Dr Isabella Bastien
She has experienced the power of food, and has been an avid learner and a follower of the concept “let the food be your medicine” for over 26 years. She is sharing her knowledge and experience by discussing healthy eating facts and how judicious choice of foods can create perfect weight, relieve and eliminate health problems, and give a helping hand when treating serious illnesses. Diet plays a big part in every treatment in Chinese medicine. Together with air and water there is nothing more fundamental than food; we like it, we need it, we can’t live without it. It has a profound effect on our health both positive and negative. With a little ‘Know-How’ we can make sure that every time we eat that effect is always positive. Isabella is often asked what prompted her to study this medicine, so little known in the West. Here is her answer: At one stage in my life my own health problems lead me from one specialist to another for over ten years. When I thought I had exhausted all possibilities, someone asked me if I had tried Chinese medicine. My reply was, “Chinese what?" At that time I didn’t know Chinese medicine existed. Over those ten years I have learnt not to talk about some of my symptoms, which were somewhat puzzling to the mainstream medicine. At one time it was even suggested that my symptoms might be psychosomatic. “It’s all in your mind”, I was told. Sounds familiar? What a surprise it was when the doctor of Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) during my first consultation was asking me questions about those very symptoms that others found so illusive. During the course of my treatment I became increasingly more interested in this ancient medicine. I wanted to know what TCM practitioners knew that others did not. I wanted to have that knowledge. At the university I found that many others in my faculty had similar experiences. We often joked about it saying, “we liked the product so much that we bought the factory.” Increasing dissatisfaction with the pharmaceutical drugs, which the side effects are often worse than the disease itself, made TCM and other natural therapies become more and more popular. TCM is now the most used natural medicine in the world. I personally like to combine both, Eastern and Western ways and use the strengths of one to compensate for the weaknesses of the other. I hope soon it will be common practice.
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