Unlike Western medicine, Chinese medicine mainly uses herbs (and sometimes minerals or biological substances). While these may not seem so pure or clean, don’t forget that the food we eat and drinks are not absolutely pure and clean too. So it’s actually not that hard to accept.
Another important concept in Chinese medicine is formula. In order to cure a disease, it is often necessary to use multiple herbal medicines at the same time (just like a maintenance worker cannot carry a screwdriver only, he may need to carry an oscilloscope, an electric soldering iron and a multimeter at the same time) . Therefore, in the practice of more than a thousand years, Chinese medicine has developed thousands of formulas, each containing one or two to dozens of different herbs. These herbs then work together to cure a disease.
After we have the concept of the formula, let’s look at several papers, which discuss several diseases of our friends in this group. One paper is even sourced from the best journals in the world. As can be seen from these papers, traditional Chinese medicine is capable of curing diseases even by the strictest scientific and statistical standards. Moreover, the reasons why TCM is useful also have rational molecular biology explanations.
Vertigo:
https://journals.lww.com/…/Linggui_Zhugan_Decoction_for….
Asthma:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-35791-9
Swallow problem:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32791655/
But in practice, genuine TCM doctors will not read the research results of these papers. This is because different people may need different formula for the same disease (e.g. asthma). For example, if a patient feel short of breath and feels cold for a while and then hot for a while, he may need Xiao Chai Hu Tang. If the patient has a whistle-like sound in his throat, he may need Shegan Mahuang Tang. If the patient has not use toilet for many days, Xiao Chengqi Tang may be needed. From this point of view, those studies that look scientific are actually not helpful for TCM doctors.
Therefore, genuine TCM doctors would rather read ancient TCM books, than research papers using RCT. At the same time, the Western medical community is unable to understand these ancient Chinese medicine books, hence unlikely to find the correct prescriptions. They cannot reproduce the efficacy of Chinese medicine, so it is just natural that they will reject this medical model.