The War at the Dinner Table

On the third day of the first lunar month in 2019, I left my hometown because of an urgent matter. My child and his mother were still in the hometown for the New Year, visiting relatives and friends and attending various gatherings.

For the month before this, my wife had been found to have gallstones during a physical organized by her workplace. Before the New Year, a series of symptoms began: after greasy and spicy food, she developed upper abdominal pain, even radiating to the back. When I used Tongrentang's Shugan Hewei Wan (Liver-Soothing and Stomach-Harmonizing Pill), or massaged her Hegu (LI4) point, the symptoms were markedly relieved.

But my wife is someone who cannot live without meat or spice, so although each bout of pain was miserable, once the symptoms disappeared after medication she would go back to eating spicy and greasy food and refuse to keep taking medicine. Yet the pain grew worse each time. In the period before the Spring Festival, she finally realized that her poor dietary habits were a major cause of her abdominal pain. At my urging, she began eating a bit more plainly and stayed away from spicy food for a while.

But the gatherings of relatives and friends during the Spring Festival inevitably involved feasting. As a Hubei person, over eighty percent of the food on the table is very spicy. My wife is not a self-disciplined person like me, so I had to supervise her at every meal to keep her away from spicy and greasy food as much as possible.

Our original plan was to get through the Spring Festival peacefully, then go to the hospital for a gastroscopy and CT to determine what was causing her upper abdominal pain, and see whether surgery was needed.

Unfortunately, once I ended my leave early, my wife's diet and routine slipped out of control. At noon on the fourth she attended a banquet celebrating a relative's new home; on the evening of the fourth she attended an elementary-school reunion; on the fifth there was another family banquet; on the sixth, yet another family banquet.

On the nights of the fourth, fifth, and sixth, she had upper abdominal pain, but after taking the Shugan Hewei Wan I prescribed and our Gouteng Bohe (Uncaria-Mint) tea, it eased. On the morning of the seventh, when I called her, she told me that in the small hours of the seventh she had been in such pain she could not even turn over.

I quickly called my mother-in-law and sister-in-law and told them to rush my wife to the emergency department of the hospital's gastroenterology service. At the hospital, a CT was done and showed that the gallstone previously in the gallbladder had now fallen into the end of the bile duct. The doctor prescribed some anti-inflammatory and bile-promoting medicines and gave IV fluids for a day and a half, which slightly eased the pain. Then my wife and child came to Beijing, planning to transfer to a Grade-A tertiary hospital in Beijing for gallbladder removal.

On the way, severe pain struck again. Fortunately, our son, who had studied medicine with me for two years, was beside his mother. The Shugan Hewei Wan had run out two days earlier and could not be bought at local pharmacies, so there were not many usable medicines on hand.

I called my own teacher, who is skilled in acupuncture, for advice. He told me to have my son, on top of massaging his mother's Hegu point, also add Taichong (LR3), pressing and massaging it for pain relief. He also suggested having my son use the abdominal-vibration method (pressing the palm on the patient's navel and continuously vibrating the abdomen) to help his mother.

I told my son to keep pressing Hegu (LI4), Zusanli (ST36), and Taichong (LR3), and my wife's severe pain eased. Setting out from Wuhan, they rode a rather harrowing five-hour high-speed train, and in the small hours of the ninth finally arrived safely at Beijing West Station.

I found a friend to drive, and we waited at Beijing West Station to bring them home. When we picked up my wife, she could no longer walk upright; once home, I noticed she had developed jaundice.

Back home she lay down to rest. I called the emergency departments of several Beijing Grade-A tertiary hospitals. Because it was still the Spring Festival period, when the municipal people's hospital's phone was answered by a sleepily operator, before we could explain the situation she hung up for no clear reason. No one answered the phones at the other hospitals.

We had to wait through the night for dawn to go to the hospital for examination and prepare surgery to remove the stone. But before dawn, my wife was seized by severe pain again. Fortunately we had Shugan Hewei Wan at home; I gave her two doses within half an hour and had her drink plenty of plain water. This time it worked: after a dozen minutes the pain completely eased, but the jaundice did not recede.

