How Long Must a Cancer Patient on TCM Anticancer Therapy Take Medicine Before Stopping?

How long must a cancer patient using TCM anticancer therapy take Chinese medicine before stopping? This is a question I am often asked.

Few doctors can answer it. In fact, the problem is not limited to TCM anticancer therapy; modern anticancer therapy faces the same issue.

Whether surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy, or immunotherapy, one must consider: after the tumor-eliminating treatment ends, how long should maintenance treatment continue to reduce the patient's risk of recurrence?

Not only are patients unsure; doctors are unsure too. I myself was at a loss on this question. After some patients' tumors shrank or disappeared under my treatment, they faced the question of how to continue preventing recurrence.

Driven by financial pressure, patients and families mostly hope to finish treatment as quickly as possible. Some patients, lacking the patience for long-term medication, readily stop on their own after a period. So both doctor and patient hope to shorten the course.

The wish is a good one, but reality is often cruel.

Yesterday, a mesothelioma patient I had treated for over five years came for a follow-up. He had stopped his medicine on his own for half a year, and the previously well-controlled condition spun out of control: lesions appeared in the liver with ascites, though for now it is still within the range I can control.

I had planned to treat him another two or three years, then summarize my experience and write a report on mesothelioma survival beyond ten years, sharing treatment experience for this disease. He has already survived more than seven years and is one of my textbook cases of pure TCM treatment—arguably a survival miracle created by pure TCM.

When he first came to me his condition was very poor, with ascites and other advanced signs; by other doctors' accounts he had only months to live.

After my treatment he recovered well, and with his own active exercise his physical state is better than that of an average healthy person. I had always thought he would stay well, and he himself let his guard down, no longer taking his condition as seriously as when he first fell ill; one lapse later, he capsized in a gutter.

A melanoma patient I treated last year also stopped his medicine on his own after the tumor shrank and stabilized; months later the condition recurred and spun out of control.

Cancer is like drug addiction: once addicted, you must stay clean for life, because relapse can come at any time. Once you have cancer, you must fight it for life. Unless it is an early-stage cancer curable by surgery, never let your guard down.

Over these years I have seen countless patients who stopped on their own and quickly relapsed. I hope you will take this as a warning: do not stop on your own. Stop for more than ten days or half a month and you risk recurrence and metastasis. Once cancer-cell growth spins out of control, the rebound is frighteningly fast.

Yesterday afternoon I was talking with a depression patient. She is in several depression support groups and knows many fellow sufferers. She said that among depression patients, those who stop against medical advice and relapse after control is achieved are likewise everywhere.

This shows the problem is quite universal. Life and death are fated; however willing and able a doctor is to save lives, he still needs the patient and family to cooperate and adhere.

Six years ago I met a gastric-cancer patient controlling his condition with Chinese medicine; by then he had already survived fourteen years after cancer, without once interrupting his medication.

He asked me whether he might relapse. I told him that for gastric cancer, the second-to-fifth years and the thirteenth-to-fourteenth years after recovery are the high-risk recurrence points. He said he would keep taking Chinese medicine for at least another five years; as far as I know, he was still alive at the end of last year.

In fact, the patients the elder physician Sun Bingyan treated with TCM (not even pure TCM, since he often also gave patients oral chemotherapy drugs) basically, after controlling the acute phase, took medicine for life to prevent recurrence. As far as I know, patients of his who took medicine for fewer than five years were very rare.

The most common problem I meet now is that patients and families lack the patience to persist, so treatment often falls at the last hurdle. If patients and families lack the patience for a long fight against cancer, what will save them?

My own understanding of this issue was also biased. Sometimes, to reduce patients' financial burden or cater to their fear of cost, I let them stop for long periods; in retrospect that was wrong.

Of course, financial pressure is a very real problem. Cancer is a major, chronic disease; long-term medication is a heavy burden. Both doctor and patient must consider this, trying to reduce costs while controlling the condition and easing the financial load.

After the patient's condition passes the acute phase, switching from decoction to pills is a good approach. During the recurrence-prevention phase, costly materials such as musk and bezoar (niuhuang) should be avoided as much as possible; this can sharply cut the patient's financial burden.

The late Shi Jinmo and Wang Fengchun, two of Beijing's four famous physicians, basically worked this way when treating major chronic diseases.

Decoctions waste herbs. If one boils the cheaper grass-type herbs in the decoction into a strained liquid and uses that liquid, together with herbal powders, to refine pills, it can help the patient a great deal.

For one thing, pills are easier to carry and take; for another, the patient's financial pressure drops at once. This is a very worthwhile approach.

The late cancer-fighting TCM masters Liang Xiuqing and Li Changda were both known for using pills in the maintenance phase. Gentle treatment with pills is enough for patients whose cancer cells are already in an indolent or dormant phase.

The gastric-cancer patient I mentioned above, who has been preventing recurrence, has for years used pills or capsules instead of decoction.

Incidentally, homemade pills carry the problem of bacterial and parasitic contamination.

Homemade Chinese pills can be given simple sterilization and parasite-killing treatment: place the dried, finished pills in the freezer for three days, take them out, heat them in a microwave for three minutes, and if there is moisture, air- or sun-dry them appropriately, then store at room temperature or in the refrigerator.

This treatment minimizes the side effects of impurities in the herbs on the patient's stomach and intestines, and some large molecules poorly absorbed by the body can also, in this process, be broken down into more readily absorbed small molecules.

Large pharmaceutical companies generally send herbs to regional irradiation centers for radiation sterilization. Patients or small clinics making their own medicine lack this condition and must use their ingenuity to find workable methods.

Moreover, the European Union bans the import of Chinese foods preserved by irradiation, so radiation sterilization is not without its own drawbacks.

Dear patients with sensitive stomachs, after making your own medicine or buying homemade pills, for safety's sake it is best to treat them by the method I describe. Of course, most people's guts are not that fragile, and the little bacteria on the herbs are harmless.

In addition, during long-term medication, patients should also watch the effect of drugs on liver and kidney function, getting regular liver and kidney tests and quickly adjusting if anything seems off. The prescribing doctor should fully account for reducing the burden of the drugs on the patient's liver and kidneys.

Patients may also consider a common way I use to reduce the side effects of Chinese medicine on the gut, liver and kidneys: after taking medicine for three to five days, stop and rest for one or two. But absolutely do not stop for long once you stop; such self-neglect has already caused many tragedies.