Professor Yu Rencun's Theory of Cancer as Caused by Healthy-Qi Deficiency and Excess Evil-Qi
Professor Yu Rencun is a renowned Chinese expert in integrated Chinese-Western treatment of tumors. He proposed that deficiency of healthy qi (zheng qi xu) and excess of evil qi (xie qi shi) are important causes of cancer. The internal-deficiency doctrine he advocated has become an important guiding principle in contemporary TCM treatment of cancer.
This medical idea was inherited from ancient TCM. Classics such as the Huangdi Neijing long ago noted that insufficiency of healthy qi is an important reason why evil qi prospers. "Wind, rain, cold, and heat—if they do not encounter deficiency, evil alone cannot harm a person."
Modern medicine has also found that when a person's immunity is not strong enough, all kinds of diseases arise. Cancer cells precisely take advantage of a weak immune system to invade and grow.
Internal deficiency includes both constitutional deficiency and emotional deficiency. Constitutional deficiency is the various deficiencies in common parlance: kidney deficiency, lung deficiency, spleen deficiency, qi deficiency, blood deficiency, and so on. Emotional deficiency is deficiency in a person's psychological makeup; when the inner heart is not strong, all kinds of emotions easily arise from the worries and displeasures of life, and these emotions cause disease. Both Chinese and Western medicine recognize that human emotion is an important pathogenic factor.
Emotional deficiency requires a person to read widely and think constantly, to break through the various shackles in one's own heart, liberate the mind, and gradually cultivate an open-minded heart. This is a problem that clinical medicine cannot solve; the patient himself must find a way to solve it.
To live healthily, a person needs both a strong body and a strong heart. A person with insufficient healthy qi must avoid exhausting his limited healthy qi. Therefore the basic TCM principle of health preservation advocates that people have few desires and make few demands, keep the spirit internally guarded, and not ruin their bodies chasing all kinds of empty fame and profit.
Some people who look very healthy ultimately live shorter lives than patients who have long suffered from various chronic diseases. The reason is not that their healthy qi is weak, but that they recklessly abuse it. The healthy qi of the human body is like money in the bank; if you keep spending, one day it will run out.
Worries are self-inflicted, and so are most diseases. If we understand this point, and do not recklessly ruin our bodies or our hearts, follow the laws of nature in life, let our thoughts follow nature, make peace wherever we find ourselves, and always maintain a good state of mind—then even with chronic disease, we can still live healthily and long.
Sun Simiao, the Medicine King, was weak and sickly as a youth and sought medical help everywhere, so much so that his family was bankrupted treating him. Later, through long illness he became a physician himself, and he was also versed in Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism. He nourished his mind through stillness, and as a result lived to a ripe old age, passing away at over a hundred.
Professor Zheng Ji, in his sixties, underwent a major stomach operation. Afterwards he awoke to the importance of health preservation, nourished his mind through stillness, supplemented by medication, and lived to the age of 110 before passing away naturally.
Therefore, the internal deficiency Professor Yu Rencun spoke of can be changed. A person who was previously internally deficient, having recognized the causes of that deficiency, can turn over a new leaf and stop ruining body and mind. Although the remaining healthy qi may look limited, by gradually cultivating it and dissipating it less, one can still live out this life in peace.