Ten Key Points of TCM Cancer Treatment
The basic approach of TCM in treating cancer is a comprehensive strategy combining supporting the healthy qi (fuzheng) with eliminating the pathogen (quxie). Ideally, TCM cancer treatment should achieve results that both improve the patient's quality of life and inhibit the tumors and cancer-toxin within the body. But achieving this is no easy matter. Based on my years of reading the literature and clinical practice, I distill the key points of TCM tumor treatment into the following ten: enriching the kidney, fortifying the spleen, protecting the liver, soothing the gallbladder, protecting the lungs, resolving stasis, dispersing nodules, opening the interstices, attacking toxin, and purging downward. The first five belong to supporting the healthy qi; the last five belong to eliminating the pathogen.
Most TCM physicians consider enriching the kidney and fortifying the spleen the crux of fuzheng treatment for cancer patients, and this has basically become a consensus in the TCM world. Protecting the liver, soothing the gallbladder, and protecting the lungs, however, are rarely mentioned specifically. I discuss these at length below.
The kidney is the root of congenital constitution; the spleen is the root of acquired constitution. When the kidney is good, a person's essence, spirit, and vitality are all good; the kidney is an important guarantee of the body's immunity. The spleen's role is also enormous; without the spleen, this acquired root, a person may not live many days, because the spleen's function is to transport and transform water and grain, providing the necessary nourishment to the body's organs. The spleen also governs blood production and generation; when the spleen and stomach are poor, a hundred diseases arise. Li Dongyuan, one of the four great masters of TCM and founder of the Spleen-Earth school, is revered by later generations precisely because he created the spleen-earth theory, exploring an important approach for later generations to treat disease.
Thus the importance of enriching the kidney and fortifying the spleen is self-evident, and few physicians dispute it. The depletion tumors inflict on the body easily causes cancer patients to develop symptoms such as listlessness and poor digestion; after taking some kidney-enriching and spleen-fortifying herbs, most patients improve. Even for end-stage patients, it can to a certain degree improve their quality of life and prolong survival.
For patients undergoing radiotherapy and chemotherapy, the approach of enriching the kidney and fortifying the spleen is also of great help. Radiotherapy and chemotherapy are damaging treatments; while attacking the tumor they also injure the body's healthy qi, causing problems such as lowered white blood cell count, loss of appetite, and hair loss. If combined with TCM kidney-enriching and spleen-fortifying support treatment, the damage caused by radiotherapy and chemotherapy can be rapidly improved.
In addition, the side effects patients suffer during non-chemotherapy Western internal-medicine treatment can also be regulated through the TCM approach of enriching the kidney and fortifying the spleen. In clinical practice I have found that most cancer patients have a problem of excessive intravenous infusion. This problem leads to severe fluid retention in the body, producing swelling of the limbs.