The said article uses meta-analysis and bio-medically based studies to explore the effectiveness of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) when treating generalized anxiety disorder (GAD).
The research concludes TCM demonstrates a clear ability to benefit the brain, bodily biochemistry and produces positive outcomes when treating both depression and anxiety. In general the article is favorable to TCM and stays honest to its framework. It even goes so far to describe TCM treatment based on meridian theory, five-element theory and uses TCM pattern language to explain the treatments applied.
However studying TCM scientifically through western practices and using points of reference like glutamic acid circulation, transduction cAMP-CREB-BDN, ect. is incredibly problematic. First, it promotes a sense of western supremacy given that thousands of years of "clinical study" is forced to fit within the framework of biochemistry, rather than the other way around. By setting the study in this manner, TCM will be validated only if the results of the biochemistry follows with positive outcomes. Second, the discussion will limit TCM to biochemistry's inherit limits as well as those of western scientific experiments. Again, we will see TCM acknowledged only for those treatments that biochemistry and western science can provide evidence for through their own frame of reference.
This sort of logic leaves TCM with a medicinal practice limited to the validations of a completely different school of thought while helping to uphold western supremacy.
