Unlearning Medicine: What Eastern Medicine Taught a Western Mind

By Ashley Edwards (DACM, L.AC, IFMCP)

The Turning Point in Newport Beach

I remember the sterile smell of disinfectant like it was yesterday. It clung to my scrubs, seeped into my skin, and lived in the corridors of my memory. The hallways of the hospital gleamed under fluorescent lights, spotless and cold. Monitors beeped rhythmically like an artificial heartbeat echoing through the sterile silence. There were hurried footsteps, clipped conversations, pagers buzzing like mechanical insects, and the quiet exhaustion permanently etched onto my colleagues’ faces. It was a world that ran on caffeine, efficiency, and the illusion of control.

For fifteen years, I practiced internal medicine in Newport Beach, California—board-certified, well-respected, and, outwardly, successful. My patients were often wealthy professionals, retired executives, and busy parents. They drove Teslas and Range Rovers, sipped green juice, and wore smartwatches that tracked everything but joy. Newport was paradise on the surface—sun-kissed beaches, palm trees standing like sentinels in the ocean breeze, designer yoga studios nestled between boutique cafés.

But behind the polished veneer, something was deeply broken.

Every day, I saw people not truly living, but merely managing—numbing their symptoms with prescriptions and distractions. Patients with IBS, anxiety, chronic fatigue, insomnia, migraines, autoimmune issues—they came in waves. I prescribed medications. Then more medications. Then medications for the side effects of those medications. Our solution was always pharmacological, our dialogue always clinical. “Try this. Let’s adjust the dose. Come back in six weeks.”

At first, I believed in it. All of it. I was proud of my training. Proud of the initials after my name. Proud to wear the white coat and carry the stethoscope like a badge of honor. But over time, the cracks appeared. I began to notice how many of my patients returned again and again, their spirits dimmer each time. The spark was missing—not just in them, but in me. I was not healing people. I was managing them.

The final straw came during a quiet Tuesday morning. A 27-year-old woman sat in my office, wringing her hands, eyes red from crying. She had been misdiagnosed repeatedly—told her pain was “just stress,” her fatigue “just laziness,” her gut issues “probably diet.” For years, no one had listened. Not really. When she told me, “I feel like I’m disappearing,” something inside me broke.

That moment became a mirror. I saw myself—my fatigue, my disillusionment, my own spiritual erosion. I realized I was part of a system that reduced complex human beings to charts, codes, and symptom clusters. A system where listening had become a lost art.

And I had a choice: continue playing god with a prescription pad—or relearn how to truly hear, see, and understand.

The Awakening: Discovering Eastern Medicine

My journey into Eastern medicine didn’t begin with a textbook or a conference. It began in silence.

I took a sabbatical—a temporary leave cloaked as “professional development” but born out of desperation. One evening, following a sleepless night of heart palpitations and anxiety I couldn’t name, I walked into a tiny acupuncture clinic juvemedwellness in Newport Beach.

The room was dimly lit, peaceful, smelling faintly of incense and cedar. The practitioner, a woman with kind eyes and broken English, placed three fingers on my wrist. She closed his eyes. Time stood still. After a moment, She said, “Too much fire. You worry too much. Liver not happy.”

I almost laughed. In med school, we’d mocked that kind of language. “Fire” and “liver qi stagnation” sounded like folklore, not science. But I lay on the table, unsure what to expect, and let the needles in.

That night, I slept better than I had in years. The heaviness in my chest lifted. The static in my mind softened. And the most astonishing part? There were no drugs. No side effects. No jargon. Just needles. Stillness. Presence.

That session was the thread that began to unravel my entire worldview. I needed to know more. What else had I missed?

Over the next three years, I immersed myself in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) in Shanghai, studied acupuncture techniques in Seoul, explored Ayurveda in Kerala, meditated in ashrams, and read ancient texts that saw the body not as a machine, but as a garden to be cultivated.

