Transcript: Ancient Medicine in Modern Healthcare

By Katherine Shagoury

Katherine Rushlau: Welcome, everyone, to today’s episode of the Integrative Practitioner Podcast. I’m Katherine Rushlau, editor at Integrative Practitioner, the leading online resource for news and industry insights for the integrative healthcare community. We’re pleased to bring you this episode as part of our Integrative Healthcare Symposium preview series, a collection of podcasts where we’ll give you a first look at some of the sessions from this year’s event.

A few quick reminders: The Integrative Healthcare Symposium takes place February 21-23, 2019, at the Hilton Midtown in New York City. Integrative Practitioner members do receive a 25% discount off of a standard conference pass, so make sure to register today.

I’m joined today by Dr. Josh Axe. I think many of us are familiar with his wellness website, draxe.com. Dr. Axe is a doctor of natural medicine, chiropractic physician, and clinical nutritionist with a passion to help people get healthy by empowering them to use nutrition to fuel their health. Dr. Axe, welcome. Thanks so much for being here.

Josh Axe: Hey, thanks for having me.

Katherine Rushlau: So, at the upcoming Integrative Healthcare Symposium, you’re going to be talking about revolutionizing modern health with ancient medicine. What are some of the benefits of applying traditional Chinese medicine and Ayurveda in the healthcare setting?

Josh Axe: I think the big thing is, is they take a more holistic and full-body approach. A lot of our Western medicine, and even Western nutrition today, a lot of people that are naturopaths, nutritionists, and health coaches still see the body sort of functioning separately in terms of the internal systems, whereas Chinese medicine and Ayurveda really looked at the whole person and how organ systems function together. Also, they really looked at a lot more herbs, spices, and how to use food as medicine.

In traditional Chinese medicine, there’s something called the five elements of Chinese medicine, where everybody sort of falls into one of the five categories. It’s kind of like the first Myers-Briggs Personality Test. Within that system, they not only look at your health from a physical standpoint, but they look at your mental health, your spiritual health, and really know that certain people are susceptible to different emotions. So, somebody might, when they come into conflict, deal with that in anger. Someone else might become depressed. Someone else might have a lot of worry or anxiety around that. They know that those emotions actually even cause disease in specific organs.

It’s really a unique and powerful form of medicine. Chinese medicine and Ayurvedic medicine are probably two of the oldest forms of medicine that are still used widely throughout the world today, so I’m really excited to share everything that I know and have been trained on with Ayurveda and TCM, and share: Hey, what does that mean for common conditions today, like Candida, leaky gut syndrome, hormone imbalances, infertility, [and] brain conditions? I think that these forms of medicine, like Chinese medicine or other ancient forms of medicine, just do a really good job because they really take a whole-person approach to health.

Katherine Rushlau: I think, from our audience’s perspective, the consumers are so excited whenever we produce something about TCM or any of these ancient healing methods. On the practitioner side, it’s pretty split. We have some people that are 100 percent for it; they’re excited about it and want to help further integration into modern healthcare. But some are pretty skeptical. What do you have to say to those that might be a little bit skeptical about integrating some of these traditional methods into the modern healthcare system?  

Josh Axe: I think the first thing to remember is it’s essentially a different language and different way of looking at the body. When I first started hearing some of the terms, like yin and yang and qi, I kind of thought, just at first: That sounds a little bit out there. And then I started reading and researching myself and realized, you know what? It’s just a different language, the way they’re explaining things. I’ll tell you: In my perspective, it is far more accurate than any Western medicine blood tests or exams that we follow today, in terms of actually getting people healthy.

Today, a lot of our Western research results or studies, they’re about—we look at about 50 to 100 years back, and that’s what we go off of. Chinese medicine and Ayurvedic medicine, they’re both over 3,000 years old, and they’ve been proven through millions and millions of individual case studies over the years. So, my experience is, if I have a patient come in with any number of conditions—everything from diabetes to high blood pressure, Chinese medicine is more effective, without a doubt, at treating that person and actually getting the body back to normal, than any form of Western medicine.

Western medicine, when you look at the body in isolated pieces, you might be able to change something in the body, but you’re ultimately not getting to the root cause of the disease. I’ll give you an example of this. Hypothyroidism today—when you look at hypothyroidism, what most Western doctors will do in the medical field is they will say, “Okay, well, we’ve got some hormones that are off here: T3, T4, TSH. So, we’re going to give a drug like Synthroid.” Or maybe somebody’s in the more natural realm, and they’ll give a drug like Armour or Nature-Throid. They’ll do one of those medicines, and try and support the thyroid in the that way. But the problem is those are going to have side effects. They, in fact, can leach B vitamins from your body. It’s not a healthy way to do it.