At dawn we went to the hospital. CT and MRI showed that my wife's gallstone had traveled down from the end of the common bile duct into the duodenal wall. The Chinese patent medicine Shugan Hewei Wan she had taken over the past month had been effective in expelling the gallstone. By the way, a year earlier, my sister also had gallstones triggering cholecystitis with biliary colic; I used Shugan Hewei Wan on her for nearly two months and resolved her problem.

I myself do not have the energy to research gallstones, but several people in my family have them, so I have tried many methods, with Shugan Hewei Wan giving the best result.

I strongly suspect this Chinese patent medicine has a soothing and dilating effect on the bile ducts, promoting the expulsion of gallstones. I hope this small, shallow bit of my own medication experience and conjecture can offer some reference to colleagues who specialize in hepatobiliary disease. I also hope that fellow gallstone patients will not come looking to me for help because of this article; I have only this small experience treating my own family's gallstones, nothing more. My main energy goes entirely to researching tumor diseases.

Gallstones can trigger acute pancreatitis, which has a five-to-fifteen-percent mortality rate. So from the moment my wife was found to have gallstones and first developed biliary colic, I was very worried about her condition.

Because it was the New Year season and the medication was working, my initial thought was to wait until after the holiday to bring her to Beijing for surgery to remove the stone. But I never imagined she would worsen before the Spring Festival was even over.

Hospital tests showed her transaminases and bilirubin were already very high, but fortunately this time pancreatitis was not triggered. We followed the hepatobiliary surgeon's advice, staying in the hospital for a few days of observation: fasting, nourished by IV fluids, and also given a week of liver-protecting infusions. I myself prepared some Chinese herbs to promote bile flow and reduce jaundice.

Since that severe pain at home in the small hours, she never had another attack. After three days of fasting she resumed normal eating, with no further pain.

After five days of inpatient observation we were discharged. At discharge her liver function was still abnormal, with transaminases even higher than on admission day one, but the jaundice had receded. We discussed with the doctor and decided to go home and observe: if the stone had passed this time, we would forgo gallbladder removal for now; if it recurred, we would return at once for surgery.

A week after discharge we returned for a follow-up; the transaminases had dropped considerably. The gallstone was no longer visible on imaging, the bile duct was no longer dilated, and amylase testing showed no pancreatitis. The surgeon gave some dietary restrictions, and this hospitalization was basically over. We also dodged a gallbladder-removal surgery.

This severe pain and the experience of being hospitalized in two hospitals gave my wife much food for thought; she finally realized how harmful bad diet and routine habits can be. After discharge she began eating plainly. Before she came home, I had already thrown away all the chili sauces and soybean pastes she had bought.

But less than half a month after discharge, she could no longer stand the plain diet and could not control her mouth. Though her liver function was still abnormal, she ate the fatty cured meat a colleague had given her. But under my strict supervision, spicy food never touched her again, and greasy food was basically brought under control.

This emergency episode also badly frightened my father and mother-in-law. I took the opportunity once more to emphasize to them how harmful the cured fish and cured meat of my hometown are to the body, begging them that next year, no matter what, they not cure all kinds of cured fish, cured meat, and chili sauces and other harmful delicacies again.

I cannot remember how many times I have begged my father and mother-in-law to change the family's eating habits; at least over the last ten years, this war at our dinner table has never stopped.

Over these ten years, my mother died after two strokes plus stomach cancer; my father-in-law died after three strokes; my brother had gallstones removed by surgery; my sister's gallstones triggered cholecystitis and she lost dozens of jin, nearly becoming skin and bones if I had not treated her. My wife had gallstones that nearly triggered acute pancreatitis and nearly cost her life.

Every time I tell my father about the harms of cured fish, cured meat, and chili sauce, he rebuts me with almost the same argument: these foods have been eaten in our region for thousands of years, and plenty of families make far more of them than we do. My father is a person who never admits he is wrong, and I can hardly persuade him.

