The Perils of Reckless Tonic Supplementation for Cancer Patients

Many cancer patients are indeed very deficient, and families, frantic with worry, tonify recklessly: renshen (ginseng), dongchongxiacao (cordyceps), lurong (pilose antler), lingzhi (reishi mushroom)—especially the deceptive broken-wall reishi powder, reishi spore powder, and ginsenoside extracts; merchants spare no means, and despite repeated expert debunking that such supplements are useless against cancer, countless people still fall for them. Every rare tonic they can buy, they buy. There are also cordyceps-and-antler tonics marketed under Tibetan or Miao banners, equally harmful. Some patients' families have extraordinary reach and can obtain extremely rare tonics; when relatives ask me about supplements I get a splitting headache, for some tonics most people will never see or hear of in a lifetime.

The medical world has long said, "Ginseng kills without blame; rhubarb saves without credit." Patients and families beam when a doctor uses tonics and frown when he uses attack herbs. I have seen this many times. Look it up on Baidu and you know the properties at once; or another doctor's few words of "enlightenment" and the patient and family are immediately "smart": delighted by tonics, afraid of attack. It is truly not easy these days to be a TCM doctor who prescribes by conscience; hand out a steady, smooth, tonifying peace formula, add a line of "when upright qi is internal, pathogen cannot invade," and you are instead regarded as brilliant.

Treating terminal disease is inherently high-risk. If a patient dies on tonics, the family does not suspect the doctor's prescription; they only feel their relative's illness was too severe, that even tonics could not sustain life, and that nothing could be done. But if a patient dies on attack herbs, the family immediately concludes the doctor abused anti-cancer drugs and killed the patient.

For many patients, tonics used wrongly can be fatal. Mild tonification may save; heavy tonification hurries death. A constipated patient, tonified with ginseng, antler, and cordyceps, gets nothing but worsening. Cancer patients, unless in the agonal stage or in a desertion syndrome requiring emergency rescue, really need no great tonic to extend life. Ancient physicians considered ginseng and antler supplies that "feed the bandits": after taking them the tumor grows wildly. Once the patient has eaten such tonics, rescue becomes very difficult. The Qing physician Xu Lingtai once said that diseases caused by tonification are the hardest to treat.

Food supplementation should also not be excessive. Traditional "triggering foods" such as rooster, goose, and carp have the side effect of promoting tumor growth. One of the causes of most tumors is precisely "overrich, fatty food"—eating too much high-fat, high-calorie meat until the zang-fu organs are overburdened and finally collapse, normal metabolism failing to expel harmful substances. Some patients, once they get cancer and see themselves weak, immediately begin heavy tonification—truly sending charcoal to a tumor desperate for nutrition to grow. When treating cancer patients, Mr. Zhao Shaoqin always, after writing the prescription, admonished them to eat vegetarian and exercise more.

The deficiency of cancer patients, as Zhang Zihe—one of the Four Great Masters of the Jin-Yuan—said, is deficiency caused by pathogen; only by expelling the pathogen will the constitution improve. Attack, not tonify—or at minimum combine attack and support—and the direction of support should be guided by a professional doctor, not done recklessly. Tonifying qi in a patient with exuberant fire is like pouring oil on a flame; nourishing yin in a patient with abundant phlegm makes the phlegm worse until the patient cannot bear it.

Last year a patient in Nanjing showed very clear signs of abundant phlegm; a so-called top professor at a Nanjing hospital prescribed large doses of yin-nourishing fluid-enriching drugs. At the time I warned the patient's daughter that this direction was wrong, but the professor's name was too great; a nobody like me could not outweigh a big professor, and the patient kept taking the medicine as before. Within ten days the condition worsened: vomiting as soon as food entered, and a sawing sound in the throat. Only then did they awaken; later, with modified Erchen Tang, I finally brought the condition under control. This should be a warning to other patients.