Reviewer: Tanya Cushman
Hello, everybody.
Thank you very much for inviting me to Bratislava.
You know, it's a funny story.
I was coming backwards and forwards to Vienna
and using the London-Bratislava line,
taking flights almost every other week.
And a very nice woman sat next to me
on what I told her was my very last flight to Bratislava.
And I said it with a little bit of relief
because, you know, flying very frequently gets very tiring.
And anyway, as the flight progressed -
we have two hours from London to Bratislava -
she said, "Well, what do you do?"
And I told her I'd been involved in Chinese medicine for 20 years of my life.
So we talked, and she said to me,
"Well, how would you like to come back to Bratislava
and talk to the TED conference about your experiences?"
So, you know, never say never; here I am again,
and thank you very much
because, actually, you have a very beautiful city here
with a wonderful castle.
So, I'm very pleased to be here. Thank you.
(Applause)
Anyway, I have a rather unconventional career.
I, in the mid 1980s,
decided I rather wanted to change my life and study Chinese medicine,
which not too many people did in London in those days.
I managed to learn Chinese medicine in London,
and I thought, "Wow, what a wonderful system of medicine."
It comes from China;
it's almost 3,000 years old,
and it works on a completely different basis to Western medicine.
But there was a little bit of me that was rather cynical,
and I thought, "Well, how does it work?"
Because what happens here is that we stick needles in people's bodies
in different acupuncture points,
and suddenly they get better.
And there's no scientific explanation
for how this system of medicine actually works.
So I thought, "It's time to go to China."
So in 1991, I went to China, to Nanjing,
and I lived and worked in a busy hospital of traditional medicine.
And this really did change my life,
partly because, you know, there was no private little room;
there was no, you know, cozy, intimate conversation
about what happened when we were five or six years old or such,
and it made us ill, maybe, today.
You know, this was a system
where hundreds and hundreds of people were coming into this busy hospital,
and they were getting better.
What I saw was things very much like shingles,
very painful eruptions on the body,
but surrounded by acupuncture needles went away within two or three days.
Things like facial paralysis, you know,
very physical symptom where one half of the face is frozen,
and people got better.
So I had no doubt in my mind that Chinese medicine had something.
So I came back to the UK;
I went into practice, set up my own clinic with colleagues,
and really, to some extent, it was a big experiment in Britain;
we didn't really know what we could treat.
But people kept coming to us, and people got better.
And then, very hard to believe when I started all of this,
acupuncture education moved into universities,
and to cut a long story short,
I find myself at the University of East London;
I'm the head of Chinese medicine there.
I'm very pleased to tell you,
I have one student from Bratislava who I hope will pass her exams this year.
So she's going to be bringing Chinese medicine back here.
So, here we are, for me 20 years doing this,
yet no scientific explanation for how this medicine could possibly work.
And I want to tell you a short story about a patient
to give you some idea of what's involved with acupuncture.
Let's call her Nadine.
She's 30 years old,
and she and her husband
for two years have been trying to have a baby,
but she can't get pregnant.
She goes for tests to her doctor, and the tests reveal there's no problem:
"You should be able to get pregnant."
So they continue to despair,
and she has two cycles of what's called IVF, assisted conception,
and they don't work.
So as a last resort, she comes to me for acupuncture.
And to be honest, you know, this is quite a big job,
you know, to give this woman a baby, with needles.
(Laughter)
No, no pun here.
So, anyway,
we make a diagnosis; we listen to her pulse;
I do all the things that Chinese doctors do,
and we work together for about five months,
and nothing happens - she doesn't get pregnant.
And I'm beginning to get uncomfortable
because she's paying money for this treatment,
and one day I say to her,
"Look, I'm not so sure that acupuncture's for you."
And she looks at me, and she said,
"You're like my mother:
you think I'm useless; you think I can't do this."
And, you know, she welled up with anger,
and I said, "You mean your mother doesn't think you can get pregnant?"
And she said, "No."
And she said, "I'm so angry."
Now, in Chinese medicine,
the Chinese long recognized
there's a connection between the mind and physical function.
So on this particular occasion, I changed the acupuncture treatment.
And when I put the needles in,
there were little electric shocks that seemed to be different,
and this is bearing in mind we've been working together five months.
And guess what? She got pregnant.
You know, and there are many stories like this.
This is why, you know, the Chinese have kept Chinese medicine going.
And just, because I don't know how many people here
know what really traditional Chinese medicine is,
but acupuncture is one treatment;
herbal medicine and massage and also movement.
