Many Cancer Patients Are Not Suitable for Heat-Clearing and Detoxifying Herbs
When treating cancer, contemporary academic clinicians habitually prescribe heat-clearing and detoxifying, blood-activating and stasis-resolving, hardness-scattering and nodule-dispersing, qi-supplementing and blood-enriching, and vital-qi-supporting and pathogen-expelling formulas. Having seen many cancer patients, the great majority of TCM prescriptions I encounter are built on large doses of heat-clearing and detoxifying herbs; many patients worsen rather than improve after taking them. For a long time I myself was influenced by academic doctors and was partial to heat-clearing and detoxifying. But this year that view began to change.
The trigger was several terminal patients I saw: their hands and feet were ice-cold, some ears had begun to waxen, lips had turned cyanotic, and the tongue coating showed obvious cold signs. Milder cases showed an intense love of sunbathing and warming by a fire. These were typical yang-deficiency, yin-pattern patients, yet the doctors' formulas still centered on heat-clearing and detoxifying. For such patients, taking cold herbs not only fails to treat the disease but makes it worse.
A recent patient told me that in summer he likes to lie out in the scorching sun, saying only after blazing exposure does he feel better. Regrettably, the TCM experts at the Guang'anmen Hospital of the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences still treated him with heat-clearing, yin-nourishing, and lung-clearing strategies. The result was very poor.
After I took him on, I abandoned the heat-clearing approach and gave him modified Yanghe Tang (Yang-Combination Decoction). In less than twenty days his systemic symptoms improved markedly. Another patient I treated, a Dr. Li with lymphoma, after years of heat-clearing and detoxifying treatment, developed such coldness in the upper back that he had to use a hot-water bottle. Yet several top TCM experts in Beijing whom Dr. Li consulted continued to give him heat-clearing and detoxifying. As a result his lymphomas multiplied, enlarged, and began to harden. After I took over, I rejected that approach and used Yanghe Tang, which warms yang and opens the cou li (interstices). The effect was very clear.
Many folk recipes also center on heat-clearing and detoxifying, especially large doses of Banzhilian (Scutellaria barbata), Banbianlian (Lobelia chinensis), Baihuasheshecao (Hedyotis diffusa), Youduncai, and other so-called anti-cancer herbs. Cancer patients should not casually take such drugs; especially if they already show aversion to cold and cold limbs, taking too many heat-clearing detoxifying herbs is harmful rather than useful.
TCM holds that cold congeals and stalls the blood, one of the important causes of tumor formation. Diseases are divided into yin and yang, and the body into cold and heat. Patients with a cold constitution, or those differentiated as yin patterns, must be cautious with heat-clearing and detoxifying herbs. Anti-cancer Chinese herbs do not suit every cancer patient, and their anti-cancer effect is limited; however strong an herb is, it cannot match Western chemotherapy drugs. If you consult the Chinese Materia Medica Dictionary, you find that nearly a third of herbs have anti-cancer effects. Does that mean all of them can be used casually against cancer? Obviously not.
If TCM treats cancer by trying to kill cancer cells, that is TCM's failure. TCM should focus on the balance of the body—regulating yin and yang, cold and heat—to control tumor growth and, on that basis, gradually dispel the tumor.