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Persian Medicine (PM) is an ancient and holistic healthcare approach that has been practiced for thousands of years. While PM is often considered to be a traditional or alternative form of medicine, it has a rich history and a wealth of knowledge that can be of great value in contemporary medical practice. It encompasses a wide range of medical practices, including herbal medicine, dietary therapy, manual intervention, and lifestyle modification. Despite its long history and widespread use, there is a lack of standardized terminology in PM, which can lead to confusion and miscommunication among practitioners and patients. The Persian Medicine standard terminology provides a framework for understanding Persian medical concepts and terminology and can serve as a bridge between traditional and modern medicine. Therefore, to systematize the use of Persian medicine standard terminology, a working group was formed in the Persian Medicine Office of the Iranian Ministry of Health. After gathering opinions from experts in Persian medicine and the English language, a set of commonly used words was identified for the project. The first step of the project includes 100 standardized terms which are presented in this paper.

The term “crisis” in medical context is an important turning point or stage which occurs in some diseases and if not managed correctly, can become life threatening. Despite the use of the term in modern medicine, it was a much wider and sophisticated traditional medical concept. The first usage has been seen in the Greek writings of Hippocrates. In the Islamic Golden Age, this concept entered Persian Medicine by translation of Greek medical treatises. Great Persian Medicine scholars have paid particular attention to the concept and have written exclusive chapters about it. One of such scholars, Hakim Mohammad Azam Khan Chishti (1814-1902), an Indo-Persian physician and medical writer, wrote several comprehensive encyclopedic books - in Persian language - about various aspects of Persian Medicine including crises. In this historical review we discuss his biography and his books, especially his important book Rokn-e-Azam, which is a comprehensive work on the concept of crisis in which he collected and discussed opinions of great medical scholars from ancient times to the 19th century. Despite his fidelity, unfortunately he rarely criticized the previous literature and thus did not add an additional value to the subject else than his comprehensive review. In the recent worldwide accepted roadmap towards Integrative Medicine, studying such inclusive traditional manuscripts may give better insight and understanding of the behavior of acute and chronic diseases and their appearance, exacerbations and remissions.

Crisis is one of the sophisticated yet important and practical concepts of Persian medicine which have been discussed and pointed out throughout traditional medical literature starting from Hippocrates, Galen, Avicenna and others or discussed independently in their related treatises. Being so important, it was used to classify the days of illnesses according to days devoted to it (critical days) or the days forecasting it (warning days) and the days in between. Crisis was known to be an important change in the process of disease which afterwards the destiny of the patient was predicted. It was categorized by its completeness/incompleteness and its good/bad prognosis, timing and direction of the pathogenic substance displacement or excretion. Many factors have been known to affect the onset and type of crisis including type of illness, the temperament of the patient, the season of disease occurrence, and even the effect of heavenly bodies especially the tidal force of the moon and the sun. Therefore many branches of science like chronobiology, physics, nanomechanics, astrophysics and rheology are needed to understand and demystify the narrated information derived from centuries of clinical observation. This understanding may lead to the decoding of unknown causes of exacerbation and remission of chronic diseases like multiple sclerosis and so on. As mentioned in previous articles, we have also designed a set of treatments named SINA therapy to simulate good crisis artificially in order to hasten the coction period and facilitate the curing of the daily increasing material diseases.

One of guilty pathologies in insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is ectopic fat accumulation in organs like pancreas, liver and skeletal muscles due to fatty acid’s bad digestion. This situation corresponds much with a spectrum of illnesses named the Soo ul Qinya & Estesgha in Traditional Persian Medicine (TPM). We renamed and redefined the concept as “The Bad-Anbaasht Syndrome” meaning bad-deposition. One of its basic treatments mentioned is thermal-therapy which interestingly also shown to benefit T2DM in recent studies. We designed a novel protocol named SINA therapy to treat T2DM including sauna’s benefits but reducing its side effects and then performed an animal pilot study. Five Wistar rats made diabetic by high fat diet and low dose streptozotocin, were treated daily by month long SINA 1.2 treatment protocol (1 cc Oxymel gavage and then 30 min thermal therapy in 37 ̊C dry sauna incubator). Weight and blood glucose were measured at beginning and at the end. Although Mean weights increased significantly from 296 to 321 (paired T test, p = 0.022) but surprisingly the mean blood glucose lowered significantly from 200mg/dl to 127mg/dl (p = 0.049). According to results of this pilot study, SINA therapy 1.2 is probable to have benefits in treatment of T2DM, but yet needs further experimental and clinical evidence.

Abnormal Uterine Bleeding (AUB) is the most common reason for women’s medical referral in the reproductive age. In Persian Medicine, one of the major causes of this disorder is known as uterine dystemperament (Su-e Mizaj). AUB is known as “Kesrat-e Tams” in this medical school. We aimed to investigate the frequency of positive symptoms of uterine dystemperament in patients with AUB from the perspective of Persian Medicine. This cross-sectional study was conducted from October 2009 to September 2010 in Tehran, Iran. It comprised 70 patients with abnormal uterine bleeding who were 15-45 years old. Data were collected by a questionnaire prepared based on the textbooks of Persian Medicine. The frequency of each symptom of uterine dystemperament was obtained. Among the four uterine dystemperaments, the “dry” and “warm” uterine types had the highest rankings. In patients with excess uterine hemorrhage, the symptoms of warm uterine is more frequent than cold uterine. Meanwhile, the warm uterine dystemperament interference was also observed in excess uterine hemorrhage.

