As Chinese medicine becomes more available as a system accessible to the general public, more and more people suffering with cancer are coming to utilize the rejuvenating effects of the Chinese herbal, acumoxa, dietary and qigong therapies to prolong life and aid in their recovery from this powerful illness. Although Chinese medicine has evolved primary treatments for the treatment of cancer, in this country there are still legal problems with this approach, and most western cancer patients at this time will choose to combine biomedical treatment with alternative therapies. Although a limited number of successes have been recorded with biomedical treatments such as surgery, chemotherapy.
The concept of "side effects" is not recognized as such in Chinese medicine. The toxic effects of certain medicinals is recognized according to degree, and if it is necessary to use a 'toxic' substance medicinally, it will be prepared in a special manner or combined with other medicinals to reduce or eliminate toxicity if possible. For example, fu zi/rx. aconiti is considered toxic, but it has a very strong medicinal power to mobilize and rescue yang qi to the spleen and kidney.
It is usually combined in Chinese herbal prescriptions with sheng jiang/rx. zingiberis and gan cao/rx. glycyrhhizae to neutralize the toxic effect. Sometimes the principle of du yao gong xie/use toxin to attack pathogenic evil is used clinically; we can look at the modern use of chemotherapy according to this principle, if not in the degree of its clinical application in biomedicine. In Chinese medicine, it is considered unthinkable to damage the host or the zheng qi/correct qi in any clinical intervention.
In Chinese cancer hospitals, the use of chemotherapy and radiation are often combined with the use of herbal medicine to protect the body/mind from damage as much as possible. Dosages of chemotherapeutic drugs also tends to be lower than in western countries. In my opinion, it makes clinical sense to use the least toxic dose possible of anti- cancer drugs, radiation or surgery given concurrently with herbal.
