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Big Think extends a warm thank you to Cogito and the Center for Talented Youth at Johns Hopkins University for facilitating this interview. Steven Castellano is a senior at High[…]

There is much room for bringing Eastern approaches into Western medicine.

Question: Should Western and Eastern medicine be more integrated?

 

Steven Castellano: Yeah, definitely I mean, there are few differences that I see right now. Eastern medicines is more focus on just regulating the body and keeping you healthy and boosting your immune system sort of thing and western medicine is definitely more like focus 3 months you have like medications, antibiotics therefore targeting specific types of illnesses and helping you recover from them so I mean, that’s the key difference I see at this point in time and I think both of them should be used. I think that natural treatments boost immune systems are definitely good.

Acupressure could be good for more types of chronic pain. It’s been shown to help and as I said, with the tension that was my research so I definitely think they could be integrated and also like the theories behind them people say eastern medicine hasn’t been scientifically investigated. So that’s my goal to kind of scientifically investigate it and see how it is effective and if you look at the theories behind them I said there’s chi going through the body point eastern theory and you’re trying to regulate that but then it’s been shown that the acupressure points are located at points in the body where there is low electrical resistance so it’s conductive areas where you can easily send an electrical signal throughout the body.

So in that sense, there is some electrical energy through out the body. There is an electrical charge differences between blood in the arteries, blood in the veins so. So really chi could just be another form and eastern form for electricity that they had way back before electricity like was formally discovered and I think that there is a definite relationship between the 2 that and they should connect more or so then than they are in present.

I think its hard word to define. It’s generally just like a sense of balance I feel it’s an internal energy source that easterners kind of prefer to, so when they say chi it’s just I guess they mean like energy in the body. It’s a more spiritual term I feel. So I guess that would be my general list definition for it.

 

Recorded on: May 08, 2009

 


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