WHO has declared sudden hearing loss (SHL) as the third cause of disability. The mechanism of SHL remains unknown. Considering numerous complications of related medication, we decided to use non-medical therapeutic modalities derived from Persian Medicine (PM). A middle-aged female patient had a history of multiple attacks of SHL, she disliked to get injection again and preferred a traditional treatment. Therefore, she was advised to take a simple protocol in order to make rheological changes in and evacuation of the probable stagnant phlegmatic matter as it was diagnosed from the given oral history. The hearing loss recovered 60% after the first attempt and up to 100% after the second round and has not yet relapsed in the recent two and a half years of follow up despite its recurrences in the year before the trial. In this patient, by using safe user-friendly methods without any medications, we tried to increase the blood circulation to the affected organ, in order to change the consistency of the stagnated waste material so that it could be disposed from the auditory nerves and also out from the body.

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Persian Medicine (PM) is a holistic school of medicine with a unique philosophy and terminology. “Masam” (pores) is a widely used concept in PM literature, both in physiologic and pathologic conditions, defined as natural openings on the skin surface and also other organs. Penetration of substances topical medications, expulsion of substances including hair, excretion of waste products such as sebum and sweat, and substance transport in various organs, including the placenta, uterus, synovial membrane, stomach, muscle, lung vessels etc. are facilitated through these macroscopic, microscopic and nanoscopic pores. “Masam” are subject to various alterations, including collapse and occlusion, which may lead to bad deposition of material in the body and prevention of the Haar -innate heat- from reaching the organs, leading to dysfunction and dystemperament. Changing rheological characteristics of such material by “Nozj” may help their removal and therefore open “Masam” to yield the return of normal organ temperaments and functions.

Temperament is a key concept in comprehending the fundamentals of traditional medicine, based on which individuals are classified as healthy and ill. This principle plays an important role in determining ways to maintain good health and also in treating diseases. Recently receiving increasing attention in conventional medicine, the trend has progressed towards treating the individual rather than the illness in general. Accordingly, studies have been conducted to investigate the relationship between temperament and proteomes in the human body. This article is an attempt to review the definition and classification of temperament, its modifying factors, and categorization of dystemperaments as discussed in Traditional Persian Medicine references. Clarifying this concept has a vital role in health recognition and maintenance, treatment of diseases as well as in traditional medicine studies.

Apart from being a sign in diagnosis, the pulse is a unique conceptual issue in Traditional Persian Medicine (TPM) that deserves to be discussed in detail. A positional and local motion originating from the source of vital spirit, and consisting of two movements and two rests, the pulse increases the vital spirit and produces the psychic spirit. Analyzing the pulse provides a framework to evaluate conditions of the heart and its vital force, conditions of the matter in the vascular wall and both inside and outside the vascular lumen, and the status of tissue demand for ventilation. There are many factors, both physiologic and pathologic that can bring about specific changes in various parameters of the pulse. Therefore, the comprehensive pulse diagnosis of TPM inquires and is founded on assessing ten features of the pulse, namely parameters of pulse expansion dimensions, pulse strength, pulse speed, pulse frequency, vessel fullness, vessel consistency, overlying skin and tissue quality, pulse uniformity, regularity vs. irregularity of pulse diversity, and pulse weight or music. Overall, the pulse is a demonstration of blood perfusion in tissues, which in turn determines the temperament of organs. This concept has led the authors to the “Doctrine of Priority of Blood Production and Distribution over the Formation of Temperaments and Dystemperaments”. Derived and assessed by the study of pulse in TPM, this doctrine may be used to forecast different temperaments and dystemperaments within an individual by evaluation of the blood and its distributional status via the pulse. This doctrine may solve the paradoxical findings of non-homogenous dystemperaments in single individuals, and reduce misdiagnosis and treatment.

Haar-e Gharizi, or the innate natural hot [substance] is the natural fluidic substance that produces the natural heat, Hararat-e-Garizi. These two concepts are sometimes used interchangeably but the fact is that Haar may be considered as the action potential of the body whilst the heat being one of the byproducts of Haar’s actions. The Haar, is distributed throughout the body by its source, the heart, and ventilated by the heartbeat and breath. Two movements have been described for the Haar: the normal expansion and distribution of Haar to the periphery of the body, and the constriction and condensation of Haar in the core of the body. These currents may both be physiologic or pathologic depending on the duration, strength and extent of each movement. Considering the importance of the balance between these movements, and the dependence of Haar on heat to stay in optimal state, it is proposed that external heat therapy can be used to treat various diseases by strengthening the pump of the Haar (the heart), and opening its pathway (the vessels). Named SINA, this modified sauna therapy is highly individualized, corresponding to the patient’s temperament, and at the same time monitored and managed based on emergence of warning symptoms. Thus, SINA therapy opens a whole new perspective in treatment of a wide range of diseases by means of the body’s own powerful potential, the Haar.