Activating the Body's Self-Healing Ability to Fight Cancer

Doctor zhou
Whenever I fall ill myself, I am always very reluctant to take medicine. For a cold I use heat therapy, and for a cough I rely on rest. Of course, I rarely fall ill either; although my constitutional foundation is not all that strong, because I have done a fairly good job of preventive medicine—avoiding wind and cold in winter and the intense heat in summer—I have hardly even caught a cold in recent years.
This time, after contracting COVID, the weakness in my constitutional foundation was nevertheless stirred up. Entering the second month, I began to feel fatigued because of cardiac discomfort, and these past few days it has become somewhat noticeable. After taking a few doses of medicine, I grew tired of taking drugs again, so I once more took up the hair dryer—from when I returned home for the New Year until now, I had not used it for more than ten days, because during the holiday I was always traveling back and forth and it was inconvenient.
After using the hair dryer to induce sweating, I felt whole again; the cardiac discomfort vanished and I was no longer fatigued. Of course, if I am exposed to cold or overwork again, these symptoms will reappear. But for the rest of this year I will likely pay close attention to self-care, avoiding cold exposure and excessive exertion, and repeatedly using the hair dryer to promote blood circulation.
After the New Year, when we returned to Beijing, my wife's blood pressure also began to rebound. Some Chinese antihypertensive herbs I had prescribed for her had once brought her blood pressure down from over 160 to between 110 and 120, but during the Spring Festival she refused to take medicine. Back in her hometown for half a month, she ate too much rich meat and fish, and she was also fairly busy at home. When her blood pressure was measured last night, her systolic pressure (the high number) had risen to over 140 and her diastolic pressure (the low number) to over 90—both readings were elevated.
After the measurement, on a sudden whim, I made her my guinea pig: use the hair dryer for a while and then measure the blood pressure again. After blowing heat on her for 15 minutes and remeasuring several times, the systolic pressure was basically between 120 and 130 and the diastolic between 70 and 80. So we decided not to rush into medication for now, but to try this heat therapy for a week and see.
Of course, her renewed rise in blood pressure may also be related to COVID aftereffects. After contracting COVID, many people have reported to me that their blood pressure went up. Some people seem to have recovered but are not quite aware of it themselves, because they never monitor their blood pressure. But several patients I treat, having read my articles, developed the awareness of monitoring their own blood pressure; around a month after infection, they discovered that their pressure had become high.
There are also patients with very high platelets who have developed carotid artery plaques, aortic plaques, or lower-extremity venous thrombosis. Many patients have developed various kinds of pain symptoms they never had before, or wake up after a night's sleep not refreshed but exhausted all over. In addition, I have recently received reports of three patients who suddenly developed cerebral thrombosis one month after contracting the novel coronavirus. The youngest was a 29-year-old woman who had been left with persistent headaches after COVID and recently had a sudden stroke; upon going to the hospital, she was found to have cerebral thrombosis.
In February 2022, research data released by the United States showed that, compared with uninfected people, COVID patients faced about a 63% higher risk within one year of recovery of a series of potentially fatal cardiovascular diseases, such as abnormal heartbeat, inflammation, thrombosis, stroke, heart attack, and heart failure.
Many people who recover from COVID go to the hospital for checkups and find elevated myocardial enzymes, white blood cells, and platelets, as well as abnormal blood pressure and blood glucose. Some people also experience this after vaccination, but relatively speaking the reaction after vaccination is milder. Recently, the family of an elderly physician in his eighties also reported to me that, after receiving the third vaccine dose, this doctor developed thrombosis and edema in the lower limbs, and his lymph nodes also became enlarged.
From my own and my wife's experience with heat therapy, I somewhat suspect that all of these people's problems might be relieved by heat therapy. Because all of their problems point to the same cause—poor blood circulation—and heat therapy is the fastest and most harmless way to dissolve thrombi and promote blood circulation. The human being has self-healing ability; as long as one finds a way to activate that self-healing ability, illness need not necessarily be treated by taking medicine.
Having studied cancer for so many years, I naturally also think about cancer treatment in light of this experience. From the perspective of traditional Chinese medicine, a considerable proportion of malignant masses result from the intermingling of phlegm and stasis; qi stagnation and blood stasis are one of the important disease mechanisms of cancer.
Therefore, TCM treatment of cancer places special emphasis on activating blood and resolving stasis. Commonly used Chinese medicinal herbs with anti-tumor effects—such as Sanleng (Rhizoma Sparganii), Ezhu (Rhizoma Curcumae), Jianghuang (Rhizoma Curcumae Longae), Yujin (Radix Curcumae), Ruxiang (Olibanum), Moyao (Myrrha), Shuizhi (Hirudo), Dilong (Pheretima), Yiyiren (Semen Coicis), Guizhi (Ramulus Cinnamomi), and Rougui (Cortex Cinnamomi)—all have anticoagulant and angiogenesis-inhibiting effects. The famous anti-cancer Chinese patent medicine Xihuang Wan's main action is precisely anticoagulation and inhibition of angiogenesis.
Meanwhile, many Western targeted drugs—such as bevacizumab, nimotuzumab, and gefitinib—also fight cancer by inhibiting tumor angiogenesis so as to delay tumor progression. A large European study involving more than 100,000 people showed that taking aspirin can also prolong the survival of patients with cancers such as colorectal cancer. So in pharmacological terms alone, there is not much difference between Chinese and Western anti-cancer drugs.
