How Does Chinese Medicine View Health?

Chinese medicine does not measure your health by whether your labs are normal. I measure it by your quality of life, your relationships and your experiences. I treat the body as a microcosm of its environment, and I read your symptoms as a pattern, not a code. And when you get better, the goal is that you need me less. Here is what that looks like in practice, and what the research says about each piece of it.

How does Chinese medicine view health?

As something you live, not a number you pass. I measure health by your quality of life, your relationships and your experiences. A normal lab result tells you what was not found. It does not tell you whether you sleep well, digest well, have energy for the people you love, or wake up looking forward to the day. Those are the things I ask about first.

This is not a soft way of looking at health. It is a very practical one. Up to half of people seen in primary care report at least one symptom that tests cannot explain: a review of 32 studies and 70,085 patients across 24 countries put the figure at 40 to 49 percent.^[1] Those people are not imagining things. Their tests simply were not built to see what they feel. I wrote more about that gap in Blood Work Normal but Still Sick?

How you feel is real data

The simplest question in medicine, how would you rate your health, turns out to be one of the most telling. A meta-analysis of 22 cohort studies asked people to rate their own health as excellent, good, fair or poor. Compared with people who said excellent, those who said poor had about twice the risk of dying during follow-up, and the link held even after adjusting for other illnesses, function and depression.^[2] Your own sense of how you are doing carries information that a panel of numbers can miss.

Relationships are part of your health

I include relationships because the body does. Across 148 studies and 308,849 people, those with stronger social relationships had a 50 percent greater likelihood of survival over the follow-up period. The effect was comparable with well-established risk factors for mortality, and it held across age, sex, starting health and cause of death.^[3] That is why the people around you come up in my clinic, and why so much of what I teach happens in community, inside Gut Brain Synchrony.

What does it mean that the body is a microcosm?

It means your body follows the same rules as the world it lives in. Classical Chinese medicine describes the person as a small version of nature: heat and cold, dampness and dryness, seasons that rise and fall. You are not separate from your environment. You are shaped by it every day, by the light, the season, the food, the people and the pace of your life.

Modern research keeps finding the same thing. A study of white blood cells and fat tissue found more than 4,000 protein-coding genes with a seasonal expression pattern, inverted between Europe and Oceania. In European winter the immune system took on a more inflammatory profile, with higher levels of markers such as C-reactive protein.^[4] The body changes with the season. That is what the microcosm idea has always said.

This whole-person view is the starting point of Chinese medicine practice. A review of traditional Chinese nursing describes its two defining features as holism and care based on pattern differentiation, with a focus on mobilizing your own capacity for self-adjustment and recovery.^[5] Instead of a diagnosis code, you get a description of how your whole system is behaving.

What are your symptoms pointing to?

A deeper pattern. When someone tells me they are tired, foggy, anxious, bloated and sleeping badly, I do not see five problems. I see one pattern showing up in five places. Your symptoms are pointing to a deeper pattern of interaction between signaling gases, gene expression, your autonomic nervous system and your microbiota. That is the language of modern physiology for what Chinese medicine has always called the relationship between the organs.

Signaling gases

Your body talks to itself with gases. Nitric oxide and carbon monoxide were the first recognized gaseous transmitters, and hydrogen sulfide was proposed as the third: it relaxes smooth muscle, lowers how excitable nerves are and helps regulate blood pressure.^[6] In the gut, nitric oxide made by the enteric nervous system shapes motility, blood supply, the mucosal barrier, secretions and immunity, and some of it is made by your gut microbes. Hydrogen sulfide and carbon monoxide act on the same targets.^[7]

Gene expression

Your genes are not a fixed script. Which ones are switched on changes with the season, as above, and with how you live. In a pilot study of 30 men with low-risk prostate cancer who made intensive nutrition and lifestyle changes, prostate biopsies three months later showed 48 genes switched up and 453 switched down.^[8]

Your autonomic nervous system and your microbiota

These two are in constant conversation. The microbiota and the brain communicate through the immune system, tryptophan metabolism, the vagus nerve and the enteric nervous system, and stress can disturb this axis at every stage of life.^[9] A 2025 review describes the vagus nerve and the gut microbiota as one two-way network that shapes the stress response, immune function and resilience, with nitric oxide production running through it.^[10] Four systems, one pattern.

Why "it is just anxiety" is not an answer

When the pattern is not recognized, the symptoms often get a single label instead. In a survey of 227 young adults diagnosed with POTS as children, nearly three quarters had a delay in diagnosis and more than half had been told their symptoms were in their head.^[11] In a larger survey of 8,919 people with POTS, about three in four had been misdiagnosed first, and the typical patient saw five doctors before getting an answer.^[12] Anxiety can be part of a pattern. It is rarely the whole of one.

How does Chinese medicine create health?

With botanical medicines, breathing and lifestyle. Those are the three tools I use to create health, and they work on the same four systems your symptoms are pointing to. And I refer to Western providers when appropriate. Good care uses the right tool for the job.

Breathing changes the nervous system

Slow breathing, under ten breaths a minute, is one of the most direct ways into the autonomic nervous system. A systematic review found that it raises heart rate variability, shifts brain activity toward calmer alpha rhythms, and is linked with more comfort, relaxation, vigor and alertness, and with fewer symptoms of anxiety, depression, anger and confusion.^[13]

Calm changes gene expression

Practices that bring on the relaxation response, the opposite of the stress response, change which genes are active within a single session. In one study, both newcomers after eight weeks of training and long-term practitioners showed increased activity in genes tied to energy metabolism, mitochondrial function, insulin secretion and telomere maintenance, and reduced activity in genes linked to inflammation and stress.^[14] Breath, meditation and movement are not extras. They reach all the way down to how your cells run.

