Insights and Updates

A cervical-cancer patient who recently consulted me developed radiation enteritis after radiotherapy. She had previously seen a TCM physician locally. That physician, although he could not solve her cancer problem, very effectively solved her radiation-enteritis problem. The prescription this physician wrote was extraordinary; I myself…

Some women develop headache and rhinitis symptoms before their periods—a phenomenon whose cause is hard to explain clearly. But TCM classics contain a formula for symptomatic treatment, and that formula is Xiongzhi Shigao Tang. Xiongzhi Shigao Tang comes from the Yizong Jinjian. It is composed…

The Chinese medicinal lianqiao is the dried fruit of Forsythia suspensa (Oleaceae). Fruit harvested in autumn when just ripe is called “green forsythia” (qingqiao); fruit harvested when fully ripe is called “old forsythia” (laoqiao or huangqiao). Forsythia heart (lianqiao xin) is made by steaming green…

Yinchenhao (also called yinchen) is the rootless seedling or above-ground part of Artemisia scoparia or Artemisia capillaris (Asteraceae), mostly harvested in the third or fourth lunar month. There is a folk saying: “March yinchen, April hao; May and June it is firewood.” Yinchen can be…

Xuanshen is the dried root of Scrophularia ningpoensis (Scrophulariaceae), produced mainly in Zhejiang. It is sweet, bitter and salty in taste and slightly cold in nature, entering the lung, stomach and kidney meridians. Its functions are to clear heat and cool blood, nourish yin and…

The Chinese medicinal zhuling is the dried sclerotium of the fungus Polyporus umbellatus (Polyporaceae), grown mainly in Shaanxi, Shanxi, Hebei, Yunnan and Henan. Zhuling has a black skin and yellow interior; the Bencao Tujing says it has “a black skin and grows in blocks, resembling…

I previously introduced my experience treating a breast-cancer patient in Tianjin with lung and bone metastases (for details, see the article Experience Treating a Patient with Breast Cancer and Lung and Bone Metastases Using Modified Maxing Shigan Tang Combined with Wuling San). In that article…

During the Dragon Boat Festival, the rain-lilies I had planted were in full bloom. Waking early and pushing open the window, I saw the flowers blooming on my balcony and felt great joy in my heart. I did not know whether to describe them as…

Among Chinese medicinal materials there is an herb called mugua. It shares its name with the edible papaya we commonly eat, but the two are actually different. The medicinal mugua is the nearly ripe dried fruit of Chaenomeles speciosa (Rosaceae), grown mainly in Anhui, Hunan,…

The patient, a woman surnamed Liu, born in 1980, originally from Shandong and now living in Nanjing, was referred to me by another patient whom I had treated for rhinitis. She reported that she had had rhinitis since high school, over ten years earlier; she…