But in recent years, among my ten rural-neighbor families, two have died of stomach cancer, two of esophageal cancer, and one nearly died from the aftereffects of gallstone surgery. My mother also died of stomach cancer. Plus this frightful episode of his own daughter-in-law, he finally, with resentment, promised me that from now on he will no longer cure cured fish or cured meat, nor make chili sauce or fermented bean curd.

My mother-in-law, feeling for her daughter, also promised not to cure these New-Year delicacies anymore. But I suspect that by the end of this year, under the influence of the neighbors, they will lose control again and forget this scar.

In the Huangdi Neijing (Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon), Huangdi and Qibo have this exchange:

(Huang)di said: When a disease first arises, it is extremely subtle and fine, first entering and binding in the skin. Now good physicians all say the disease is already formed, call it "contrary disease," and then needles and stones cannot treat it and good medicine cannot reach it. Now good physicians all have their method and keep their measure; relatives and brothers, near and far, hear the sound daily and see the colors daily, yet the disease does not heal— how can this not be because it was not treated early? Qibo said: The patient is the root, the physician is the branch; when root and branch do not meet, the evil qi does not submit. This is what is meant.

The gist of this passage is:

Huangdi asks Qibo: diseases all begin from the subtlest places. Now there are good doctors and good medicines, and one's relatives and brothers live day and night with these good doctors, yet the doctors cannot keep their relatives from falling ill, and once ill cannot cure them early. Why? Qibo answers: the patient himself is the root, the doctor is the branch; when doctor and patient do not trust and support each other, then even if they are as close as one family, the disease cannot be cured.

Since I began studying medicine and researching cancer, I have been trying to eradicate the bad dietary habits in my own family. But helplessly, neither gentle discussion nor fierce conflict has worked.

I could only watch, helpless, as my kin fell ill one by one and died one by one. My youngest sister-in-law once said that every misfortune my eldest brother-in-law predicted eventually came true, but however he warned, the family ignored it.

This phenomenon is also everywhere in my clinical practice. However we tell patients to quit smoking and drinking, and what to watch in diet and exercise, their habits and prejudices always matter more than my advice.

Some patients with cirrhosis, liver cancer, and ascites, after the ascites is cured and we tell them absolutely not to drink, dare to gamble with their lives and drink boldly. Some cancer patients, urged to quit smoking during treatment, always find excuses to refute the idea that smoking causes cancer.

In earlier years I strongly refuted the ideas that raw pressed potato juice and adjusting the body's acid-base balance help treat cancer, but at that time such a fad had formed among cancer patients, and many would not take my advice seriously, piously trying them. In recent years there have been further fallacies such as garlic pickled in vinegar and sweet-potato meals for anticancer; many ended up with gastric bleeding or intestinal obstruction, yet we still cannot win this war against fallacies.

Sometimes I feel discouraged. There was a patient with leiomyosarcoma whom I repeatedly warned to stay away from glutinous rice and sweet potatoes, but his family thought such dietary restriction was sheer nonsense. They insisted on feeding him ciba (glutinous rice cakes); sadly, right after eating he developed intestinal obstruction, and not long after he died of it.

Just the other day, my father called me, very embarrassed, to say he had once again developed intractable constipation. In recent years, after every Spring Festival I have had to find ways to deal with his intractable constipation. I told him that only by removing the various New-Year delicacies from the table could he break the vicious cycle of constipation every festival, but the old man simply refuses to admit his constipation is related to these delicacies.

Self-discipline is a very difficult thing. Many doctors, knowing some living and dietary habits are unhealthy, cannot discipline themselves, let alone patients. Disease is nature's means of punishing humanity; most patients are both pitiful and hateful. Some stubborn bad habits simply cannot be changed no matter how.

When a family member falls ill, we take him to seek a doctor's help. Medical costs are high and doctors are busy, and we condemn medical institutions and doctors for lacking compassion, yet few people examine themselves and look for the problem in themselves.

