Bu Zhong Yi Qi Wan - Why It Helps With Chemo Related Fatigue? (Study)

Comment by Archived User

Thanks for the info. When I first read the subject line I did a double take because I would think that you would want to make sure the cancer is gone before tonifying. What are the main signs you would look for to know when to start the by Zhong yi qi wan? Pulse? Would the pattern diagnosis (Sp qi def, Sp qi sinking) be clearly evident right away? Or is it strictly based on fatigue? I ask because as a student I have no experience in treating cancer and a friend has asked about acupuncture which I feel confident with, but my herb knowledge is limited. The Ben Biao keeps me guessing.

Martin

Comment by Chad J. Dupuis, L.Ac.

Besides answering your questions one by one, I think the general presumption that “tonifying” may somehow strengthen and/or spread cancer needs to be dealt with first. The use of tonifying herbs in properly utilized formulas with the proper diagnosis is not going to strengthen cancer, period. This is the same type of wrong view that led people to express concern that massage would somehow spread cancer all over their bodies which unfortunately kept people from treatments that could help them immensely. Similar wrong ideas kept people from being able to give blood when they said they had had acupuncture. Thankfully, some of these completely false assumptions have died down, but there is still too much of this information/feeling floating around. What breaks this down, is a firm understanding of what cancer is, how it starts, how it spreads, and what influences it (and what doesn’t). This requires a deep exploration of the western and chinese ideas of cancer. So I suggest that before you start working with patients with cancer that you do this exploration and get a firm understanding of the disease process. This will take away most of the possibility for poorly formed ideas about potential interactions.

To get into your actual question - you essentially never base a formula on symptoms alone, you base it on the diagnosis overall and, yes, these would most often be quite obvious. That said, you also have to see a number of cancer patients to understand what signs the western drugs will give and how to ignore those to varying degrees to see what is truly underlying. As an example, when they obtain chemo in many cases they are given steriods - so if you see that patient the day following their chemo you might see a hyperstimulated, mildly aggressive version of your patient when in actuality they are quite depleted. If you saw them a few days later, your diagnostic techniques would arguably highlight a different pattern than on that day. Only experience helps with this.

A few texts that are important to understanding these issues better are:

• 1e
• Healing Cancer with the Nervous System (an exploration of our approaches to cancer - utilizing acupuncture, tong ren therapy (our version of medical qi gong) and tuina).

There is an enormous amount Chinese Medicine (acupuncture and/or herbs) can offer to cancer patients and much of this has been well researched. But as with auto-immune conditions and other more complicated conditions you have to really understand more of the western disease process to get insights into how to help people with this range of conditions within the Chinese Medicine constructs.