Cancer as a Deficiency-Consumption Disease

Whether cancer arises from pre-existing deficiency, or whether deficiency develops after cancer sets in, deficiency-consumption (xusun) is, for most cancer patients, an unavoidable clinical manifestation after they develop the disease. This is why TCM cancer treatment must always combine attacking the pathogen with supporting the healthy qi; only in this way can the patient's constitution be gradually restored during treatment, helping the patient gain a longer survival time and a better quality of life.

Yet how to treat the deficiency-consumption caused by cancer is a very difficult problem. Not only is eliminating the pathogen (quxie) no easy task, but even supporting the healthy qi (fuzheng) is exceedingly hard. As the condition changes, cancer patients often develop a series of symptoms such as organ failure, malnutrition, and anemia. If the therapeutic strategy is wrong, even medicines prescribed as tonics can instead make it harder for the patient to eat and cause their strength to decline rapidly; I myself have encountered such situations in clinical practice.