As a doctor graduating from a clinical program, I don’t know much about Chinese medicine, not much. I remember when I was in college, a TCM class was offered. But ah, because it is an examination class, the teacher only simply taught some basic knowledge. The students, too, were just able to cope with the exam. Every Chinese person actually has a little interest in Chinese medicine, after all, is the motherland medicine, plus from literature often see her magic, admirable. So in school, I also learned about acupuncture points, acupuncture and moxibustion, as well as the Four Gentlemen’s Soup and so on. After graduation, there was a great development of traditional medicine in China, and Chinese medicine hospitals or hospitals combining Chinese and Western medicine were opened all over the world. However, the argument that TCM is a pseudo-science has never stopped, and even intensified. As an authentic Western medical doctor, I am only a spectator to this dispute, after all, I have no say in a subject I do not understand. In recent years, as a result of sitting in the sleep specialist clinic, I have come into contact with a variety of patients with insomnia. What struck me most was that many of the insomnia patients were more or less treated with TCM or herbal medicine. Every day, I also had to answer many patients’ nearly repetitive questions. Which is better, Chinese medicine or Western medicine? So I would like to talk about the choice of Chinese and Western medicine treatment from the perspective of treating insomnia. If it is against the theory of Chinese medicine, I would like to ask the experts concerned, to criticize and correct me. I have talked about this in my previous article on science, what is insomnia? What is persistent insomnia? In fact, simply put, insomnia is a condition of dissatisfaction with the quality and quantity of sleep that lasts for a considerable period of time. In the taxonomy of diseases, insomnia belongs to the physiological disorders related to psychological factors. And insomnia as a symptom is commonly found in some other psychiatric or non-psychiatric disorders. And sleep disorders are even more so in many other categories besides insomnia. In order not to cause ambiguity, this article will only discuss the issues related to insomnia. As I said earlier, insomnia is a physical disorder related to psychological factors. Therefore, any method that can eliminate psychological factors can be effective in treating insomnia. As the saying goes, “the heart has to be cured,” as a doctor, is unable to help patients solve some of the conflicts in life, the only way to eliminate psychological factors is the best way to do is psychotherapy. So I often hear patients say something like, “Doctor, as long as I can talk to you, I can sleep at night without taking any medicine.” I think the biggest reason for this is “suggestion”. “Suggestion” is a means of psychology, but in people’s daily lives, play a very powerful role. Some people encounter problems to pray to the gods, face to face to ask the trigrams, often can play a very good effect, which the role of suggestion is not to be underestimated. Many people in China believe in TCM, and once they have insomnia, they will naturally think of physical deficiency and disorder, and the TCM practitioner will look, smell, ask questions, and immediately catch the root cause of the disease, and conclude that the patient has spleen deficiency, lung deficiency or kidney deficiency, or liver fire, stomach fire or lung fire, and give herbal tonics to regulate yin and yang, and make up for the deficiency and dispel fire. I’m afraid it would be disrespectful to Chinese medicine to say that the role of Chinese medicine can only play a suggestive role. However, if the patient is really suffering from insomnia caused by the weakness of the five organs and the imbalance of yin and yang, I am afraid that from the Western medical point of view, the patient is not simply suffering from insomnia, so the cured insomnia is not in the scope of our discussion. Chinese people always hope to “get rid of the root of the disease”, no matter what the disease is, they always hope to get rid of it once and for all and never have it happen again. Insomnia as a disease symptom can appear in many diseases, and insomnia will naturally improve when the primary disease is cured. I think that if the TCM practitioner can clarify the disease the patient is suffering from, find out the root cause of the disease, target the treatment and dialectic therapy, it is not impossible for the patient to have baby-like sleep again. This first has to be based on the correct diagnosis of the Chinese medicine practitioner, I guess not everyone who has studied Chinese medicine can do it. The side effects of western medicine are a scare for every patient, and each western medicine has a long instruction manual, which the patient reads for the purpose of knowing the correct usage, but mainly to see what the side effects of the medicine are. For whatever reason, some manuals even list animal experiments or reactions to large doses, greatly increasing the patient’s psychological burden. The Chinese medicine, since ancient times, is believed to be able to not only cure, but also detoxify, which greatly satisfies the psychology of patients who want to cure but are afraid of side effects. Especially in the treatment of insomnia, the mention of western medicine makes people think of “addiction”, “dependence” and even “death”, which is related to the fear generated by the national restrictions on the use of such drugs. This is related to the fear of the state’s restrictions on the use of such drugs, as well as to some literary works that depict the protagonists committing suicide by taking sleeping pills at every turn. Objectively speaking, the side effects of TCM should not be underestimated, and some are quite serious. Acupuncture hurts the nerves and leads to restricted movement, while herbal medicine is not uncommon in clinics with impaired liver and kidney function. In particular, some Chinese medicines have opposite effects, and if any doctor is not well versed in the art and prescribes the wrong prescription or uses the wrong dosage, the side effects can be significant. The emergence of proprietary Chinese medicine has to a certain extent compensated for the shortcomings of Chinese medicine treatment and reduced human errors. However, the fixed dose and fixed usage seem to be against the theory of dialectical treatment in Chinese medicine. And some proprietary Chinese medicines for insomnia, in addition to having a favorite trade name, are so complex and expensive in their ingredients that one cannot help but wonder if the drugs have any effect. In short, there are many ways to treat insomnia. The choice of Western medical treatment or Chinese medical treatment is one of the means. We don’t need to talk about western medicine and think that the son’s arsenic is the son’s arsenic when it comes to Chinese medicine. For insomnia, now the more respected approach is a combination of measures, including psychotherapy and medication, Chinese medicine and Western medicine, including treatment and conditioning.