Somebody more natural might say, “Okay, for the thyroid health, we need to give it certain nutrients that might be missing. Maybe it’s iodine. Maybe it’s vitamin B-12. Maybe it’s selenium. And then, hey, let’s change some of the dietary factors, like getting gluten out of the diet, which might be causing inflammation of the gut, which then, in fact, is effecting the thyroid, and it’s actually an autoimmune disease. So, that goes a step further of getting the results we want.

What Chinese medicine and Ayurveda do is they look and they say, “What’s actually going on in the body?” What hypothyroidism is often called in TCM is low qi and low yang. What does that mean, low qi? It means that somebody isn’t getting enough rest, they have high stress levels, their adrenals are being worn out, and that’s really low qi. Low yang is more of the masculine aspect of health. It’s low testosterone. It’s low sort of that masculine energy. So, in Chinese medicine, they’ll give diet recommendations, stress recommendations, and herbal recommendations for taking care of that body.

How do you build qi? You get more sleep. You reduce stress. You unplug more often. That’s a solution there. What do you do for herbs? Well, ashwagandha and bacopa are known as the essential herbs for boosting qi and yang. They’re qi and yang-boosting herbs, which is important for thyroid health. So, they’ll do that, and then they’ll give a diet that’s really great for supporting those organs in the body. Those are typically very nutrient-dense foods that are blue, purple, and black in Chinese medicine.

Anyway, I know these sound like very specific things, and they are, but my experience is that doctors that are stuck in that Western medicine mindset of “just do this,” the problem is they’re not seeing the forest through the trees. They’re not seeing the big picture. That’s what Chinese medicine does. It’s taking a bigger step back, looking at a big-picture perspective of what’s going on in someone’s body, and then treating the body holistically—not just with a supplement or not just with medication, but with diet, supplementation sometimes, but also even emotional health.

Katherine Rushlau: I think that’s really awesome about the people that attend IHS is that most of them are going to be really excited about: How can they start to incorporate TCM and Ayurvedic principles? I’d love to know, from your perspective, how can practitioners begin to apply some of the principles that you’re going to be talking about? And what are some things that they need to keep in mind when they’re doing so?

Josh Axe: One of the things I’m really excited to share at the symposium is I’m going to go through a simple form that people can follow today, in terms of: How do we diagnose people, and then how do we care for people, based on Chinese medicine? One example of this is looking at somebody’s tongue. You can go online and do a Google search after this for TCM or Chinese medicine tongue diagnosis. But I can look at somebody’s tongue and 80 percent of the time for myself, I can know what’s going on there.

People that are advanced practitioners, they can oftentimes feel a pulse and also know even to a higher degree of what’s going on in somebody’s health. But if I have somebody stick out their tongue, or a doctor does that—today, in Western medicine, people just do that to see if, oh, is the back of the throat red or are the tonsils swollen? Well, for about 4,000 to 5,000 years, people in TCM and Ayurveda, those ancient physicians would have patients stick their tongue out, and they would diagnose what was going on based on their tongue. I’ll give you an example.

We know this one. This is an obvious one. If somebody has a white coating on their tongue, we call it Candida. Now, in Chinese medicine, if there’s a white coating on the full tongue, that’s actually called dampness. They believe that the body can be one of several things. Your body can be too hot or too cold internally. It can be too damp or too dry. It can have too much movement, called wind; too little movement, called stagnation. And then it can be yin or yang, or it can have a qi deficiency. Those are the big things in Chinese medicine that a practitioner is going to look at.

By the way, do you ever wonder: Why do we call it a “cold” today? Well, that actually comes from probably Greek, but they got the idea from ancient Chinese medicine. We call it a cold because your body is cold internally. What are all the remedies that people have used? And science proves that they can help you overcome a cold. It’s all warming herbs and spices. Think of cayenne pepper, garlic, ginger, cinnamon. These are very warming herbs and spices to help combat a cold. So, when your body is cold internally, we have to warm it up.

What does Western medicine do today? Let’s give somebody an antibiotic. Well, why is that bad bacteria overgrowing? Well, it’s damp in the body and it’s cold in the body, so we need to dry up the dampness, and we need to warm the body up. That’s ultimately how you beat a cold. So, when you have a cold, again, it’s either warming herbs or it’s bitter herbs, which dry up dampness, like Andrographis, Echinacea, goldenseal. Some of those herbs are very, very bitter. Myrrh is another example. Oregano. Those are all really bitter. So, it’s bitter and warming herbs and spices are what help you beat the common cold.