For example, in China, I visited a cancer hospital,
and they don't lay their people down when they have cancer;
they keep them moving with things like qigong and taiji -
it's a different philosophy, different way of thinking.
And, you know, in China this medicine has been running for 3,000 years.
And the idea is that the body is a network of meridians, or channels,
and these channels carry something apparently called "ch'i."
Now, there's no definition for ch'i.
There's no explanation; you can't measure it.
There's no science that explains what ch'i is.
And, of course, this makes people in the scientific establishment
very, very skeptical about what we do.
In China, ch'i isn't energy; it isn't some primordial life force.
It actually gives meaning to things.
This conference today has good ch'i.
You know, it has huge energy behind it.
It really gives purpose and meaning;
it creates life - that's the idea of ch'i.
And Chinese medicine is really a system of clinical evidence
based on a very different way of thinking about the body.
So that, for example,
emotions, in Chinese medicine, can cause illness.
So that, as with the patient I told you about,
the idea that all this suppressed anger,
actually, in Chinese medicine would have some relevance.
So Chinese medicine is a huge success story.
And I visited Cuba in my work
because I heard that in Cuba
Chinese medicine was a part of their integrated healthcare system.
And, you know, when Cuba was isolated from the rest of the world
and they had no essential medicines,
they had to try acupuncture.
And they found it successful for things like strokes and heart attacks,
and so now in Cuba today, you'll find two systems of medicine:
you'll find traditional medicine as well as Western contemporary medicine.
And I said, in Cuba, to the head of the Cuban Acupuncture Society,
"Why? Why acupuncture here?"
And he said, "Because Chinese medicine is one of the best systems in the world,
one of the best medical systems,
and we want one of the best medical systems for Cuban people."
So, back in Britain, you know, acupuncture's very popular;
Chinese medicine is a huge success story.
But we, in the last couple of years,
have faced huge hostility from the scientific establishment.
"Where's your evidence?" they say.
"It must just be placebo," you know, the idea of suggestion.
Well, maybe, because placebo runs in many medical systems,
but I think it's more than that.
I'm quite convinced that when those needles go in,
something happens.
And we do know certain things now.
We do know that acupuncture affects the limbic part of the brain.
We also know in the treatment of infertility
that in the middle of the month if you do acupuncture,
it increases the blood flow to the uterus.
So we're beginning to understand.
But in the meantime, with all the hostility -
and it's quite serious in Britain.
I mean, for example, there are people within the scientific establishment
who would like to close down university courses like mine.
There have been many books published saying, "What's happening in Britain?
People are suddenly beginning to believe in things that are irrational."
So, you know, these people ask good questions,
because I particularly, as an educator, have to ask myself, you know:
well, is something happening here?
Or is this system of medicine, which is 3,000 years old,
is it just a good idea
or something that's based on, you know, on magic almost?
But I think Chinese medicine has two things
that Western medicine doesn't have.
The first is that Chinese medicine is a real art.
Any practitioner needs to listen and look.
They listen to the pulse; they listen to the patient's life -
that illness isn't just a collection of isolated symptoms;
it's the way our lives and our histories and what we want to do
impact and can actually cause ill health.
It's a really, really creative process, almost an art form.
And we know from art, just with the music we heard before,
how this can actually create change - it makes us think differently.
The second thing for me about Chinese medicine,
something that really came across in China -
and you know what we've done in the West
is we've made it very hierarchical, all-important system of medicine
with a language patients often don't understand.
It's often frightening for patients; it's often invasive.
But, you know, in China, one doctor said to me,
"You know, Charmian,
here it's actually the patient that's the god, not the doctor."
And I found this over and over,
that Chinese medicine tends to empower people;
it enables them to take much more responsibility for their health,
and I think this is what it has to offer.
So I'd like, just to finish, I'd like to show you a clip.
I revisited China just before Christmas this year,
and I was taken to a hospital in Shenyang, which is in north of China,
and there's a doctor there
who has developed a technique for treating low back pain,
and I'd like to leave you with a quick clip.
It looks very dramatic;
it's a very traditional treatment.
It's for low back pain and sciatica.
Have a look,
and if you're in trouble,
I hope in Bratislava you'll have a choice of having acupuncture.
Thank you.
(Applause)
(Video) Female voice: [This medicine] originated from northeast part of China.
Charmian: So what kind of conditions? Just pain? Generally back pain?
Female: Yeah Yeah Yeah.
Male: Wrinkled and traumatized.
Male: You can see the fire along the channel.
Charmian: Yeah, I can see it. It's fantastic.
Male: It's hot. Just feel it.
You can repeat the fire.
Female: And the medicine can be also very good.