When my wife went to the hospital in her hometown and angrily told me over the phone that the doctor was too busy to attend to her, I did not criticize the doctor; I criticized her. Why, when I repeatedly told you to keep to your dietary restrictions and keep taking your medicine, did you chase momentary pleasure and make yourself ill, stop the medicine before the illness was cured, and then blame the doctor? She fell silent.

Being ill brings suffering to oneself and to one's family. Though a family should care for one another, when a patient does not cherish himself and stubbornly turns an avoidable problem into a big one, he really has it coming.

This war at the dinner table is a war of each person against his own and his family's appetites, against custom, against social habits; it relies on each person's self-discipline. Sadly, this war usually ends in defeat.

To date, no food whatever has any anticancer effect. All articles about foods that fight cancer are evidence-free nonsense; relying on a single food to fight cancer is a gigantic joke. The nutrients the human body needs are complex and varied; overeating any single food will only backfire. Far from fighting cancer, it will leave the patient malnourished through lack of diverse nutrients. The human diet should be broad, not superstitious about any one food's anticancer powers.

The American Institute for Cancer Research does not recommend any single food or nutrient as an anticancer food; it only puts forward the following points:

First, plant-derived foods should make up over eighty percent of what people eat, and animal-derived foods should not exceed twenty percent. Second, the daily intake of vegetables and fruits should number no fewer than five kinds, and should be varied. Third, nutrients taken from the diet should match the calories the body burns each day; maintaining a healthy weight keeps cancer away. Fourth, quit smoking and control alcohol.

But some foods are classified as Group 1 carcinogens.

For example, the pickled foods and hot pot that Chinese people love most, because the carcinogen nitrite content is too high, are the chief culprits behind many cancers. Cured meat, cured fish, chili sauce, fermented bean curd, and sausage all fall in this category.

Foods contaminated with aflatoxin, such as moldy foods and sprouted potatoes and sweet potatoes, are also highly carcinogenic. All kinds of delicious grilled and fried foods also contain high levels of carcinogens.

Spicy and greasy food easily triggers many diseases, not just cancer. I often put spicy and greasy food on my patients' restriction list— not because they cause cancer, but because cancer patients cannot afford more turmoil; many cancer patients, alongside their cancer, develop acute diseases such as cholecystitis and pancreatitis from spicy and greasy food, ultimately dying not of cancer but of other diseases.

Sweet potatoes, white potatoes, and soy products are gas-producing foods and should be eaten less; patients at risk of intestinal obstruction should avoid them entirely. But sadly, among cancer patients, many foolhardily believe in sweet-potato meals for anticancer. I have already seen many patients who developed intestinal tympanites and obstruction from sweet-potato meals. Garlic and similar foods also easily trigger severe gastrointestinal discomfort and are not suitable for everyone.

Seafood, crab, shrimp, and other allergy-prone foods should not be eaten by weak, deficient patients just because of their high protein content. China's high liver-cancer regions are mostly coastal, precisely because coastal people love seafood. And patients with allergic constitutions who eat these allergy-triggering foods are asking for trouble.

Among fruits, citrus fruits with very high fruit-acid content are described in orange-growing regions as things that "cause shanghuo if eaten too much." Many patients believe the rich vitamin C in citrus fruits fights cancer and eat them in quantity; the result, of course, backfires, and quite a few develop ulcerative conditions.

The war at the dinner table is in fact also a war against human prejudice and ignorance. The Huangdi Neijing says: "Appetites are boundless, and anxieties never cease; essence and spirit scatter, construction fluid congeals and defense disperses, so the spirit departs and the disease does not heal." The more affluent our life, the more appetites we have, the more diseases and the harder to treat; the reason of humanity, puffed up by desire, has great defects.

For me, this war at the dinner table with my own family is far from over. I also believe that countless more people will become patients through chasing palate pleasure. No one can win this war; the ultimate victor can only be the unseen, intangible heaven, which ends it all with death.

When you feast, think of your own health and your own family. Governing the mouth is responsibility to yourself and to your family.