HKU Bulletin May 2004 (Vol. 5 No. 3)

19 18 PEOPLE A Prescription for Chinese Medicine P rofessor Tong Yao, the new Director of the School of Chinese Medicine, has just moved f rom Shanghai to Hong Kong, encountering not only a new job and city, but a new set of challenges. Whereas traditional Chinese medicine is well-recognized by the Mainland government, in Hong Kong it has only recently started to be appreciated by the authorities. “I didn’t understand clearly what the status of Chinese medicine was before I came here, but I found it compares very differently with western medicine. Chinese medicine practitioners in Hong Kong cannot prescribe drugs while western medical doctors cannot prescribe herbal formulas. This is quite different from the situation on the Mainland,” she said. Nonetheless, she sees great potential for Chinese medicine here. Apart from growing support in official quarters, traditional Chinese medicine has an established presence in the community. And the blending of eastern and western traditions in Hong Kong offers great potential for growth and research. “Many people in Hong Kong believe in Chinese medicine – about 25 per cent of people see Chinese medicine practitioners for health problems – but a Chinese medicine practitioner cannot prescribe drugs, examine, x-ray or test the blood and there is no Chinese medicine hospital in Hong Kong,” Professor Tong said. “It is my dream to develop Chinese medicine here more quickly. I know it wi l l be very difficult, but recently there have been good signs. HKU has a great plan to develop research into Chinese medicinal herbs and the Hong Kong government plans to establ ish special ist Chinese medicine clinics in public hospitals, so I think it is a good beginning.” Professor Tong believes the University has a special advantage in the field because of its well-regarded Faculty of Medicine. She sees opportunities to integrate Chinese and western medicine into the curriculum and research and bridge the divide between the two disciplines. “HKU is a famous uni versi ty, i t is internat ional and modern. Since Chinese medicine is just starting to develop in Hong Kong, I think the University can do much to help i ts development and even help i t to spread abroad,” she said. Professor Tong was Vice-President of the Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine for five years before coming to Hong Kong and she is confident that she can help the School of Chinese Medicine to develop. But she also feels there is much to learn and adapt to. “The University started admitting undergraduate Chinese medicine students two years ago. I shall put much effort into developing a curriculum that will provide quality Chinese medicine training to students,” she said. “The University has established a plan for the development of traditional Chinese medicine. Many Professors in the University are interested in Chinese medicine, so I feel confident about the future development of the School,” Professor Tong added. Physical Activity Increases Life Span W ith an obesity epidemic to tackle you might think that Professor Bruce Abernethy’s conviction that Hong Kong’s sporting elite ‘punches below its weight’ would be a good thing B . ut the new Director of the Institute of Human Performance (IHP) recognizes that he has his work cut out if he is to help Hong Kong shape up and also help realize a better elite performance on the world sport’s stage. He said: “We have an obesity epidemic sweeping the world and physical inactivity is the prime cause of that. In my previous role as Head of the School of Human Movement Studies at the University of Queensland my brief was to help students and the community alike understand the profound health, social and economic benefits of regular physical activity. “This is very much the agenda I want to develop here as well.” With boxes still lining the floor and his office in Sassoon Road largely bare, Abernethy might be new to Hong Kong but he comes armed with an impressive curriculum vitae. Eager to downplay the suggestion that his prime concern is pushing the boundaries of athletic excellence, Abernethy’s academic and sporting life does, nevertheless, show why his native Australia is so successful. Much of his own research work has concentrated on understanding skill learning and expert performance. Some of this research involves working with Australia’s leading cricketers and athletes from different team sports at the Austral ian Institute of Sport in an attempt to unlock some of the secrets of expert performance. Abernethy said: “One of the hallmarks of experts is that they appear to have ‘all the time in the world’ but the question is why? Is this capaci ty innate or acqui red? Is i t possible to design innovat ive ways to practice to accelerate the acquisition of expe “ r T ti h s e e? lay view is that experts in ball sports are born with exceptional vision and have some innate giftedness not present in the general population but the evidence we uncovered runs contrary to that. “To all intents and purposes the basic visual funct ions of exper ts are not noticeably di fferent to the average population so that’s not the cause of this advantage. Specific perceptual skills, like pattern recognition and anticipation, do show a clear, reproducible advantage for experts, and this advantage appears to come about through the expert’s learned use of different cues to those used by lesser skilled performers. “For example, in cricket, by recognizing variations in the way a bowler is holding the ball or delivering it the batsman can reliably predict the trajectory and landing position of the ball well before it is even released by the bowler. This distinctly expert skill can be improved in others through the right type of practice (and lots of it).” To this end Abernethy is very interested in the art and science of teaching people to learn the skills of anticipation and pattern recognition in an implicit or subconscious way. This is important because much of the machinery for human movement is not conscious and so thinking about the mechanics of movement can actually impair learning the skill rather than improve it. He said: “That’s one of the advantages of coming to the IHP because we have people like Richard Masters and Jon Maxwell in the IHP who have interests and strengths in these areas. A ” bernethy also believes that the traditional perception among many Asian cultures that involvement in sports activities can impair your academic studies simply does not hold true. Students, like people of all ages, should seek the many benefits of regular physical exercise, including the facilitatory effects of exercise on cognitive function and general mental well-being. He said: “With nearly all major chronic diseases physical inactivity is a significant risk factor and regular exercise also has a central role to play not only in primary prevention of these diseases but also in their ongoing management. The increasing evidence base is that regular physical activity will add years to your life and life to your years.” Balancing the IHP’s provision of teaching, research and service programmes so as to both increase participation in physical act ivi ty for everyone and promote excellence in performance in movement for the elite few is one of the key challenges to which the new Director says he is particularly looking forward.