I learned to pulse-diagnose with fingertips instead of machines. To read the tongue like a map of the internal landscape. To ask questions that weren’t just about pain or bowel movements, but about dreams, fears, and energy. My understanding of health transformed from a checklist of biomarkers to an art of attunement.

I didn’t just detox my body—I detoxed my perspective. The arrogance of modern medicine—the belief that we knew everything because we had data—gave way to humility and reverence.

Why I Left Western Medicine—And Never Looked Back

Let me be clear: Western medicine is brilliant at trauma care. If I’m in a car crash, get me to a hospital. If I need surgery, bless the skill of a surgeon’s hands. But when it comes to chronic illness, prevention, emotional health, and the subtle art of vitality? It fails. Often spectacularly.

The Western model divides. You see one doctor for your gut, another for your skin, a third for your mood. Your body is fragmented into departments. Your story is reduced to a chart.

Eastern medicine taught me to see the body as a symphony. A disturbance in one instrument affects the whole orchestra. Healing isn’t about silencing the noise—it’s about retuning the song.

I’ve watched patients with “untreatable” migraines find relief after dietary shifts and acupuncture. I’ve helped women regulate their cycles, reduce fibroids, and conceive without invasive treatments. I’ve seen anxiety melt through breathwork and herbs that nourish the heart. This isn’t magic. It’s medicine. Just a different kind.

The Science Is Catching Up—But Slowly

To the skeptics, I say: I hear you. I was you. I once demanded double-blind, placebo-controlled studies before I’d believe a practice had merit.

But here’s what I’ve learned: not everything worth knowing can be measured in a lab. The human experience is more than data points.

Still, for those who want the data—it’s there. Acupuncture has over 3,000 years of clinical application, and now, thousands of peer-reviewed studies supporting its efficacy. The NIH recognizes it for pain, google anxiety, fertility, insomnia, and more. Functional MRI scans show that acupuncture stimulates specific brain regions. Harvard, Stanford, and Mayo Clinic now offer integrative care.

Yet most U.S. medical schools still offer less than 20 hours of training in nutrition. Almost none include serious coursework in Traditional Chinese Medicine. Why? Because balance isn’t profitable. There’s no billion-dollar patent for reishi mushrooms or moxibustion. No lobbyists for tai chi or fermented foods.

Needles, Not Narcotics

I’ve had former colleagues reach out quietly, under the radar, asking for help they couldn’t find in the system we trained in.

There was John, a 58-year-old former surgeon with debilitating sciatica, scheduled for spinal surgery. After three months of acupuncture and gentle stretching, he canceled the operation and now golfs pain-free.

Then there was Leah, a 32-year-old teacher labeled with “treatment-resistant depression.” No antidepressant touched her. After six acupuncture sessions and a personalized herbal formula, she began smiling again. She found joy—not as a side effect, but as a result.

These stories are not anomalies. They are possibilities.

What I Tell My Former Patients

If you’ve ever been told “everything looks normal” while you feel anything but—you’re not crazy. You’re not broken. You’re unheard.

If you’ve been handed pill after pill, but your energy, digestion, or sleep hasn’t improved—there is another way.

Eastern medicine is not a silver bullet. It asks something from you. It’s participatory. It’s slow. But it’s also sacred. You will be seen—not just as a set of symptoms, but as a soul in a body longing for harmony.

My clinic in Newport Beach doesn’t look like a hospital. The air smells like sandalwood and moxa, not ammonia and bleach. The soundtrack is birdsong, not machinery. My patients leave not just with fewer symptoms, but with a deeper sense of connection—to their body, their mind, their intuition.

Conclusion: The Revolution Starts Within

Medicine does not have to be a war against the body. Healing does not require suppression. True health is not the absence of disease—it’s the presence of balance, clarity, and joy.

You don’t have to reject Western medicine. You can embrace both. But you do have to choose to be conscious. To question. To advocate for yourself. To explore.

You are not a problem to be solved. You are a living, breathing ecosystem, capable of healing far beyond what you’ve been told.

I’m Dr. Ashley Edwards. I used to believe in the system.

Now, I believe in you.