Insights and Updates

Mirabilite (Mang Xiao) is a mineral used in TCM from ancient times to the present; its main component is sodium sulfate. Among the sulfates, both sodium sulfate and magnesium sulfate are excellent laxatives. Their purgative mechanism is that the sulfate ions they contain are poorly…

Should scientists and doctors care about politics? I often hear voices telling me: just study medicine and do your research well, don't get involved in politics. This remark actually reflects a peculiar, distorted value cultivated by our traditional culture, which can be elegantly phrased as:…

Putin governs incompetently and has failed at anti-corruption, bringing Russia economic depression, ruble devaluation, and a withered people's livelihood. Yet he clings to office, tampering with the constitution to stay president for life. He suppresses the opposition and launches wars opposed by many inside his…

Biologists have found that genes and environment each account for about half of their influence on human development, and on the onset and progression of disease. We can actually use this feature of genes and environment to change our own fate and regulate our health.

San Ye Qing (Tetrastigma hemsleyanum Diels et Gilg, family Vitaceae, genus Tetrastigma) is an anti-cancer herb commonly used in the folk medicine of Zhejiang. The whole plant can be used as medicine, but the underground tuber is the most effective. TCM holds that San Ye…

To understand the character of the Russian nation, one must first understand Russia's geography. Although Russia is the largest country in the world by land area, three-quarters of its territory is unfit for human habitation; most of Russia is a bitter cold land. Across the…

That something as appalling and sorrowful as war has become a running "meme" for so many people to joke about—that is the disaster I have witnessed on my WeChat Moments over the last two days, and it saddens me even more than the war itself.

Family members of cancer patients often ask me whether they should use traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) as an adjunct during radiotherapy and chemotherapy. Their attending Western-medicine oncologists tell them, in very certain terms, that they should not, and even forbid them from using any TCM…

A circle is a geometric shape found throughout nature: a figure drawn around a point (the center) with a line segment as radius is a circle. We use the circle to symbolize the most perfect state in the world; we wish everything to be complete.

Patients' emotional problems have long been highly valued in Chinese medicine, which has regarded emotion as an internal cause of disease from ancient times to the present. But regrettably, although Chinese medicine has all kinds of specialized monographs, it lacks works on psychiatry. Perhaps this…