Couture Pauline - Inner beauty: looking, feeling and being your best through traditional Chinese healing

Also by Xiaolan Zhao, CMD

Reflections of the Moon on Water: Healing
Womens Bodies and Minds through
Traditional Chinese Wisdom

P UBLISHED BY R ANDOM H OUSE C ANADA

C OPYRIGHT 2011 X IAOLAN Z HAO

A LL RIGHTS RESERVED UNDER I NTERNATIONAL AND P AN -A MERICAN C OPYRIGHT C ONVENTIONS. N O PART OF THIS BOOK MAY BE REPRODUCED IN ANY FORM OR BY ANY ELECTRONIC OR MECHANICAL MEANS, INCLUDING INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL SYSTEMS, WITHOUT PERMISSION IN WRITING FROM THE PUBLISHER, EXCEPT BY A REVIEWER, WHO MAY QUOTE BRIEF PASSAGES IN A REVIEW. P UBLISHED IN 2011 BY R ANDOM H OUSE C ANADA, A DIVISION OF R ANDOM H OUSE OF C ANADA L IMITED , T ORONTO. D ISTRIBUTED IN C ANADA BY R ANDOM H OUSE OF C ANADA L IMITED.

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R ANDOM H OUSE C ANADA AND COLOPHON ARE REGISTERED TRADEMARKS.

L IBRARY AND A RCHIVES C ANADA C ATALOGUING IN P UBLICATION

Z HAO , X IAOLAN
I NNER BEAUTY: LOOKING, FEELING AND BEING YOUR BEST THROUGH TRADITIONAL C HINESE HEALING / X IAOLAN Z HAO.

eISBN: 978-0-307-35882-0

1. B EAUTY , P ERSONAL. 2. W OMEN H EALTH AND HYGIENE. 3. M EDICINE , C HINESE.
4. A LTERNATIVE M EDICINE. I. T ITLE.

RA778.Z528 2011 646.7042 C2010-904236-0

v3.1

To all my colleagues at Xiaolan Health Centre,
whose care helps our patients glow
with inner health and beauty

C ollaborating with Dr. Xiaolan Zhao and becoming her friend and patient has been a journey of learning and opening horizons, in more ways than one.

It took me twelve years of post-secondary education and experience to become a dermatologist and a scientist. Armed with this background, I am able to help hundreds of people every week: workers with occupational skin diseases, teenagers with severe acne, women concerned with protecting their aging skin, students eager to become the next generation of doctors.

And yet I am also keenly aware of the many things for which Western biomedicine does not yet have satisfactory answers; the limitations of treating patients through the narrow lens of a specific specialty rather than as whole beings; and the difficulty in really knowing what patients are experiencing in the short windows of time I have to spend with them.

My colleague Dr. Xiaolan Zhao is an admirable physician and a gifted healer. As an abdominal surgeon in China and a university researcher in Canada, she shares a connection with me to the body of Western medical knowledge. But she is also a highly qualified practitioner of Traditional Chinese Medicine, about which I knew very little until I met her. She tells the story early in this book of how I became her patient. We have also become friends and co-conspirators, enjoying each others company at work and at play.

Not only has Xiaolan helped me personally, but she has opened my eyes to the depth and breadth of knowledge that TCM has to offer. While my inner scientist continues to want peer-reviewed evidence, my own experience and observation of Xiaolans practice tell me that thousands of years of traditional knowledge have much to offer that is of great value. I have come to believe that it should be a priority of Western medicine to devote some of its resources to better understanding why TCM analysis and solutions often work as well as, or even better than, the remedies we can offer our patients.

Better still, I think that Xiaolans ambition of joining hands, East to West, which she has begun to do in her beautiful new wellness centre in midtown Toronto, holds the key to better outcomes for many patients. We have begun to treat some patients togetherso far, with excellent results. I have come to feel that there is much promise in this collaboration.

For example: during my twelve years of training and education, I can remember only about six hours of nutrition courses. Now that I have spent more time thinking about the various factors that influence wellness and disease, it seems obvious to me that what we put into our bodies and how we live are crucial determinants of health. Until I got to know Xiaolan, it would never have occurred to me that the condition and beauty of the skin could be linked to the quality of a persons breathing, as this book explains in a whole chapter on breathinga subject that we take entirely for granted.

And while no Western dermatology manual tells me to do this, I now tell acne and psoriasis patients to avoid spicy foodsbecause TCM is consistently adamant about this. I have seen Xiaolans remarkable results with patients who suffer from these and other conditions.

TCM views every patient individually; each treatment is designed for the person, not only for the condition, based on thousands of years of empirical knowledge. Western medicine takes a completely different approach, treating conditions rather than individuals, based on rigorous scientific evidence that can be replicated over and over again. Both approaches have their merits but it can be difficult to reconcile them, and many physicians never attempt to do so.

This book contains many stories from Xiaolans life and her patients, as well as the patients we have begun to treat together. It also contains much practical information about skin conditions, Xiaolans treatment approaches and detailed herbal remedies, as well as elements of dialogue between us where we believe there is potential for collaboration between TCM and Western medicine and where we diverge.

This book is intended primarily for an audience of lay people, and it is mostly written in direct language, often using non-medical terms. Despite this, I think that my Western colleagues will find it interesting and revealing. I hope that they, as I have, will welcome this journey of discovery into what Xiaolans world and our patients have to teach us.

Sandy Skotnicki, M.D.

I am delighted to write an introduction to this book.

I met Dr. Xiaolan Zhao in 1990. At that time, she had just started her Traditional Chinese Medicine practice in Canada. She had received her MD degree in China in 1977 and her Doctor of Traditional Chinese Medicine degree in China in 1985.

Dr. Xiaolan Zhao is an expert in (zhng gu). Zhng means adjust; gu means bones. Zhng gu is a 5,000 year-old ancient Chinese treasure. There are very few doctors who excel at zhng gu.

After meeting Dr. Zhao, I introduced one of my friends to her who had a dislocated elbow joint. Dr. Zhao applied her zhng gu techniques, and within seconds, she corrected my friends dislocated elbow. That power has been left in my heart forever.

Dr. Zhao is a very successful expert in Traditional Chinese Medicine. She has used her expertise to treat thousands of difficult cases from all over the world, with remarkable healing results. Many MDs and other medical professionals see her for acupuncture, Chinese herbs, and tui n (Chinese massage).

I have read her excellent first book, Reflections of the Moon on Water, in which Dr. Zhao shares the essence of 5,000 years of Traditional Chinese Medicine, especially the essence of The Yellow Emperors Canon