Chronic sleep disorders and infections quite frequently occur with multiple organ dysfunction. This finding from a study of modern Western medicine is also confirmed by an observational study of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). The TCM study also suggests that sleep disorders can be prevented by antimicrobial therapy combined with TCM measures. Early treatment of spleen-kidney yin weakness could prevent the accumulation of organ dysfunction and thus prevent sleep disorders. Thus, the linking of TCM and modern Western medicine and the combination with microbiology would also bring advances in the treatment of sleep disorders from the perspective of the TCM study.
166 patients with chronic sleep disorders were examined – in parallel to a general medical, laboratory and microbiological diagnostic observation – by TCM diagnostics by sight, anamnesis, pulse and tongue diagnostics. 79 percent of the examined patients showed infections, 92 percent showed digestive disorders.
Chronic sleep disorders are at the end of a physical process. They are the result of a progressive chain reaction. In this process, an infection-related spleen overload can lead to a kidney overload (spleen-kidney yin weakness). Thus, digestive disorders and other organ dysfunctions (liver and heart) are joined in interactions. The function of the TCM study was to investigate the processes and their interactions with regard to the order of their sequences and to observe the connection between chronic sleep disorders and organ dysfunctions from the perspective of traditional Chinese medicine.
As a result of TCM observations, disorders were found in kidneys (in 95 percent of patients), liver (in 58 percent), spleen (in 42 percent), and heart (23 percent). In combination, weaknesses were observed in kidney and liver (27 percent), kidney and spleen (20 percent), kidney and heart (ten percent); kidney, spleen and liver (18 percent), kidney, liver and heart (ten percent) and kidney, spleen and heart (two percent).
The TCM study contributes to a first-time parallel diagnostic observation of patients with sleep disorders and infections by modern Western and Traditional Chinese Medicine. In this context, it also points to the possibilities of combining both approaches in complex clinical pictures – as in this case of sleep disorders. This opens up new possibilities in both diagnostics and therapy for patients with often long histories of suffering.
With regard to sustainable therapies, it is particularly important to consider interactions, functional circuits, chains of causes and varied factors that ultimately lead to chronic sleep disorders. Especially for the connection of infections and organ dysfunctions, which often manifest themselves in digestive disorders and infection-related gastrointestinal diseases, there is neither an overall diagnosis nor any integrative therapies of the overall causes in both medical systems.
The diagnostics of traditional Chinese medicine can complement imaging methods and especially „snapshots“ of the physical condition of patients. Through its pulse and tongue diagnostics, Chinese medicine can often describe interrelationships in the body, interaction of organs in the sense of functional circuits better than the selective, often only quantitative, individual determination of values.
Kidney values can be determined in the laboratory. Kidney damage (such as of the parenchyma) can be observed by sonography and some of the kidney values can be determined. Mycological evaluation of stool and mouth samples detects e.g. a pathogenic yeast infection. However, determination of kidney qi in conjunction with spleen qi or observation of spleen-kidney yin weakness can provide indications of disturbance correlations that cannot be detected by laboratory analysis and observation of images alone.
Can the combination of the studies of modern Western medicine and TCM also work in the treatment of infections and organ dysfunction? This was not the subject of the TCM observational study. But the monitoring of the subsequent treatments suggests this according to a meta-analytical review.
