Insights and Updates

Cotton is an indispensable necessity of daily life: many of the clothes we wear, the hats on our heads, the bags on our shoulders, the shoes on our feet, and the bedding we sleep on are made of cotton. The cotton we commonly use comes…

The Chinese medicine Xiong Huang is a sulfide mineral of the realgar group, mainly containing arsenic disulfide (As2S2) with a small amount of impurities, mainly produced in Cili and Shimen (Hunan), and Langdai and Sinan (Guizhou). Realgar is a typical mineral of low-temperature hydrothermal and…

Xi Shu (Camptotheca acuminata) is a deciduous tree of the genus Camptotheca in the Nyssaceae family, mainly distributed in southwest China and in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, Jiangxi, Hubei, Hunan, Guangdong, Guangxi, and Taiwan. Its fruit, root, and root bark can all be used medicinally. The…

The Chinese medicinal A Wei is the oleoresin secreted by umbelliferous plants such as Ferula assa-foetida, F. sinkiangensis, and F. fukanensis. The parent plants grow in sandy soils and deserts, mainly distributed in Central Asia of the former Soviet Union, Iran, and Afghanistan; they are…

Not long ago I published an article, Three Medical Cases of Treating Lung Cancer and Pulmonary Nodules with "Same Disease, Same Treatment", in which I described using the same treatment method and the same medication regimen for two lung cancer patients and one pulmonary nodule…

A recent study published in Stroke, the monthly journal of the American Heart Association, points out that people who sit for more than eight hours a day and are physically inactive have a sevenfold higher risk of stroke than those who sit for less than…

Chan Tui (cicada slough) is the molted exoskeleton left after eclosion by cicadas of the family Cicadidae—Crytotympana atrata, Meimuna mongolica, Leptopsalta sp., and related species, commonly known in Chinese as "zhiliao." It mainly contains chitin and protein. It is generally collected in summer and autumn…

On the day of the End of Heat (Chushu), I shouldered a hoe and went to my little vegetable plot to turn the soil. I dug about thirty square meters, worked up a heavy sweat, and rubbed the skin off my hands. After digging, I…

Not long ago, the family of a terminal ovarian cancer patient, recommended by her classmate—another physician—came to me, asking me to help her mother relieve suffering. This patient developed intestinal obstruction with every chemotherapy cycle; her condition was already very serious, and the possibility of…

Nowadays, more and more patients are found on physical examination to have thyroid enlargement or thyroid nodules, and many people worry unduly because of thyroid enlargement. In fact, most thyroid nodules found on physical examination are benign, are very unlikely to become malignant, and need…