TCM Principles and Formulas for Cancer ⁽²⁴⁾

Colleagues and patients repeatedly ask me how one should go about learning to fight cancer with traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). I am writing this article to share some of my own reflections. One thing I should state in advance: I am not an authority in…

Chaijie Jiedu Wan (Chai-Guided Toxin-Resolving Pill) is a formula I created for treating COVID infection. The composition is: Guizhi (Ramulus Cinnamomi) 10 g, Huangqin (Radix Scutellariae) 10 g, Renshen (Radix Ginseng) 10 g, Zhi Gancao (processed Radix Glycyrrhizae) 6 g, Baishao (Radix Paeoniae Alba) 10…

Chinese folk has long had the crafts of pickling and boiling eggs. Traditional foods made by these methods—salted duck eggs, century eggs, tea eggs, and marinated eggs—are all delicious. Of course, eating too much pickled food like salted duck eggs is very harmful, because their…

Like humans, bees, and ants, cancer cells rely on cooperation among individuals to survive and multiply. Cancer cells that fight alone find it very hard to survive: first, because a single cancer cell can hardly draw nutrients from its surroundings; second, because such scattered, solitary…

Since ancient times, humans have continuously sought effective medicines from naturally occurring toxic substances, and with considerable success. Today, the highly toxic arsenic trioxide is used to treat leukemia; vincristine, extracted from the toxic Madagascar periwinkle, and paclitaxel, extracted from the equally toxic yew, have…

The theory of evolution was proposed by Darwin. All things in nature are, at every moment, undergoing evolution visible or invisible to our eyes. As long as there is pressure of natural selection, there is evolution. For example, when a goshawk hunts a rabbit, the…

Several years ago, a radiologist from Jiangsu Province came to see me. She had unfortunately developed advanced colorectal cancer; after suffering through painful surgery, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy, her condition was still not contained, and she hoped for TCM help. Before coming to me, she had…

Almost everyone who has studied TCM knows of a treatment called "fighting poison with poison." As a four-character idiom, the phrase is known to every man, woman, and child in the Chinese-speaking world. But the great majority of people understand only its surface meaning, unable…

In Zhang Xichun's *Lvshi Lvxiao Fang (Repeatedly Tested and Repeatedly Effective Formulas)* there is a formula called "Shiquan Yuzhen Tang" (Ten-Complete Truth-Nourishing Decoction), which Zhang Xichun used to treat what TCM calls "xu lao" (deficiency-tax) and "lao zhai" (consumptive phthisis; the character zhai is pronounced…

In TCM pattern differentiation, some tumors belong to the excess-heat type. Such patients' tumors often manifest fever, heat and swelling; they have constipation, are prone to acne and bleeding, and the pain is usually a burning or throbbing pain; some patients also have maculopapular rashes…