Applications of dynamical complexity theory in traditional Chinese medicine

Abstract

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has been gradually accepted by the world. Despite its widespread use in clinical settings, a major challenge in TCM is to study it scientifically. This difficulty arises from the fact that TCM views human body as a complex dynamical system, and focuses on the balance of the human body, both internally and with its external environment. As a result, conventional tools that are based on reductionist approach are not adequate. Methods that can quantify the dynamics of complex integrative systems may bring new insights and utilities about the clinical practice and evaluation of efficacy of TCM. The dynamical complexity theory recently proposed and its computational algorithm, Multiscale Entropy (MSE) analysis, are consistent with TCM concepts. This new system level analysis has been successfully applied to many health and disease related topics in medicine. We believe that there could be many promising applications of this dynamical complexity concept in TCM. In this article, we propose some promising applications and research areas that TCM practitioners and researchers can pursue.

Keywords

traditional Chinese medicine / Multiscale Entropy / dynamical complexity / system level / applications

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Compliance with ethics guidelines

Dr. Yan Ma, Prof. Shuchen Sun, and Prof. Chung-Kang Peng declare that they have no conflict of interest. This manuscript is a review article and does not involve a research protocol requiring approval by the relevant institutional review board or ethics committee.

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

2014 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg