What to Do When Cancer Patients Ruin Their Liver and Kidneys with Folk Remedies

At the outset of this article, I want to emphasize: cancer patients, do not take folk remedies! Do not take folk remedies! Do not take folk remedies! The important things are said three times. Before using Chinese medicine, be sure to ask a qualified physician to assess your overall condition and use medication cautiously.

During the Spring Festival of 2018, my wife was hospitalized in the hepatobiliary surgery department of Air Force General Hospital in Beijing for gallstones. A woman in the same ward had sought out a folk remedy to treat herself and ruined her liver. First came liver damage, then liver failure. She was transferred from out of town to Beijing for treatment and needed long-term intravenous therapy. Her family had no money; although they needed an implanted infusion port, they refused it. I could not bear to watch and paid three thousand yuan toward her hospitalization. This patient was both pitiable and blameworthy: her own ignorance had harmed her, and she was full of regret while hospitalized at Air Force General Hospital.

This is a lesson written in blood. At the start, the patient trusted neither the hospital nor qualified TCM physicians; she trusted her own judgment and that of fellow patients, found a folk remedy, and used it herself. But she knew nothing about safe medication. She used toxic herbs of unknown toxicity long-term without timely liver and kidney function checks. The result was a ruined liver. Early drug-induced liver injury usually has no symptoms, so most patients ignore it and keep taking the medicine. Finally, mild drug-induced liver injury progressed to severe liver failure, and hospitalization became unavoidable.

I myself am extremely cautious in clinical prescribing. For long-term medication, I always remind patients to have periodic liver and kidney function checks: the first check half a month after starting the medicine, then, if normal, every two to three months. Once liver or kidney function becomes abnormal, immediately stop all Chinese medicine and first use common liver-protective drugs (glutathione tablets, bicyclol, silybin, Hugan tablets, etc.) for one to two weeks. If there is no improvement, hospitalize. Most patients who follow this approach detect liver and kidney damage in time, intercepting it while symptoms are mild, and it does not progress to severe damage.

Nowadays there are many online patient groups, and people who are extremely distrustful of hospitals and qualified doctors tend to gather together. They themselves find folk remedies to give to patients, without assessing the patients' condition beforehand, and liver or kidney damage after use is often severe. Every year dozens of such patients come to me for help, and I turn every one of them away, telling them to go to a hepatobiliary specialist or nephrology department for liver- and kidney-protective treatment.

The liver and kidneys are vital organs. Once damaged, the safest course is to go to the appropriate specialist and seek the help of a specialist physician. This is especially true for those who have long taken folk remedies on their own; lacking professional guidance, their chronic poisoning has usually lasted a long time, and they need hospitalization—which may be quite long.

To date, there is no clear evidence-based medical evidence proving that any TCM therapy can reliably help patients recover from drug-induced liver injury and drug-induced kidney injury, especially diffuse liver injury. The liver is the body's second most important organ; once drug-induced liver injury occurs, without timely, standardized modern medical liver-protective treatment, the injury readily worsens and may even cause death.

At such times, the clinical TCM physician must have a clear head and insist on the principle that life comes first. We must firmly refuse requests from the patient or family to use Chinese medicine to restore liver and kidney function, and send them to specialist care. Most patients recover normal liver and kidney function under the care of hepatobiliary and nephrology specialists. But using Chinese medicine to treat it is a great unknown; it may not only fail to relieve but worsen the condition. Once the patient worsens or dies, the TCM physician faces serious trouble. So whether from the patient's interest or the physician's own interest, do not rashly agree to treat drug-induced liver or kidney injury with Chinese medicine.

From what I have seen over the years, cancer patients are the group that most abuses folk remedies, and also the group that suffers the most severe liver and kidney damage from them. Because cancer treatment is long and difficult, patients and their families, desperate for treatment, turn to folk remedies and are easily misled by exaggerated claims that some remedy can cure cancer. Qualified doctors use extremely cautious language when treating cancer, and this caution leaves patients and families anxious; they then turn to so-called miraculous folk remedies or "divine doctors," which often ends in tragedy.