A Veteran TCM Physician's Proven Trick for Intractable Functional Constipation That Really Works

Many years ago, a patient with advanced liver cancer, after ineffective integrated Chinese-Western treatment at an authoritative Beijing hospital, returned to his hometown at his wits' end. He was unable to urinate or defecate, was extremely weak, and in great distress. His daughter, unable to bear it, tried a long shot and found an old TCM physician who wrote a prescription. After one dose, both urination and defecation were restored.

The patient's daughter later showed me the formula. The composition was extremely ordinary — Wuling San (Five-Ingredient Powder with Poria), a formula almost any doctor could write. But the old TCM physician's dosages were astonishing. Raw atractylodes (Baizhu) was used at 120 g; Poria (Fuling) and Polyporus (Zhuling) each at 90 g. At the time I suspected the old physician had simply put a week's worth of medicine into a single dose, as is nowadays done, so I asked the patient's daughter how long one dose lasted. She told me it was taken in a single day. With such large dosages, no wonder one dose restored both urination and defecation.

Later, when I myself treated patients with qi-deficiency constipation, I used raw atractylodes at over 60 g, with very satisfactory results. Some seriously ill patients with prolonged illness and qi deficiency develop dry, bound stools; some elderly people, because of age and debility, also develop functional constipation. Such patients should not be given bowel-moistening and purgative herbs like rhubarb (Dahuang), hemp seed (HuoMaren), or senna leaf (Fanxieye). If such patients use rhubarb for a long time, not only will the constipation not be resolved, but habitual constipation will develop instead.

Later, as I treated more and more of these qi-deficiency patients, I often added 30 to 60 g of Cistanche (Roucongrong) on top, with even better bowel-relieving results.