A Secret Oral TCM Formula for Treating Cancer Pain
This is a prescription for cancer pain that a patient's family provided me during a house call in Zhejiang. That family had obtained it when visiting a folk TCM doctor, who, while compounding a secret formula for them, inadvertently showed them this prescription.
The family then compounded the medicine according to this secret formula and brought the cancer pain under control. The patient later recommended it to two other patients with different kinds of cancer, who also obtained good results.
After I obtained the prescription, I compounded it as a powder and gave it to several patients. Some patients achieved rapid analgesia (onset within half an hour), while quite a number obtained no effect. For the patients who responded, as long as they took this powder, cancer pain generally did not recur.
To date, I have obtained good analgesic effects in some patients with liposarcoma, gastric cancer, lung cancer, pancreatic cancer, breast cancer and ovarian cancer. In one or two patients the tumor even shrank for a time after taking it, though it ultimately grew again. So this formula's antitumor effect is not ideal; it can only be used for palliative treatment of cancer pain in terminal-stage patients.
The prescription is as follows:
Pao Shanjia (prepared pangolin scales) 30 g, large Wugong (centipedes) 20 pieces, Quanxie (scorpion) 20 g, Sanqi (Panax notoginseng) 40 g, Yeshen (wild ginseng) 30 g, Zhi Maqianzi (processed nux vomica) 20 g, Shexiang (musk) 3 g, Bingtang (rock sugar) 60 g
Divide into 60 packets. Take twice daily, one packet each time, washed down with boiling water after breakfast and dinner.
Note: both musk and prepared pangolin scales are restricted-use, costly medicinal materials that are hard to buy. Musk especially: genuine natural musk is rarely sold on the market. To my knowledge, by the end of last year, genuine natural musk at the Beijing Tongrentang Qianmen boutique sold for 2,000 RMB per gram—about twelve times the price of gold.
Some patients have tried replacing natural musk with artificial musk; it is said to have some analgesic effect. But without the musk, this formula has no efficacy.
In this formula, maqianzi (nux vomica) is a highly toxic TCM herb that can easily cause fatal poisoning when taken internally; therefore only processed, detoxified zhi maqianzi must be used. Under no circumstances use raw maqianzi.
From my own experience, the yeshen in the formula can be replaced with older forest-grown ginseng or garden ginseng; there is no need to buy true wild ginseng, which is now expensive and rife with fakes.
Because of the high cost, I later stopped compounding this formula and mostly advise cancer-pain patients to take cheaper Chinese analgesics or opioid Western drugs. I recommend it only for some patients who fail other analgesics. Families adopting this formula should weigh the drug costs as well.