Do Not Give Up Lightly; the Road Ahead Is Still Long

As a child, I never imagined that most of my life would be spent in a study. Now I always feel time is too short, with many problems still needing solutions; aside from reading, thinking, and practicing, there is no better way.

Cancer is a worldwide medical puzzle, and for now no one dares claim to have conquered it (fraudsters excepted). Many people explore ways to conquer it for all sorts of reasons, but the great majority, after a lifetime of effort, end up with nothing to show for it. Humanity will not stop exploring cancer because of this; as the most intelligent creature on Earth, driven by the biological instinct to seek benefit and avoid harm, we will not easily let go of the disease that kills us.

None of the current cancer treatments solves the problem fundamentally, because cancer is a fate multicellular organisms cannot escape. We multicellular beings are not precision instruments without flaw; the tens of trillions of cells in our bodies, as they proliferate, differentiate, and grow, cannot possibly make no mistakes. Under various internal and external factors, some erroneous cells evolve into cancer cells. Moreover, the causes and processes of carcinogenesis differ among multicellular organisms, so perhaps until the human species goes extinct we will still have no ultimate solution for cancer. Because the so-called ultimate solution for cancer contradicts the basic laws of biological evolution.

But adopting comprehensive treatment to prolong cancer patients' lives, even letting them live like normal people until natural death, is an achievable goal.

No single treatment can reach this goal. Surgery can only remove the tumor; it cannot clear cancer cells that have not yet formed a tumor but have already spread throughout the body. Radiotherapy and chemotherapy kill only some cancer cells while also killing many normal cells; as the killed cancer and normal cells struggle in their death throes, they keep generating new mutations to counter our blows, mutations that make their descendants hardier, so some patients progress at an unprecedented rate while on chemo and radiation. Targeted drugs act on only one or two mutated genes (targets), but carcinogenesis is usually not a single-gene event; it results from multiple mutations together, so targeted drugs cannot escape resistance.

Prolonging cancer patients' lives requires two strategies.

The first is to draw on the patient's own self-healing power. Change the patient holistically on the physical, mental, and spiritual levels, so that the patient's own strength does the main work.

Cancer is a disease closely tied to lifestyle, and the patient bears primary responsibility for its onset. It is precisely because the patient chose a series of wrong lifestyles, exposing himself to various carcinogenic risks (smoking, drinking, eating pickled foods, favoring scalding-hot food, bingeing or picky eating that leaves the body's elements imbalanced, staying up late, sitting for long periods, chronic emotionality, and so on), that his cells, under internal and external factors, eventually developed a series of irreversible mutations and formed a tumor. So if the patient himself does not strive to change, no matter how advanced the medical tools, they are useless.

I often meet ignorant cancer patients who, after diagnosis, still binge, smoke, and stay up late, lacking any reflection and unable to change their habits. They cannot improve their psychological balance, constantly clashing with the outside world and living in anger, depression, or stress. All of this causes invisible changes in the genome; it is these changes that turn cells cancerous. In a sense, cancer is nature weeding out such people.

For example, of the 3,000-plus compounds in tobacco smoke, over 50 are proven carcinogens; these harm not only the lungs but cause other cancers too. The damage these compounds do to human body cells is incalculable. Take carbon monoxide, produced in smoking: it binds to hemoglobin hundreds of times more strongly than oxygen. As the smoker puffs away, carbon monoxide replaces oxygen, travels through the pulmonary and systemic circulation, crosses the capillaries, and is carried to every cell in the body, leaving those cells chronically starved of oxygen. Such a person cannot expect health and long life.

Another example: the pickled vegetables and tea-pickled dishes we Chinese love. Because they are pickled too long, they produce nitrites (such as sodium nitrite), which are deadly carcinogens. Yet cancer patients often tell me they simply cannot live without suancai or pickled vegetables. Nitrites not only cause cancer but damage the eyes; people who eat pickled vegetables long-term will not have good eyes.

People without self-discipline or exercise habits also have a much higher cancer rate, yet 82% of Chinese adults do not exercise. The power of habit is immense: most of the cancer patients I meet who dislike exercise still dislike it after diagnosis. One breast-cancer patient scoffed at the idea that disciplined people are healthier; she weighed nearly twice a normal person. She may die without ever admitting that her undisciplined habits killed her.

So we must spare no effort to educate the public about cancer and repeatedly emphasize the importance of a healthy lifestyle. No cancer patient survives on doctors alone. The ancient TCM classic Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon already recognized this, proposing that "the physician is the branch, the patient is the root." For chronic diseases like cancer, the patient's own active change is fundamental; the physician is only auxiliary.

The second strategy, which I call the "cocktail strategy," can also prolong cancer patients' lives. The cocktail strategy means approaching treatment from multiple angles and never relying on a single method. Aside from curative surgery for early cancer, every single-agent cancer treatment is irresponsible.

Just as a frozen foot of ice does not form in one day, since cancer is not caused by a single factor, we must use a cocktail strategy that melts multiple approaches into one, treating the patient from multiple angles. Do not wait until the patient becomes resistant before trying another method, because by then it is too late. Resistance means the cancer cells have already mutated during treatment, spawning hardier descendants; trying other methods then is usually futile. Any doctor who preaches the absolute efficacy of a single therapy to cancer patients is a half-baked doctor; he is not saving patients but destroying their lives.

I cannot cure cancer patients, but I take comfort in the fact that, guided by these two strategies over the years, I have mobilized and cared for patients; most of those I have cared for survived far longer and spent far less than comparable patients. That lets me live with a clear conscience.

Even so, this is not my ultimate goal; I am still on the road. The pursuit is endless. My wish, and that of my patients and their families, is the same: to prolong survival as much as possible, even to let them live to natural old age. So I hope my knowledge and vision are not confined to a single field, and that I carry a richer toolkit for solving problems.