The following words are written after I had a long voice talk with a Singapore friend, trying to persuade him to try herbal medicine. You can find a copy here.
1. Why Chinese Medicine May Work？
While it is true that the global medical community lacks a clear and definitive understanding of the mechanisms behind long COVID, there is an indisputable fact: a significant percentage of infected individuals (potentially as high as 90%) remain asymptomatic. This suggests that the body’s immune system plays a vital role in preventing long COVID. Additionally, many long COVID patients have recovered over time, indicating that the human body has the ability to combat and heal from the disease. From this perspective, any method that helps strengthen and rejuvenate the body may be effective in treating long COVID. The method may be yoga, meditation, or herbal medicine. The common goal is to optimize the body’s own defenses against the disease. Chinese medicine, unlike Western medicine, focuses on identifying imbalances in the body and restoring it to its optimal state, allowing the immune system to naturally fight off the disease. Therefore, dismissing Chinese medicine simply because it lacks a physiological or chemical explanation or a novel compound drug would be unjust. If we want our immune systems to function optimally, it makes logical sense to utilize herbs that are naturally grown(Don’t forget human beings grow up by taking rice/noodles and they all come from plants).
2. Why the Western World Has Not Adopted Chinese Medicine
This question is complex, and several factors contribute to the current situation: First, replicating the therapeutic effects of Chinese medicine is very difficult. For instance, an author write a book titled “Pathogenesis And Treatment Of Covid-19 And Long Covid With Traditional Chinese Medicine” (You can buy it from Amazon), detailing COVID-19 and long COVID treatment cases, including patient symptoms and prescribed medicines. However, it is not possible for western medicine doctor to replicate the healing effect solely based on the information in the book. Chinese medicine treatment is not a straightforward process of matching specific medicines to particular diseases. Rather, it involves creating a customized prescription based on a combination of symptoms(There’s no simple one-to-one relationship between symptom and medicine, rather, seemingly identical symptom need to be cured by different medicine when it’s combined with different other symptoms). For example, if the patient has dizziness, bitterness in mouth, feel thirsty, and pulse feel like a string, he may need Xiaochaihu Tang+ Wuling San; if the patient is dizzy, thirsty, and has trouble urinating, he may only need Wuling San; If the patient is not dizzy, feel palpitations, thirsty, and pulse is hard to feel, he may need Xiaochaihu Tang+ Lingguizhugan Tang; Obviously, the author cannot exhaustively list all the symptom combinations (that would be an astronomical number) and give the corresponding prescriptions. So the doctor facing a new patient need to be proficient in the theory of Chinese medicine and be good at thinking and adapting. Obviously, it is impossible for doctors of western medicine to do this(it is even difficult for young inexperience doctors of Chinese medicine to do this), so for them, the treatment effect is difficult to replicate, and they will not adopt this mode of treatment.
Second, Chinese scholars is not good at effectively publicizing their achievements. There are two types of Chinese medicine doctors. The first group consists of staunch traditionalists, often older doctors, who refuse to adopt any new technological means and are reluctant to publish papers. Their belief is that if a patient doesn’t believe in Chinese medicine, don’t try to persuade him. Only help those who believe in Chinese medicine, otherwise you are wasting your time(you can see they are right from the fact that hardly anyone believe me:). The second group comprises modernists who seek to integrate Chinese and Western medicine. However, the significant differences between the two systems make integration impossible. Moreover, a new trend has emerged over the past decade: many doctors/scholars(not only Chinese medicine doctors but also western medicine doctors) in China are increasingly eager to publish papers, primarily for the purpose of obtaining various titles and corresponding profit. However, since writing paper in western style (control group & statistics etc) is difficult (if not impossible) for TCM, many doctors/scholars resort to deceptive practices. Consequently, the western medical community has grown even more skeptical of Chinese medicine.
Third, The Influence of Prejudice. The Western medical model is relatively easy to comprehend. Supported by advancements in modern physics and chemistry, it provides precise measurements and there are simple relationship between medications and corresponding diseases. This model appears accurate and intuitive, functioning well for straightforward ailments. Western scholars thus possess a sense of pride and prejudice, dismissing the relatively ancient and less intuitive Chinese medicine model. Consequently, many countries do not allow Chinese medicine to say that they can treat the COVID-19. However, it is crucial to realize that advanced instruments and measurements do not guarantee a comprehensive understanding of the essence of a disease. Western medicine has not yet fully comprehend many long COVID symptoms, let alone given effective treatments. In contrast, Chinese medicine has documented numerous peculiar symptoms and corresponding treatment methods. So, are you willing to dismiss these records like modern medical experts(and stick to a very limited list of foods), or are you willing to give it a try?
