Traditional Chinese medicine: potential approaches from modern dynamical complexity theories

Abstract

Despite the widespread use of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) in clinical settings, proving its effectiveness via scientific trials is still a challenge. TCM views the human body as a complex dynamical system, and focuses on the balance of the human body, both internally and with its external environment. Such fundamental concepts require investigations using system-level quantification approaches, which are beyond conventional reductionism. Only methods that quantify dynamical complexity can bring new insights into the evaluation of TCM. In a previous article, we briefly introduced the potential value of Multiscale Entropy (MSE) analysis in TCM. This article aims to explain the existing challenges in TCM quantification, to introduce the consistency of dynamical complexity theories and TCM theories, and to inspire future system-level research on health and disease.

Keywords

traditional Chinese medicine / quantification / dynamical complexity / system level / balance / modern sciences

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Prof. Chung-Kang Peng from Harvard Medical School, for the mentorship on the concept of integrating dynamical complexity theories into Chinese medicine.

Compliance with ethics guidelines

Yan Ma, Kehua Zhou, Jing Fan, and Shuchen Sun 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

2016 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg