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 Traditional Chinese Medicine:

  
I'm a very no-nonsense guy and this system is actually very practical in it's structure and end results! I have simplified (whew!) the whole system for you just below along with This Chart. and also with the most important Three Treasures! Please also see Chinese Tonic Herbal Medicine. Read all of this carefully, it's really pretty easy to understand.

To begin with, there are always opposite matters in our world (and our bodies) such as hot and cold or wet and dry or dark and bright etc. The Chinese call this factor Yin and Yang : Yang is hot and yin is cold, yang is dry and yin is wet, yang is big and yin is small, you get the idea! There are also five different elements, they are water, wood, fire, earth and metal. Each of these basic elements like everything is subject to yin and yang (they can be hot or cold, dry or wet etc.) Each of these five elements represents different organ systems within our bodies. Here's how it brakes down:

Water is the kidneys and reproductive system. Wood is the liver and gallbladder system Fire is the heart and circulatory system. Earth is the digestive or "Stomach-Spleen" system and Metal is the lungs and colon; our breathing system coupled with the ultimate end of our digestive and "life process" system being the colon.

               Please see Five Element Theory Chart For more details

 All herbs have hot or cold and wet or dry (etc.-etc.) energies. A good herbalist can taste these on his tongue or feel a hot or cold energy after eating some of the plant. This is how over five thousand plants were grouped into there categories of yin and yang, and how which organ systems that the plant effected was learned. (Yes, sadly, a few of the early herbalists died from poisoning collecting this data, my hat goes off to them!)

  So then all plants have a cooling, drying, strengthening, weakening, heating, moistening (the list goes on and on) energy and they have a specific organ system they most effect. The same is true of our organs themselves. They should ideally all be in a perfect balance of yin and yang. However things get out of balance all the time! The perfect example of an excess yang disorder would be a hot fever. A deficient  yang disorder would be cold hands and feet from lack of circulation.

So by thourgholy questioning the patient with the chart as a guidline we see how we can find the patients yin or yang disorders and then we apply the plants with the exact opposite energy. For example if a person is always cold, has little sex drive, and wakes up many times in the night needing to urinate (a kidney yang deficient condition) we would give them (as a part of there formula) a Kidney-Yang tonic herb such as Yin Yang Huo ( Epimedium Sagittatum) to counter balance this condition. However this is just one element.........

All the elements (organ systems)  effect each other by generating health and by overcoming it as the diagram  shows. (eg: Earth overcomes Water as Water overcomes Fire but Fire generates Earth as Earth generates Metal est.) After the balance information is gathered from the patient, it is checked and re-checked then applied to the final diagnoses and formula. It works  beautifully!    see Five Element Theory Chart

Well, I know I have over simplified the TCM system a bit but I hope it has given you an insight to this amazingly accurate system. This diagnostic system is over 1,500 years old and still much more preferred in China then the western system. It is taken more seriously by the patient and the Traditional Chinese doctor is usually paid more in China!