3. Why should we believe in Chinese Medicine without Evidence-based Data
I acknowledge that many members of this group have received rigorous medical education, and this paragraph aims to address their concerns. The simple answer to the question of why we should believe in Chinese medicine despite the lack of evidence-based data is that it is indeed effective, but its effectiveness cannot be measured through research methodologies commonly adopted now. This does not imply that TCM fails to meet the standards of evidence-based medicine. To demonstrate this, we could design a study, for example, first define a specific syndrome named “dizziness+bitterness in mouth+thirsty+stringy pulse+ intolerance to cold after-COVID-19 syndrome ” (the longer and more specific the syndrome name, the better the statistical effect. However, the difficulty of collecting patients into the group will also increase exponentially). We could then divide patients into two groups: one group receiving a prescription of XiaoChaihu Tang + Wulingsan, and the other group receiving any other treatment. The results would show a significantly higher effective rate in the test group compared to the control group.
However, attempting to publish such a study would encounter numerous challenges. Old traditionalists might argue that writing a thesis on something a three-year-old child knows is unnecessary. Moreover, the combination of patients’ conditions are huge, it’s impossible and meaningless to write hundreds of thousands or even millions of papers like this. Western journal editors will also reject such papers, citing reasons like non-standard disease names, the infeasibility of constructing numerous disease names, lack of in vitro and animal testing(IMO no herbal medicine kill virus directly, they just help HUMAN body do it), absence of physical and chemical indicators, and insufficient explanation of the drug’s mechanism of action. Consequently, papers containing statistical data conforming to the standards of evidence-based medicine cannot be written.
However, unlike Western medicine, which relies heavily on large-scale statistical studies to determine the superiority of a new drug over an existing one, patients seeking help from Chinese medicine can gain confidence in the effectiveness of a particular doctor through very small sample sizes.
For example, after catching COVID-19 on Dec 2022, my four-year-old son coughed three times. The first time he had a high fever, I give him Maxing Ganshi Tang, which was effective immediately. The second time he coughed, he takes Maxing Ganshi Tang for three days but get no improvement, so I changed to Shegan Mahuang Tang and it was effective. The third time I used Xiaochaihu Tang with dried ginger and Wuweizi, and it was also effective immediately. In addition, he got a diarrhea and an abdominal pain during Jan and May 2023. The prescriptions were all effective(without need of changing medicine). Therefore, the correct rate of the doctor(me) is 80% (if only one visit is allowed) or 100% (if two or more visits are allowed). The reason this value is high lies that the child has a short course of disease and no other chronic diseases, so the symptoms are simple, can fit well with the description in the book, so the treatment effect is good.
So why my wife allow me to treat the child (instead of go to a hospital to take chemical drugs), because the statistical results are so significant that a small sample can make her believe that the doctor is credible (and herbal medicine is effective).
In the past six months since China eased its quarantine measures at the end of 2022, many friends and relatives around me experienced symptoms such as shortness of breath, chest tightness, heart palpitations, facial paralysis, dizziness, tinnitus, cough, fatigue, and loss of appetite. Traditional Chinese medicine successfully treated all these issues. No brain fog has happened in my friends or relatives until now, and the reason may be that we address the problem before it escalates to brain fog.
It is worth noting that since many friends in our group have already been ill for some time, their meridians and internal organs have been progressively damaged, leading to the superimposition of multiple complex symptoms. Consequently, remote diagnosis and treatment may not yield highly efficient results (the correct rate of initial diagnosis for simple sequelae may only be between 10% and 30%). However, regardless of the effectiveness of traditional Chinese medicine, the key issue lies in the fact that Western medicine currently lacks an effective treatment to many long COVID problem(with an effective rate close to 0). So, the choice becomes whether to continue waiting for modern medicine to discover new drugs based on evidence-based medicine or to consider the alternative of herbal medicine, despite the lack of evidence-based data. The answer, at least for me, is self-evident.