Chinese herbal medicine and acupuncture for the treatment of cardiovascular disease

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is one of the world’s oldest healing systems. TCM includes herbal medicine, acupuncture, moxibustion, massage, food therapy, and physical exercise, such as shadow boxing. In modern China, TCM is a fully institutionalised part of health care and widely used with Western medicine. In 2006, the TCM sector provided care for over 200 million outpatients and some 7 million inpatients, accounting for 10-20% of health care in China. Numerous studies conducted in China and some in other countries have shown that TCM significantly helps patients with coronary heart disease, hyperlipidemia, hypertension, pericarditis, angina pectoris, tachycardia, atherosclerosis, heart failure, and other circulatory conditions. Many doctors trained with Western medicine now recognize that a combination of Western therapy and TCM has shown better results in improving overall health in patients with cardiovascular disease (CVD) than have modern medicine drugs or surgery alone. In this review, we present a brief outline of TCM for the treatment of CVD, focusing on the two most used TCM therapeutic modalities, Chinese herbal medicine (CHM) and acupuncture. There are huge amounts of Chinese publications on the use of CHM and acupuncture for CVD, but only those published in English will be reviewed here.