When Mr Lim Choon Huat was 10 years old, he dislocated his arm after falling off a see-saw. A man who knew Chinese martial arts put it right back, swiftly and easily.
Now 62, Mr Lim is the chairman of Chien Chi Tow Healthcare, a traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) health-care group.
That boyhood encounter also impressed on him the link between Chinese martial arts and TCM.
Recalling the meeting with the martial arts exponent, he said: "There was immediate relief, the pain just stopped."
Years later, his father, a businessman who ran a Chinese medicine hall, sent Mr Lim and his brothers for martial arts lessons to learn self-defence.
Because of his own experience, he was a keen learner. "Before you know how to fight people, you need to know how to cure people," he said.
He started Chien Chi Tow as a martial arts school in 1969 and it has since established itself as a leading TCM provider in Singapore, offering tui na, or traditional Chinese medical massage, as well as its own medicinal ointment brand.
Mr Lim said TCM identifies four kinds of problems: hard, soft, internal and external.
A tui na specialist himself, he said ailments such as neck stiffness are in the soft category, affecting muscles, ligaments and cartilage.
"We have many young customers seeking treatment for sprains, neckaches and the like," he added.
He felt that computers, TV, bad posture and lack of exercise have led to many of the problems young people face.
Bad habits such as poor typing posture, working long hours in an air-conditioned office and being directly under a fan can cause problems like sprains and back pains.
He said that bones degenerate with age, causing problems with blood circulation, the nervous system and muscles.
Although the bone structure will have lost its stability, there is still some muscle "pull". This is because the muscles inherently support the bone structure but the worn-down bones will cause the muscles to exert more force, leading to muscle fatigue.
All this is made worse by an ageing body's slower recovery rate. Tui na, he said, provides near instant pain relief for such problems.
Mr Lim said TCM's approach to fractures differs from Western medicine's, which normally leaves the fracture to heal by itself after being put into a cast.
TCM practitioners such as himself are more "hands-on" in their treatment procedures. In TCM, a wooden board is used as a splint and herbal cream is applied periodically. The patient is encouraged not to slip into inactivity to avoid stiffness.
Tui na is also employed after the arm has healed and the wooden splint is no longer needed to ensure a full recovery.
As in the Western method, an X-ray is still required to assess the fracture, he said.
Although a customer recently quipped that Mr Lim has an "X-ray hand" for his spot-on diagnosis of fractures, he still encourages customers to go for an X-ray diagnosis.
"Many come back with their X-ray reports to see me because they wish to have their fracture treated with TCM," he explained.
The older generation has always been more accepting of traditional tui na treatment, Mr Lim said, but he noted that Chien Chi Tow is gradually seeing an influx of younger patients.
alvin.liwei@gmail.com
Chien Chi Tow will open its sixth outlet at 01-25 Upper Cross Street on Sunday. Free tui na treatment will be offered from 10am to 5pm on that day.
This article was first published in Mind Your Body, The Straits Times on September 11, 2008.