So, just getting back to  what I was sharing is that [by] a tongue diagnosis, you can tell most of this. If the tip of someone’s tongue is very red, it’s called a heart deficiency. Somebody typically isn’t sleeping well. You’ve got nourish the hearts with beets and green, leafy vegetables and more omega-3s. If somebody has ridges on their tongue, that tends to be more of a liver issue or related to the liver and your pancreas. And when that’s going on, that person typically needs to deal with emotions, like frustration, and get more green foods and warming foods to get their bowels moving more. If somebody only has a coating on the back of their tongue, that’s a sign that the adrenals and kidneys are being worn out, and you need to take some things to increase and strengthen the body’s qi.

I’ll give you one more example of this, and then I’ll stop talking for a minute. When you look at somebody that has Candida today, what a medical practitioner will do is they’ll say, “Okay, that person has a white coating: Candida.” It’s causing acne or skin issues or whatever. It can many issues: weight gain, lethargy. But, when somebody has Candida, most of the time, conventional medicine says, let’s give ’em an antibiotic. Okay, well, it kills that bacteria momentarily, but you didn’t change the internal environment.

A more natural practitioner, health coach, nutritionist, might say, “This person has Candida. Here’s a bunch of oil of oregano, and here’s [caprylic] acid, and get the sugar out of your diet, and do lots of raw. Do sauerkraut.” That’s great. Those are some basically good changes, but it’s not fixing it all the way. In Chinese medicine, they know [that if] you have Candida, that’s dampness. Think about this. If you’ve got a damp basement in Florida—Florida is a very damp environment, right, compared to California. So, people in Florida deal with mold issues in their homes very, very frequently. Not that it doesn’t happen on the West Coast; it does. But in Florida it’s very frequent. Mold likes to grow in a very damp environment, like a damp basement or crawl space. Think about your body the same way. It’s damp internally. What’s going to happen? Mold. Fungus. Yeast.

So, we tend to have yeast overgrowth, or bad bacteria, or fungal overgrowth in our systems, and then we say, “Okay, here’s a few natural antibiotics or conventional antibiotics.” You didn’t change the environment. How do you get rid of dampness? How do you get rid of Candida, which is dampness? You get rid of dampness by drying it up. What foods are drying? Bitter foods. We get almost no bitter foods in our diet today. It’s all sweet and salty. If you get a lot of bitter and warming foods, it’s going to dry up dampness, and Candida goes away very quickly. So, herbs like Pau D’arco, oregano to a degree, and then herbs that help strengthen that system of your body to get rid of dampness, like astragalus was used in Chinese medicine.

But, anyway, all that being said, a lot of people today, they’re not seeing the best results with a lot of common health conditions, from hypothyroidism to Candida to infertility to diabetes, because they don’t really understand how to get to the root cause of what’s causing the symptom in the body.

Katherine Rushlau: So, kind of thinking about bringing these traditional medicines into the modern healthcare system, what are some of the connections between TCM and Ayurveda and current health trends, like the ketogenic diet, CBD, things like that?

Josh Axe: Yeah, sure. So, when you look at Chinese medicine versus Ayurvedic medicine, Chinese medicine tended to sort of put people into five categories. There’s always some overlap there. When I say that, that’s oversimplifying, but they had sort of the five elements of Chinese medicine. Ayurveda sort of boiled things down into three elements, and they’re called the doshas. It’s kapha, pitta and vata. They would look at the body in those terms. The thing that I love about Ayurvedic medicine is “food is medicine” is not a term they would use. It would be “meals are medicine.” Ayurveda does an amazing job, as does Chinese medicine (but Ayurveda at a whole other level), of knowing when you combine certain herbs together, they work synergistically.

I sort of laughed a few years ago. There was a study that came out that said, when you consume curcumin with black pepper, or the compound called piperine, it improves absorption of curcumin. Now, a lot of people are aware if you take tumeric with black pepper, it improves absorption, but medical practitioners came out several years ago, applauding themselves, “We have this breakthrough in science, and we know now that when you consume turmeric, you should take a warming spice,” or this exact thing, piperine, with it. Well, do you know in the recipe for turmeric golden milk, which is about, I don’t know, 3,000 years old, which was created by an Ayurvedic physician, that the recipe for turmeric golden tea or turmeric milk is turmeric plus a warming spice blend called Trikatu, which is black pepper, long pepper and ginger, and then mixing that with healthy fats of ghee or coconut. We know today [that] when you consume herbs and spices with healthy fats, it improves overall absorption.

So, anyway, all that being said, one of the things that I know about Ayurveda to what we’re seeing today is medical research now is even coming out saying: You should take this herb with this herb, or this herb with this herb. When you combine them, it has greater effects on the body. Ayurveda has been preaching that for 3,000+ years, and so has Chinese medicine. And even in our Western formulas today of a lot of supplements, they’re kind of thrown together. Whereas, in Ayurveda, they knew the exact action of every single herb and spice, and that if you combined this one with this one with this one, it’s going to have an even more powerful effect on the body.

