Cancer Notes ⁽¹¹⁶⁾

Accepting and understanding depressed patients requires great patience. Many families of depressed patients think the patient is merely "putting on an act." They do look as if they are, because their depressive mood comes on without warning, for no reason and at no fixed time.

Patients and families often ask me about the efficacy of folk remedies. Usually behind each remedy lies a miracle story of a cancer patient's recovery, but in my ten-plus years of practice I have never seen a single verified case of anyone reproducing such a…

People keep asking me this, and I have always felt such questions must be answered with great care, because many Chinese easily mistake religious faith for superstition. In reality, many religious believers are indeed superstitious, hoping that praying to gods and Buddhas will cure their…

Several years ago, a reader followed me because of one of my articles. That article should have had nothing to do with cancer, so his purpose in following me was not to learn about cancer but to read articles on other topics. But yesterday he…

Among the cancer patients I have seen over the years, those who survive longest are almost all optimists. From my own experience, patients who fret easily not only do not recover easily but also handle family and doctor-patient relationships poorly. In every word and deed…

Terminal-stage cancer patients often hope that a TCM physician will perform a survival miracle for them, because Western medicine has already given up on them, and the great majority of TCM physicians also refuse to take them. But the patients' families cannot let go; they…

TCM prescribing emphasizes variation with the seasons. Different seasons bring different climates, which exert seasonal effects on the human body, so TCM uses different seasonal herbs in different seasons. For example, the seasonal herbs commonly used in summer include Huoxiang (Agastache rugosa), Peilan (Eupatorium fortunei),…

I have dealt with tens of thousands of cancer patients. The overwhelming majority of long-term surviving cancer patients are optimistic and active people—or those who were not like that before but became so after getting cancer. The truth that life lies in movement is correct;…

One of my teachers runs a clinic in my hometown county town, using both Chinese and Western medicine to treat various common diseases. Last year (2019), I went to visit him and sat in his consultation room waiting for him to finish seeing patients, but…

Because society generally does not value the role of TCM in cancer treatment, about one-third of cancer patients first seek TCM only at the end stage, when their condition is already very poor — whether from severe pleural or ascites, intestinal obstruction, or extremely troublesome…