne. After 150 years there has been slow but steady development, in the last decade of the last century especially. Now a lot of people come with Chinese medicine knowledge. Including myself, well educated in Chinese medicine, combined with the base already built here in the community. That has certainly contributed to very significant development of Chinese medicine and taking up Chinese medicine as one of the therapeutic options by the community.

We did a study a couple of years ago, which demonstrates that almost 10% of population in Australia use acupuncture at least once a year and 7-8% use herbal medicine plus a number of people use Tai Chi, dietary therapy etc, so if you combine this together, one in four in Australia use Chinese medicine therapies.

Q: Getting back to what you were saying earlier, Chinese medicine has a very different concepts, which are unfamiliar in the West. That’s why it is so often misunderstood. In the past when I told a few of my patients that their kidney system was weak, they were asking for their kidneys to be tested. Now I don’t explain it in those terms. Can you tell us more about the concepts of Chinese medicine, please.

Prof Xue: People are used to the Western medical terminology, because it is now the main health care system. When you introduce a different concept to them, it’s important to explain what those terminologies mean. Or you need to convey the message into something which people do not draw the equasion between what you say and what the Western medical terminology means.

Q: Often it’s just impossible to translate Chinese medical concepts into Western terminology.

Prof Xue: It is a major challenge and it is going to be an ongoing challenge. The point where Chinese medicine can meet and integrate is when you are looking into those conditions where the substantial clinical evidence is available about Chinese medicine therapies. For example acupuncture for pain management. Or acupuncture for hay fever treatment where the recent research demonstrates the benefit of acupuncture.

Then it would be much easier to communicate with the patient. For other conditions I think you need to be able to elaborate a little bit more about the background before you start telling them about the problem they have with their kidneys because the term “kidneys” in Chinese medicine has much broader meaning than in Western medicine.

Q: Professor Xue, thank you very much for your time, I know how busy you were today. Can we call upon your expertise and knowledge in the future for other interviews?

Prof Xue: I’m very happy to do so. Thank you for your time, too.

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