In terms of things like CBD or high CBD low THC, whether it’s cannabis or a CBD oil, that’s another thing that was used throughout Chinese medicine. It needs to be used responsibly, though, especially when we’re talking about any form of THC involved. When we’re talking about mostly CBD oil, the great thing about that is we live in an environment today that is so stressful—our stress hormones like cortisol tend to get very high. CBD oil is very good at calming the central nervous system, that fight or flight response, calming that down. It’s great for that.

In terms of the keto diet, the keto diet and fasting (another thing I did want to mention combined with that) was used thousands of years ago. A lot of people are jumping into it today. I think the thing to remember is there’s a right and wrong way to do a keto diet, and that’s one of the things I’ll be sharing. And also, along with the keto diet, not only is there a right way and a wrong way, it tends to be great for a lot of people, but not everybody should do it. And for some people, they should do it for a long time. Most people they should only do it a short period of time.

The keto diet, for a lot of people, is good to do for about 30 to 90 days, and then they do want to actually add some carbs back in. It could be considered like a cleanse or a fast, something that you do for a period of time, but, for most people, not forever. I’ll kind of get into all of that and exactly what a Chinese medicine practitioner or Ayurvedic practitioner would believe about the keto diet. Again, I believe it’s a great diet, a powerful diet, if done the right way for a unique individual. That’s another thing to remember is Chinese medicine and Ayurvedic medicine, they’re all about personalized medicine. There is not one diet for everybody. Some people will thrive on 90% plants in their diet. Some people will thrive with about 30% plants. It is very all over the board. It depends on a lot of things. We’re moving in that [direction] today in Western medicine, looking at personalized medicine. But really, Chinese medicine and Ayurveda, they were the first forms of personalized medicine.

Katherine Rushlau: Awesome. So, kind of switching gears for the last part of the podcast, the Integrative Healthcare Symposium is celebrating its 15^th edition. So, entering this anniversary, I’d love to know from your perspective, Dr. Axe, how has integrative medicine changed over the years, and what has been one of your favorite memories from the past decade and a half or so?

Josh Axe: The thing that I’ve seen change is that I think we are realizing just what I had said, that not one size fits all. Everybody’s a unique individual, and I really think that both starting right now, or the past couple of years, into the future, practitioners are going to move more into that personalized medicine understanding, and I think people are going to start digging more into Chinese medicine and Ayurvedic medicine in what they’re practicing.

One of the things I get excited about, as well as our knowledge about balancing out the body—I’ll give you an example of this. This might surprise you. Fifteen years ago was about the time when I just started doing lectures. I was in school, studying to become a doctor, and was learning all of this. I was lecturing at the time, and I would ask a group of people, “How many of you know what an omega-3 fat is?” I bet of 50 people, 4 raised their hands. Less than 10% of people 15 years ago had ever heard of an omega-3 fat. Today, everybody—I’m talking about 95-plus-percent of people, if you said, “Do you know what an omega-3 is?” They’ll say, “Yes, of course I know what an omega-3 is. Everybody knows.” We know we have to have balanced omega-3s in the body. Do you know what else we need? Balanced amino acids like collagen. We’re going to start seeing that research come out today as well.

I think that we are gaining more and more knowledge. I think the internet has been one of the most powerful reasons why. I think, for years, people relied more on what the medical establishment told us. And now there’s so much information and proof of people having personal success stories and people sharing the truth about natural medicine and about nutrition and about herbals.

Anyway, I get excited mostly because Facebook—I don’t even know if it was around 15 years ago. I can’t remember using it 15 years ago. I think it was just starting, but I never used it. And today, how many people are learning on Facebook and Instagram and Pinterest and YouTube? Anyway, I get excited about the educational piece of more and more people learning all about natural medicine. That’s one of the things I love about IHS is that you guys are really on a mission out there, helping teach the world how to use food as medicine, which is what I love and what I teach.

Again, I’m just really excited to be part of this upcoming symposium and speaking on everything from TCM and Ayurveda, CBD oil, collagen, keto, and everything else. I’m excited to be there.

Katherine Rushlau: Awesome. Well, we’re really looking forward to your session. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Josh Axe: Awesome. Hey, thanks for having me, and I’ll see you soon.

Editor’s note: This is a transcript of the Integrative Practitioner Podcast episode, “Ancient Medicine in Modern Healthcare.” Click here to listen to the full episode. The views and options expressed in these podcasts are those of the speaker(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Integrative Practitioner.