The contemporary traditional medicine of Vietnam
Chinese Traditional Medicine - TCM for short - is one of the most famous and revered traditional medicine systems in the world, making increasing inroads into Western medical practise. Some experts say, however, that Vietnamese traditional medicine has become in the last decades a more powerful, more innovative and better-quality alternative to TCM.
Dang Dinh Khanh is a typical resident of Hanoi, combining very modern and very traditional lifestyles together. He works remotely - from home - as a marketing consultant and has a wife and two sons. He lives however, in his extended family, with his parents, in the old-fashioned Vietnamese way, in the Ha Dong district, where many historic crumbling villas sit amongst brand new shopping malls and residential towers. It’s this combination of thousands of years of tradition, alongside new technology and research, which possibly saved Dang Dinh Khanh’s life.
In 2020, when he was still a young man, just 27 years old, Khanh began to feel very sick. He describes how he was exhausted all the time but couldn’t sleep at night and had very dark urine the colour of straw. He went to the University of Hanoi Hospital for tests which showed he had liver disease.
‘I couldn’t sleep, my body ached, my face was white but my eyes were yellow. I had blood fat and liver enzymes 5 - 10 times higher than other people,’ he said.
The university doctor treating Khanh put him on a one-month course of medicine. Unfortunately, this had almost no effect on his liver and his blood fat and enzymes stayed dangerously high. He was given another month of treatment but once again, this had almost no effect on his liver. It was then that a friend of Danh introduced him to the Vietnamese Traditional Medicine practitioner Dr. Quoc Chan. From a family of Vietnamese herbalists that go back three generations, Dr. Chan learnt his trade from his grandfather and had begun treating patients whilst still a child. When Khanh arrived at the doctor’s door, Chan was in his sixties, and had been studying and practising traditional medicine for decades, particularly renowned for treating liver and heart problems. He had at that time recently created an innovative line of teas which made the traditional practise of brewing herbs on the stove for hours and hours more convenient for busy Hanoi citizens like Khanh. It was one of these teas that he gave to his new patient.
‘It was such a relief to meet the doctor. His face, his eyes, they are unusual, kind. He listened to me, he talked to me. I told him my symptoms and he prescribed me a tea to take twice a day for two months. After I had finished the course, I went back to the hospital for tests. My test results, that had been up to 10 times higher than average, were now completely back to normal. I was so happy and relieved,’ said Khanh.
Herbal teas curing liver disease like this may sound improbable to most people, but Professor Ayo Walhberg from Copenhagen university, who spent years studying Vietnamese Traditional Medicine, is less surprised. Whilst he does not believe in miracle cures, he saw for himself the power of herbal medicine in Vietnam and the innovative way practitioners in the country have developed their trade over the last decades, creating modern remedies which can have enormously positive effects on patients. For Walhberg, Vietnamese Traditional Medicine is a powerful alternative to the far more famous Traditional Chinese Medicine. This is partly due to the way in which the revolutionary leader and first president of the democratic state of Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh, supported the practise.
‘I think a very important difference between Vietnamese Traditional Medicine and TCM, for example, is the relationship between traditional and Western medicine in each country. In China the relationship is tense, and the divide between the two systems is clear. Chairman Mao summed up this attitude when he said that there was new medicine - Westen medicine - and old traditional medicine. New medicine was better, he said, but when we don’t have new medicine we use old medicine.
In Vietnam, the two systems of medicine support one another to a far greater extent. Ho Chi Minh had members of his family that practised traditional herbal medicine and there are many stories of rebels fighting in the jungle and not being reliant on Western medicine but herbs and plants. So, if you look at the rhetoric of Ho Chi Minh and people around him, they always emphasised a combination of Western medicine and traditional medicine. This history is important. Vietnamese Traditional Medicine gained political clout and legitimization from its association with Ho Chi Minh and this is very very important in tracing how herbal medicine in Vietnam arrived in the strong place it is today.’
Walhberg believes ongoing political support for herbalists has meant that the Vietnamese population today are far more at ease moving between two different systems of medicine then in many other countries and, perhaps more importantly, has allowed traditional herbal medicine to innovate and develop alongside high-tech pharmaceutical research to create an almost unique medical ecosystem. Walhberg cites particularly the example of Heantos, a renowned UN-backed addiction treatment developed in collaboration between the director of the national institute of chemistry, Tran Van Sung, and herbalist Tran Khuong Dan.
‘That collaboration said a lot about the positive equality between Vietnamese herbal medicine and biomedicine because the two men met as equals, the chemist listening to the herbalist, wanting to know why there was a particular blend of 13 herbs, boiled in the kitchen in a certain order. Then he explained that they would need to make the remedy into a capsule instead of a drink because it would have longer shelflife. When a herbal brew is turned into a capsule I don’t see that as a colonisation of traditional herbal medicine I see that as a collaboration. It was trying to integrate aspects of them both. The herbalist did not feel he was being made to transport his herbal brew into a pill, he wanted to because he wanted to help as many people as possible. The foundations for research into Vietnamese medicine are completely different compared to many other countries and very strong. I definitely think that the equality has meant a much more powerful traditional medicine.’
A further reason that Professor Walhberg cites for the power of traditional medicine in Vietnam, compared to other Asian countries, is the very high quality of the herbs and plants in the country.
‘One of the questions that people sometimes ask about Vietnamese traditional medicine is that isn’t it just Chinese medicine? The adamant answer is no. The herbs and plants that are being sourced locally might be inspired by Chinese medicine but through the years they have been adapted to suit the abundant lush flora of tropical Vietnam where everything grows so well.
A further argument for the difference between Chinese and Vietnamese plants is the quality. In China, traditional medicine is produced on a massive industrial scale and there are scandals, counterfeits and all kinds of stories of bad quality products. The Vietnamese decided quite rightly that they could profit by doing things differently and claim that their plants are better quality and more organically nourished, and when they export it is always bio-ecological quality.’
Dr. Chan’s teas perhaps feel like a strange miracle cure for liver patient Khanh and other devoted patients of the beloved Hanoi herbalist. These teas are however a product and culmination of centuries of herbal knowledge, combined with some of the highest quality plants in the world and a societal willingness to support, innovate and combine Western and traditional medicine.
For centuries, herbal remedies were boiled for many hours on a stove-top. Busy modern Hanoi locals don’t often have the time or space to continue this practise however, which is why Dr. Chan started experimenting with easy-to-make teas. These teas began simply for families and friends. The first was a general supplement to health, almost like a vitamin, but with far more powerful effects.
‘Everyone told me they were feeling much better,’ said Doctor Chan, ‘that their immune system was stronger and they generally felt much healthier. So I created another one, to help with sleep. Again, the people I gave this tea too said it was amazing, the difference it made to their sleep. Over the last five years I have created 12 different teas, for weight loss, for beauty and youth, for blood pressure, for headaches, for bone health and other complaints.’
Doctor Chan now has a steady stream of patients coming to him for his renowned herbal teas. For Vietnamese writer Dang Than, a very old friend of the doctor, there is an second important aspect to Doctor Chan’s teas which have made them so incredibly popular in Hanoi today. They not only cure illness but actually taste very good indeed.
‘Doctor Chan first opened his traditional Vietnamese pharmacy forty years ago and since then has devoted himself to creating innovative new remedies based on traditional remedies. He has an inpatient clinic here and local people come to him first. People from this district sometimes come here daily. Many of my friends come here and keep coming again and again. He creates remedies for ageing and beauty but he also has been known to help cardio and liver patients as well as those with problems in the brain. His teas are exceptional in two aspects, they are not only highly effective but they are very importantly, delicious to drink.’
