Insights and Updates

Ms. Yan, a 32-year-old Beijing resident and a relative of a liver cancer patient I treated, had a cough that would not heal. Because her relative had done well under my care, on April 12, 2014, she came to see me together with that liver…

Guipi Tang is a base formula I am very fond of in treating cancer. When pattern differentiation fits, I prefer it, and it almost always brings surprising results. Especially in patients who have undergone radiation and chemotherapy, as long as differentiation is correct, modified Guipi…

The five zang and six fu should be free-flowing; the exterior and interior, and the nutritive and defensive qi, should be harmonized. When zang-fu are free, there are no accumulations; when exterior-interior and nutritive-defensive are harmonized, phlegm-dampness is scant. Tangible cancer, in TCM view, mostly…

In clinical practice, I have again used modified Yanghe Tang to treat cancer with marked short-term effects: one patient with small-cell lung cancer and one with peritoneal mesothelioma. Judging from signs of yang deficiency such as aversion to cold, cold limbs, and anemia, I used…

Yanghe Tang (Yang-Warming Decoction) is a prescription I particularly love; I have used it widely to treat cancers of the yin pattern, benign tumors, asthma, rhinitis, body deficiency, purpura, bone hyperplasia, cervical spondylosis, lumbar disc herniation, and many other conditions, and have repeatedly obtained good…

Eating with measure, living with routine; outwardly active, inwardly still; a cheerful mood, balanced work and rest; guarding against harm from medication. These twenty-four characters were summarized by the late Ningbo TCM physician Wei Changchun. When I read them in his work I deeply agreed,…

Before I came to understand medicine deeply, I liked criticizing physicians' professional skill, like most people. After studying medicine for a while, I gradually realized those earlier comments were naive and ignorant. As of today, although human medicine appears advanced, in fact, compared with the…

In Laozi's Daodejing, the way of health cultivation he advocates is: attain the utmost emptiness; hold fast to genuine stillness. Utmost emptiness is the state of being utterly void. Genuine stillness is the state of being unmoved and secure as Mount Tai. If a person…

In winter, taking some paste (gao) tonics is very beneficial for chronic disease patients. Patients with lung-kidney yin deficiency who take Nine-Refinement Huangjing Paste can prevent many consumptive diseases the following year—such as asthma, chronic bronchitis, and diabetes of lung-kidney yin-deficiency type. Nine-Refinement Huangjing Paste…

Haze weather has triggered a broad outbreak of respiratory disease; lately I have seen many patients with allergic asthma, allergic rhinitis, and allergic skin disease. Below I write up my own diagnostic and therapeutic experience with chronic allergic disease. The great Japanese kampo physician Yumoto…