Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is a form of alternative treatment derived from Chinese traditional medicine. The bulk of its therapies have been regarded as having no rational mechanism of action, and it has been labeled as “fraught with pseudoscience.” Traditional Chinese medicine included a variety of sometimes contradictory health and therapeutic methods, folk beliefs, literati theory and Confucian philosophy, herbal cures, food, nutrition, and exercise, medical specialities, and schools of thought, among other things. Traditional methods were seen as primitive and unscientific by Chinese cultural and political modernizers in the early twentieth century. Traditional practitioners then combined parts of theory and practice into what they dubbed “Chinese Medicine,” the government supported the merging of Chinese and Western medicine, and Chinese medicine was advertised as affordable and popular. Following the normalization of ties between the United States and China, there was a surge of interest in what is now known as Traditional Chinese Medicine in the West. TCM encompasses herbal treatment, acupuncture, cupping therapy, gua sha, physiotherapy, bonesetter, exercise, and food therapy, and is supposed to be founded on the Compendium of Materia Medica and Huangdi Neijing. In the Sinosphere, TCM is commonly practiced. One of the core ideas is that the body’s life energy flows through meridians, which include branches that link to various internal organs and activities. Vital energy is a pseudoscientific idea. TCM’s body and illness concepts are based on its ancient beginnings and emphasize dynamic processes over material structure, comparable to the humoral theory.

These are medical practices that have been traditionally practiced in China for centuries. The majority of treatments are based on the theory of Chinese Herbology, which branches out to other forms of alternative therapy. Chinese medicine also incorporates acupuncture, massage, and other practices.