Yours Toothfully by Dr Chan Joon Yee

I was at Toa Payoh Library on a Sunday morning and decided to make use of the couple of hours before my TCM class started to do some studying. At 10am when the library opened, the crowds rushed in. By 11am, all the seats at the study tables were occupied. In spite of being the only uncle at the study tables, I was quick enough to claim a nice seat. All of a sudden, a sense of nostalgia and deja vu gripped me. Vivid memories of student days flooded my mind. All this was too familiar. In spite of being quite out of place, seated amongst all the youngsters, I settled down to the business of studying very quickly.

And I love old libraries like Toa Payoh. It’s big, with a children’s section downstairs and the adult’s section upstairs. The newer libraries like the one at Sengkang and Hougang, are a total waste of time. They are situated inside shopping malls, with the noisy children’s section blending into the adult’s section, the floor area is miserably small and worst of all, there’s an eatery attached, taking up valuable space that could have been used for more shelves and study tables. I’m not sure about the youngsters, but I certainly don’t like this sort of setup.

Toa Payoh is different. They have enough space for a senior citizen’s room and a newspaper room. Though demand is high, a seat at the study tables is definitely not difficult to find if you’re early and quick. Interestingly, the majority of my companions at the study table started their day by reading Chinese books and magazines. One young lady ate her Old Chang Kee snacks under the table. After some leisure reading, they got down to their English textbooks and highlighted lecture notes. No prizes for guessing where these youngsters are from, but if our local kids are going to continue waking up late on Sundays and “studying” in noisy places like Burger King, dressed in their best clothes in order to draw eyeballs from neighbouring tables, I can guess where our next generation of top students are going to come from.

Another insight I gained from this. I’m not going to believe my kid if he tells me he’s going to study with friends at Burger King or that library in the mall. Go to one of the old libraries if you really want to study.

A patient asked me why I’m called “New Age”. Am I trying to say that I’m young? No, it was Ris Low asking, but the term “New Age” is not well understood by the majority in Singapore. Does it represent youth? Modernity? Not quite.

In fact, a lot of New Age concepts are rather ancient from an Asian point of view. It’s only from the Western point of view that religions like Hinduism, Buddhism, philosophies like Cosmology, Gaia Theory, Yin-Yang Theory, Five Element Theory and practices like yoga, meditation, qigong, various forms of traditional healing are all considered “new age”.

Derived from the rebellious hippy mentality of the 1960s, the New Age Movement represents a rejection of traditional or conventional religious dogma as well as rigid social structures and protocols. In recent years, this rejection extends to the fields of conventional medicine and scientific theories. Unlike the hippies, modern New Age Movement “activists” tend to embrace a more moderate, down-to-earth lifestyle.

Wikipedia:
The New Age Movement includes elements of older spiritual and religious traditions ranging from atheism and monotheism through classical pantheism, naturalistic pantheism, and panentheism to polytheism combined with science and Gaia philosophy: particularly archaeoastronomy, astronomy, ecology, environmentalism, the Gaia hypothesis, psychology, and physics. New Age practices and philosophies sometimes draw inspiration from major world religions: Buddhism, Chinese folk religion, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism; with particularly strong influences from East Asian religions, Gnosticism, Neopaganism, New Thought, Spiritualism, Theosophy, Universalism, and Western esotericism.

Calling my clinic “new age” has something to do with my interest (I’m not an extremist) in the New Age Movement, my inclination towards Eastern religions/philosophies, my belief in TCM, qigong and fondness for New Age music which often include sounds from scorching deserts to the freezing Himalayas.

While our youngsters celebrate Halloween like it’s the coolest thing to do, many young Western professionals in the New Age Movement actually find our Taiji symbol to be the coolest thing on earth.

Conjunctivitis is due to fire in the liver. Backache is due to weakness in the kidneys. Yes, we used to laugh at such ideas, dismissing them as ancient myths, but right now, I’m reading 黄帝内经, an ancient Chinese medical text that reminds me of some of the things that mother and grandma used to say. I can’t laugh at these concepts anymore. I need to take an exam that will test me on the highly complex and seemingly absurd associations between “organs” in the body.

But make no mistake about it, my mother will not pass my exam. TCM is a highly complex study of non-anatomic “organs”, meridians, their non-physiologic functions and highly complex, convoluted interactions in the course of diseases and cures. The ancient Chinese texts are all very thick books not to be trifled with. But just as Buddhism has its many levels of worship and practices, (some of which are not really authentic/orthodox but popular amongst the peasantry), TCM concepts and principles are often quoted by hawkers and shoppers in the markets when they recommend miracle cures.

To the credit of these laymen and women, some of their recommendations are good. But without a complete understanding of TCM, many practices and prescriptions handed out in the noisy wet markets are totally baseless and sometimes even harmful.

I’ve had the character 虎 drawn on my cheeks when I had mumps. Kids with illiterate parents had it worse. The face of a tiger was drawn on their swollen cheeks. My mother and their mothers heard from market grapevine that mumps 猪头皮 had a porcine element to it and a tigery element would banish it. Many bitter, obnoxious concorctions obtained from neighbours, elders, village wisemen, wisewomen and other “experts” had caused me to vomit my guts out or break out in raging rashes. I’m not sure if other kids had it worse. My only pleasant experience was with the tuina fellow who greatly relieved the pain from my dislocated elbow.

With so many people in my generation experiencing the same suffering from the malpractice of TCM, it’s not surprising that we once regarded TCM as pure rubbish. Whenever Mom gave me health tips based on her understanding based on what the auntie upstairs (or was it the one downstairs?) told her, I would trash it like spam.

Of course, the real TCM is nothing like what you hear in the markets. Just because the pork seller’s daughter’s pimples were cured with Formula A doesn’t mean that the fishmonger’s son’s pimples will benefit from Formula A. In TCM, different illnesses can have the same manifestations. The qualified practitioner is one who has been trained to recognise the underlying cause and prescribe a suitable treatment. A person not trained in diagnosis has no business prescribing or recommending a cure.

With legislation and regulation, the standard of TCM will certainly rise. The English-educated public is now more and more receptive and there are even foreign doctors in my TCM class. However, just like dentistry, it is important to note that educating practitioners is only half the job done. The consumers must also be educated. Many of today’s medical halls sell and recommend bird’s nest, ginseng and other “tonics” that generate the most income for these businesses.

But the same expensive tonics will not be beneficial for everybody. Not too long ago, I went to a well-known chain of Chinese medical halls and asked for 荆芥. I’m sure they had it in the store, but none of the assistants knew what I was talking about. Pharmacist out for lunch. Everybody else only knows the price of ginseng and bird’s nest. Or how about some 石斛? The herb rumoured to have cured our PM’s lymphoma. Sure, we need a little hype and sensationalism to promote TCM, but the facts need to be sorted out. One should not be branded as a TCM heretic just because he dismisses the tales from the wet market.

From someone who used to mock at TCM practitioners as moronic alchemists trapped in a time warp, I’m now studying to be a TCM practitioner myself. I have no problems adjusting to the totally new mindset to look at illnesses from a TCM point of view. In fact, I’m loving TCM more and more. Yet, I see no conflict in dismissing Mom’s advice and recommendations. Don’t draw another tiger on my face please.