Inner Beauty: Looking, Feeling and Being Your Best Through Traditional Chinese Healing

by Xiaolan Zhao

The charismatic author of Reflections of the Moon on Water brings her years of experience in the healing wisdom of Traditional Chinese Medicine to show how Western women can achieve lifelong health, beauty and wellness.

From the moment we first become self-conscious about our looks, most of us want to appear young and beautiful. For some, the pursuit of beauty extends to lotions, potions and the surgeon's scalpel. But Xiaolan Zhao believes the ultimate source of beauty is health and well-being.

In this wise and important book, Dr. Zhao talks about inner and outer beauty, using personal stories, anecdotes and case studies from her TCM practice. She also covers the fundamentals of beauty, preventing and treating skin damage, caring for sensitive skin, the benefits of acupuncture, helpful non-surgical procedures, and nutrition. With a special emphasis on women's health and beauty issues, the book covers a plethora of relevant topics, such as baby skin problems, acne in adolescence and beyond, rosacea, eczema, allergies and rashes, skin cancer, wrinkles.

Providing a foreword, as well as thoughtful commentary and information on Western medical views, is dermatologist Dr. Sandy Skotnicki. Dr. Skotnicki first met Xiaolan as a patient, and the two doctors discovered they had many common interests and concerns regarding lifelong health and beauty.

What's more, there is an invaluable reference section featuring TCM and traditional treatments for a wide variety of conditions, including recipes for salves and infusions that you can make at home using ingredients purchased at a Chinese apothecary or from a TCM practitioner.

320 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

Dr Xiaolan Zhao was born and raised in Kunming, in Yunnan province, south-west China. Toward the end of the Cultural Revolution, she attended medical school, studying Western medicine. After graduation in 1977, she went to work as an abdominal surgeon at a hospital where the focus was on traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). She was soon exposed to the various forms of TCM, and in particular the use of herbs. It was an eye-opener for her to see that as many as 80 percent of patients were suffering from chronic illnesses, which generally responded more effectively to Chinese herbal remedies than to Western medicine. After a little over a year working, she went back to medical school and completed a degree in TCM. Subsequently, she returned to the hospital where she had started out, combining her training in Western medicine and traditional Chinese medicine. She worked there for eight years before coming to Canada in 1988.

Xiaolan came to Canada initially on a scholarship to do medical research at Queen’s University. After seeing the great interest that was developing in Canada for alternative medical treatments, and in particular Chinese medicine, she decided to go back to practising TCM. She opened her own clinic, which today has thousands of patients. Her patients are as ethnically diverse and demographically varied as the population of Toronto, although the great majority are women.

Reviews

[S · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have read a lot of books on Ayurveda and felt it would be great also to learn TCM's point of view and many aspects of both were quite similar. I usually look for ideas and tips I could implement in my life and in this aspect, I found the book lacking and the title a little misleading.

A list of herbal preparations is given but I guess it is quite tedious for anyone to do these especially if one doesn't know what they are looking for.

The author could have stated - "according to TCM". Instead she talks about how west does this and Chinese do things to take care of their health. The truth is Asian societies have changed so much and many people are no longer following these traditions at all.

[Trudy Bodwell · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wasn't looking for a "beauty" book. I wanted to read a book about Traditional Chinese Medicine. This was very good. I would really like to read her other book on Chinese Medicine.

[Margarita · Rating 4 out of 5]

I devoured this read in a weekend. It is well written with easy to understand terminology. Xiaolan finds the right balance between philosophy and practicality, and like her first book, effectively weaves in real life examples (her own and those of her patients). Her reference guide is useful and thorough. Highly recommended for women interested in learning more about and benefitting from Eastern medecine.