Health and Beauty

Chinese medicine breezes in beauty sector

by Amy Nip

Striving for glamorous appearance is a natural urge, and a new way of doing it is Chinese medicine.

People are increasingly consulting practitioners of Chinese medicine for their beauty issues, like skin problem and fat reduction. Beauty centres provide Chinese medical methods of slimming and beauty products stress on herbal ingredients to promote their healthy elements. Chinese medicine has become a new fad in the beauty industry.

Sally Tse Yuen-yee, director of theQuality Chinese Medical Centre in Hong Kong , sees beauty services as part of Chinese medical service. “The principle of beautifying one's look with Chinese medicine has existed for thousands of years,” she said.

The traditional Chinese medical therapeutic practice and techniques being applied on cosmetology usually cover three main aspects: how to improve the skin, body shape and health.

The Chinese medical principle emphasises that health is the most important component. Only when a person has a healthy body will she look pretty. When people are ill, problems will first show on their appearances. If people want to improve their looks, the first step they take will be dealing with their inner problems.

Tse explained the imperfections of the face might be because of problems with internal organs. For example, pimples appear when the blood is too hot. Black circles appear around the eyes when there may be problems in the liver and kidneys. A person's face turns abnormally red when the heart does not function properly, or overly yellow when the liver has problem. When the spleen does not work well, water will accumulate inside the body making a person feel fat. And if certain acupuncture points are blocked, water accumulates there and will form partial fatness.

It is important to sort out the problems with the organs if patients want to get rid of the symptoms shown externally on their bodies, she said.

According to Chinese medical theory, the body will be healthy when the forces of “yin” and “yang” are in balance within the five main organs: heart, liver, spleen, lungs and kidneys.

When the yin and yang forces are not equal, an organ will enter a state of “xu”(deficiency), which will cause problems in the body. These problems may be external or internal, affecting the colour of the skin, body shape and emotions.

Winnie Wong Wai-lin, a mother and a nurse herself, finds Chinese medicine
effective in curing her pimples. “Pimples appeared suddenly two years ago. And I could not get rid of them even after I went to see western medical doctors and took
contraception pills.”

However, after seeing a Chinese medicine practitioner for three months, her pimple problem has been solved. The practitioner told her there was “huo”(fire) in her liver and lungs. “Just one or two pimples occasionally now, no more mass outbreak,” she said.

The techniques of acupuncture – piercing fine needles into specific body areas for therapeutic purposes – can be applied to reduce fat. The principle of acupuncture slimming is to stimulate certain acupoints of the body so that the metabolism can be boosted and more energy is burnt. Partial slimming is possible by inserting needles into the fat area to enhance the blood circulation and expel waste from the body.

Xie Xingsheng, a Chinese medicine practitioner and associate professor of Shenzhen Futin Hospital , said there were a dozen beauty centres in Shenzhen offering acupuncture services to customers. “Using acupuncture to reduce fatness is so effective that people believe in it very much. It has been only three to four years since its debut in Shenzhen. Now there's a chain centre providing this service,” he said.

Every qualified Chinese medicine practitioner can do acupuncture slimming. Xie said: “All they have to do is to attend a short seminar to learn which acupoints to pierce. It's easy.”

Tse's clinic also provides acupuncture slimming service. She uses acupuncture to stimulate certain acupuncture points of the body. That will enhance the circulation of “qi”, a kind of invisible life form circulating in the Meridian system, and improve the ability of certain organs.

People get fat when “qi” does not circulate properly and their hearts are weak, she explained. The content of fat then gets exceedingly high in the blood.

When so much fat is present in the blood, the blood will flow more slowly and allow more fat to accumulate. By acupuncture, she said, it could help strengthen the heart and make fat dissolve more quickly.

However, applying Chinese medicine without knowing the specific needs of one's body may be dangerous. For example, people drink Chinese herbal tea when they have pimples. They consider that pimples appear when their bodies are too “re” (hot). They drink herbal tea and eat turtle-essence pudding, which are “liang” (cool), to help suppress the heat within them.

Yet, there are two kinds of heat, “shi re” (real heat) and “xu re” (hollow heat), Tse explained.

Pimples may appear if people develop either kind of heat, which is a sign that their bodies are not in balance.

If people drink herbal tea, they can only suppress the “real heat” but not the “hollow heat”. “Hollow heat” may appear in people whose body status is “cool”. And if those people drink herbal tea, they will make their body even more imbalanced. The pimples will not disappear as the malfunctioning of organs has not been resolved. Their health may deteriorate because they make their bodies too cold, she said.

The effect of Chinese medical treatments is also depended on a patient's own conditions. Problems can only be solved after continuous consultation and it may be costly.

In Tse's clinic, an acupuncture slimming programme costs about $4,000, including acupuncture treatments and herbal medicine. Tse said it would take about two months to lose 10 pounds. “But some thin girls may only lose a few pounds in two months,” she said. The consultation price is fixed, but the medicine charges will have to depend on the value and prices of the herbs.

Meanwhile, Chinese medicine keeps on evolving. Universal Health Care Limited's registered Chinese medicine practitioner Ho Hin-leung said doctors of Chinese medicine now had to combine the traditional medical techniques with modern knowledge. “There wasn't pollution or cosmetics in the past. Nobody had the problem of pimples,” Ho said. Referring to the long history of Chinese medicine, he said it needed modification to fit into modern society.

Ho does not practise acupuncture because many patients are afraid of needles and worry that they may have scars if there is any maltreatment.

Instead, his clinic provides a treatment which allows a patient to lie on a bed while a technician will use power control to press on specific acupuncture points. “It has the same effect as acupuncture, but it is much faster. So why should we stick to acupuncture if we have better alternatives?” he asked.

Seeing a Chinese medicine practitioner for beauty problems in Hong Kong is still at the beginning stage of development. According to the Consumer Council, it is hard to claim compensation if a patient is not satisfied with the Chinese medical treatment because its effectiveness is hard to judge.

However, if there are negative side effects, it is possible to claim compensation through civil lawsuits. Patients may report to the Chinese Medicine Council of Hong Kong to see if a practitioner has violated any regulations. Patients are advised to see another doctor to determine the degree of side effects.