Studies on the Psychosomatic Functioning of Ill-Health According to Eastern and Western Medicine 3.

Abstract

In this study. we examine the modality of improvement in psychosomatic function to verify the suitability of two treatment methods previously described. The subjects were nine medical students with no history of blood stasis-related illness (average age. 24.8; SD, 1.4 years) and 21 patients of our outpatient clinic (average age. 54.3; SD, 10.4 years). For purposes of our research. Kampo medication was selected based on the diagnosis and treatment of unbalanced qi, blood, and body fluid developed by the authors in their previous report. As a result, the therapeutic features of the preventive treatment group of nine medical students and the final treatment group of 21 patients of the outpatient clinic were essentially identical. There were two such features: 1. At the psychological level, this consisted of an improvement in stress-related emotional reaction, centered on anxiety and depression, and at the physiological level. this consisted of an improvement in peripheral blood circulation (an increase of the fractal dimension of the plethysmogram, p = 0.0357).2. The improvement of the foregoing psychosomatic function is related to the improvement of blood stasis (strictly speaking, vital energy stagnation and blood stasis) in Oriental medicine, and the improvement of blood rheological abnormalities in Western medicine. Therefore, this research confirmed the significance of two treatment methods proposed by the authors for stress-related illness and lifestyle disease in individuals with an anxiety-affinitive constitution.