Vietnam seems to have one additional medical framework: Southern Medicine. Our Vietnamese friend Van explains, “while Western Medicine comes mostly in white tablets, Chinese Medicine consists mostly roots and animal parts, Southern Medicine, unique to Vietnam, is herbal leaves.”

It's fascinating to me, how Vietnam's three medical mindsets reflect the geopolitical forces the country has been exposed to throughout history: 1000 years under Chinese rule, French colonial rule and of course US military activity during the American War as the Vietnamese refer to the Vietnam war.  

A people that has been pushed and pulled in so many directions throughout history makes me wonder whether there is such a thing as a 'medicinal identity'. When is it of importance to have a set of remedies that is a true product of one's own culture and people, and not imported or introduced by outside rulers? Are there any studies that have shown a treatment to be more effective when cultural pride is involved, such as developed by culture X for culture X? I China, I've seen this design aspect being played out in consumer electronics and the claim that Chinese understand much better what Chinese need. How about in the health space?

In Sapa and Hanoi, we come across many shops selling Southern Medicine. It seems like they come in clusters occupying entire streets or certain areas of town. Van tells us that each herbal store in Hanoi is owned by a family and that the knowledge is passed down from father to son for multiple generations. We browse through them and they are a mixture of Chinese and Southern Medicine: dried roots, alcohol tinctures, various animal parts and dried leaves. We walk into a couple of them to try and find someone to talk with, but as it turns out the herbalists are busy during Tet (Vietnamese New Year), and the women and teenagers tending to the stores weren't able to answer any of my questions. They only pointed us to the self-explanatory drugs and supplements, such as weight-loss enhancers which are mostly imports from China. It seems that the younger generation isn't that interested in learning the family knowledge. But since the entire country isn't in its representative state, I don't want to draw any conclusions.

Have you had any experiences with Southern Medicine and would like to share your story? I would love to talk with you, please get in touch.

(download)

Click here to download:

southern-medicine-vietnam-s-medical-identity-JkwslbBEmIHEIywvhIGD.zip (15.23 MB)

We spent a couple of days in a remote village, climbing a close-by mountain. Eating with the entire family, we also meet the 78 year old grandmother. While she sleeps in her own house, she comes over to her third son and his wife for the meals and is particularly interested in meeting us foreigners. Later we learn, that we've been the first foreigners ever to visit their village. Everyone has seen foreigners on TV and was kind of joking whether we had just walked out of one of their TV sets right into a living room. So many conversations we had focused on how we got to their village from San Francisco.

The grandmother was quite a character. With 78, she was very hunched over but moving around nimbly as a cat. Later we learned that currently she was part of the road construction team, collecting large rocks and filling up the other people's baskets who'd then use the rocks to pave the road. Who would have thought! Asking her about her general wellbeing and health, I learn that she is particularly proud of her teeth. She's still got all of them and this is how she does it: every evening she brews a strong green tea and lets it cool off over night. In the morning she brushes her teeth with this dark liquid. Grandmother's only complaint is her lower back. Not surprising to us, as everyone is bent over the entire day: working on the field, keeping the fire going, doing the laundry squatting down and cooking over the fire.

For her lower back, the village medicine man has told her to brew a tea out of some plants and roots that she collects herself in the woods. Imagine a 78 year old in the US being told by their doctor to go into the nearby national park and collect medicinal plants instead of filling a prescription at CVS.

I feel very fortunate to have met Grandmother and to get her permission to share her story and pictures with you.

(download)

Click here to download:

The_Forest_Pharmacy.zip (7.33 MB)

While in Traditional Chinese Medicine there are five elements, everyone I know and have shared health experiences with here in China just refers to two different states: hot (“shang huo”) and cold (“zhao han” or “han liang”). Xiao Zhang*, a college graduate in Kunming, tells me “whenever I get a cold, I first feel for the symptoms to determine whether it's a cold cold or a hot cold. Actually, I always listens to my body to feel what's missing, to stay balanced. If I feel “shang huo”, I eat “cooling” foods to regain my balance.”

Eating in China is all about maintaining balance. For example, fatty foods and most meats lead to an “overheating” of the body with symptoms such as zits and cold sores. Eating bitter tasting greens and roots can have a “cooling” effect and bring your body back into its balance.

This mindset stretches way beyond the freshly prepared foods, into the heart of the supermarket snacking aisle. Lay's has cleverly identified this underlying mental model for their sales of chips. Chips being greasy automatically classify as hot foods, leading many people to hesitate before purchasing this snack. Who wants to break out in zits or even get a cold? Lay's came up with rather unconventional flavors that claim to counteract the heating effect of chips: cherry tomatoes and green cucumber flavors to be cool and refreshing. I wonder what the impact has been on their sales numbers.
The Chinese supermarket snacking aisle also has numerous other cures for overheated bodies, for examples Gui Ling Gao herbal jello and Wang Lao Ji herbal tea. For the first time, I came across apple vinegar drinks. Before I'd only heard about them in the US (thanks to Helena and Rebecca) and now they have them in China, too. Unfortunately nobody could tell me whether this would help with excessive heat or cold.
Curious about other conditions, I ask Xiao Zhang whether the flue is hot or cold. “The flue is a very complex condition. One has to be very careful,” she concludes.

*Name has been changed to protect anonymity of the patient.

(download)

Click here to download:

Binary_Health.zip (5.59 MB)