In a certain sense, cancer and stroke sequelae have some similarities: anticoagulant drugs can improve the quality of life of both cancer patients and stroke-sequelae patients and prolong their survival. Over the years I have used drugs for treating brain tumors to treat stroke sequelae, with good results. The reason is none other than that the emphasis in both lies in anticoagulation.
Although, because the time has been short, we cannot yet conclude that the novel coronavirus is carcinogenic, judging from the various aftereffects it causes, it is suspect on that score. For a virus to cause cancer in the human body usually takes more than five years; we have not observed the novel coronavirus long enough to determine whether it is carcinogenic.
But if large statistical data in the future show that the novel coronavirus is carcinogenic, I will not be surprised. After all, the Epstein-Barr virus, HIV, HPV, hepatitis B virus, hepatitis C virus, Helicobacter pylori, and aflatoxin can all cause cancer; one more carcinogenic virus would be nothing new.
On the 28th day of the 12th lunar month last year, I met in Wuhan a lymphoma patient I treat and his father. This patient is still in college, and my previous treatment of him had achieved initial results. But because of the epidemic, all of our past diagnosis and treatment had been conducted by remote video. Last year, when I went home for the New Year and passed through Wuhan, I decided to meet in Wuhan several tumor patients I am treating, including him.
I pay special attention to this young lymphoma patient and very much hope to explore a new approach to treating cancer so as to cure him completely. Because he is only a few years older than my son, I always feel more sympathy for such young patients—their lives have only just begun, and the flower of life should not wither prematurely because of a tumor.
His father is a library director, a very learned man. A director of the National Library had introduced his father to come to me to treat this lymphoma patient. The two of them—father and son—and I chatted, and I shared some of my thoughts.
I think that one possible reason why the body's B cells and T cells proliferate excessively and eventually develop into lymphoma is that the body was previously infected by some kind of virus or bacterium from which it could not recover for a long time. It needs immune cells to complete self-repair, so the immune system keeps generating B cells and T cells. Over time, the immune system malfunctions; going beyond the proper measure, it overproduces B cells and T cells, and this finally becomes lymphoma.
My account is not without basis. Current research shows that viruses such as Epstein-Barr virus, HIV, and hepatitis B virus can all cause lymphoma. Because once the human body is infected with the above viruses, "inflammation that never goes away" forms; our immune system, in order to repair cells damaged by the virus, keeps working in excess, and over time proliferative diseases of T cells or B cells appear. Tumors, in essence, are nothing but proliferative diseases caused by abnormal signal transduction.
If we can find a way to help the human body heal itself, reducing the workload on the immune system so that it does not have to work at overload for long periods, then in theory we ought to be able to reduce abnormal cell proliferation and achieve the goal of restraining cancer progression.
The patient's father strongly agreed with my account. As a highly educated person, he is capable of judging whether such logic is reasonable. He supplemented me with some details about his son's childhood, saying that when his child was young, all kinds of eczema-like rashes frequently appeared on his body, which indicates that this patient may indeed have had an unidentified microbial infection in the past. If we can effectively resolve this patient's problem of an overloaded immune system, then it may be possible to set him on the road to self-healing.
Heat therapy gave me the inspiration to set the human body on the road to self-healing. Through so many years of evolution, we humans have fought countless battles against pathogens. The body has formed countless barriers against disease; as long as we use them reasonably, we ought to be able to solve our health problems better.
Of course, activating the body's self-healing path is far simpler than just heat therapy, and restarting the self-healing path in cancer patients is especially difficult. Because three feet of ice is not frozen in a single day, many cancer patients have been ill for a long time. For example, some people develop gastric cancer decades after being infected with Helicobacter pylori; after hepatitis B or C infection, it also takes decades to develop liver cancer. To reverse the condition of such patients is by no means something simple heat therapy can solve.
From the perspective of preventive medicine, beginning at the early stage of infection with natural therapies similar to heat therapy, or adopting the most effective and harmless anti-infective treatment to help the body recover as quickly as possible and avoid long-term overwork of the immune system, can prevent some viruses from inducing human cancer.
Some means that promote the body's self-healing can also effectively delay or even halt the progression of cancer in which a tumor has already formed. For example, for prostate cancer patients, long-term, persistent swimming can effectively slow the progression of their cancer; for patients with excessive sex-hormone (estrogen or androgen) expression, a practice of tranquil mind and few desires is also very helpful to their recovery; for patients of the yang-deficiency type in TCM, moxibustion and heat therapy can also delay the progression of their tumors. Many other patients recover through exercises such as running, qigong, and tai chi.
If we further integrate these ideas into the medication prescriptions of cancer patients, might there also be better therapeutic effects? In theory, there would indeed be. This year I plan to explore this in a subset of cancer patients—especially young ones, because their bodies have not yet aged—and I want to try to rely on their own strength to fight cancer.
This kind of treatment requires a very careful understanding of the patient's signs, growth history, and medical history, and even of the family disease history. After grasping this information, one designs a targeted self-healing plan and observes the efficacy regularly; perhaps this will raise the success rate of fighting cancer.

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