Lifestyle is the long game

Food, sleep, light, movement and the rhythm of your day are where the microcosm idea becomes practical. Botanical medicine helps shift a pattern. Lifestyle keeps it shifted.

Is resilience a skill you can build?

Yes. Resilience and health are a skill you can build. A meta-analysis of 11 randomized trials found that resilience training, based on cognitive behavioural therapy, mindfulness or both, had a moderate positive effect on measured resilience.^[15] Like any skill, it grows with practice, with feedback and with people around you doing the same work.

That is also the goal of my care. When you get better, you need me less. Once you are healthy, I teach you how to stay healthy and take care of your family, and you can teach your family what you learned. Traditional Chinese nursing has always worked this way, with health education and family care at its center.^[5]

How to start seeing your health the Chinese medicine way

Questions people ask about the Chinese medicine view of health

What is the goal of traditional Chinese medicine?

To restore health and then teach you to keep it. In my practice the measure of success is that you need me less over time, and that what you learned spreads to your family.

Can Chinese medicine help with anxiety?

In Chinese medicine, anxiety is read as part of a wider pattern that usually includes sleep, digestion and the nervous system, and it is treated through that pattern with botanical medicine, breathing and lifestyle. I go deeper in For People with Anxiety.

Is resilience a trait or a skill?

A skill. Some people start with more of it, but the research on resilience training shows it can be built, and in my experience it grows fastest with daily practice and a community around you.

Your labs are one way of looking at your health. Your life is the other.

— Brehan Crawford, L.Ac.

References

1. Haller H, Cramer H, Lauche R, Dobos G. Somatoform disorders and medically unexplained symptoms in primary care. Dtsch Arztebl Int. 2015;112(16):279-287. doi:10.3238/arztebl.2015.0279
2. DeSalvo KB, Bloser N, Reynolds K, He J, Muntner P. Mortality prediction with a single general self-rated health question: a meta-analysis. J Gen Intern Med. 2006;21(3):267-275. doi:10.1111/j.1525-1497.2005.00291.x
3. Holt-Lunstad J, Smith TB, Layton JB. Social relationships and mortality risk: a meta-analytic review. PLoS Med. 2010;7(7):e1000316. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1000316
4. Dopico XC, Evangelou M, Ferreira RC, et al. Widespread seasonal gene expression reveals annual differences in human immunity and physiology. Nat Commun. 2015;6:7000. doi:10.1038/ncomms8000
5. Hao Y, Liu H, Yue S, Liu X. Introducing traditional Chinese nursing: a review of concepts, theories and practices. Int Nurs Rev. 2011;58(3):319-327. doi:10.1111/j.1466-7657.2011.00918.x
6. Wang R. Two's company, three's a crowd: can H2S be the third endogenous gaseous transmitter? FASEB J. 2002;16(13):1792-1798. doi:10.1096/fj.02-0211hyp
7. Savidge TC. Importance of NO and its related compounds in enteric nervous system regulation of gut homeostasis and disease susceptibility. Curr Opin Pharmacol. 2014;19:54-60. doi:10.1016/j.coph.2014.07.009
8. Ornish D, Magbanua MJ, Weidner G, et al. Changes in prostate gene expression in men undergoing an intensive nutrition and lifestyle intervention. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2008;105(24):8369-8374. doi:10.1073/pnas.0803080105
9. Cryan JF, O'Riordan KJ, Cowan CSM, et al. The microbiota-gut-brain axis. Physiol Rev. 2019;99(4):1877-2013. doi:10.1152/physrev.00018.2018
10. Kurhaluk N, Kolodziejska R, Kaminski P, Tkaczenko H. Integrative neuroimmune role of the parasympathetic nervous system, vagus nerve and gut microbiota in stress modulation: a narrative review. Int J Mol Sci. 2025;26(23):11706. doi:10.3390/ijms262311706
11. Boris JR, Shadiack EC, McCormick EM, et al. Long-term POTS outcomes survey: diagnosis, therapy, and clinical outcomes. J Am Heart Assoc. 2024;13(14):e033485. doi:10.1161/JAHA.123.033485
12. Bourne KM, Hall J, Stiles LE, et al. Symptom presentation and access to medical care in patients with postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome: role of sex. CJC Open. 2021;3(12 Suppl):S44-S52. doi:10.1016/j.cjco.2021.08.014
13. Zaccaro A, Piarulli A, Laurino M, et al. How breath-control can change your life: a systematic review on psycho-physiological correlates of slow breathing. Front Hum Neurosci. 2018;12:353. doi:10.3389/fnhum.2018.00353
14. Bhasin MK, Dusek JA, Chang BH, et al. Relaxation response induces temporal transcriptome changes in energy metabolism, insulin secretion and inflammatory pathways. PLoS One. 2013;8(5):e62817. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0062817
15. Joyce S, Shand F, Tighe J, Laurent SJ, Bryant RA, Harvey SB. Road to resilience: a systematic review and meta-analysis of resilience training programmes and interventions. BMJ Open. 2018;8(6):e017858. doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2017-017858