Medicine is never easy. Nothing is really easy. We of course would love to have one single magic pill to treat all kinds of diseases, but you know that’s not true, at least for the time being. Same thing in veterinary medicine. For instance, if you are going to introduce a nutrition plan to a client, the easiest and simplest one wins. It’s just human nature to go for the least troublesome approach whenever possible. However, things are not designed in such a way that we can always have a one-fits-all solution, and this is how human intelligence can play a part.
Before I took the small animal nutrition class, I was a typical, lazy cat mom and just didn’t ever bother to calculate what my cat really needs. I just threw a pile of kibble as deemed appropriate by myself and assumed it would be fine for my cats. They did well and I did not spend a whole lot of time doing all the math, but it does not mean that’s the way to go. Something bad might have been going on invisibly for a fairly long time and might hit my cats and me hard some day. Each species has their specific nutrition need, and so does each individual.
In Eastern medicine, the concept of customization is even more emphasized, as far as I know. We look at the “whole” of the patient, including its body, personality, living environments, climate, diet, etc, because they all contribute to the overall health condition, according to the principles of Eastern medicine. Once we figure out what disease pattern the patient has, we then are able to tailor a diagnostic and treatment plan for them. No two leaves are the same, and this is the beauty of nature. No diet or treatment plans should be exactly the same for our patients, and this is the beauty of doctor intelligence.
