Q: Traditional Chinese medicine has experienced many years of treatment of diabetes, some people say that Chinese medicine can not reduce sugar, and some people say that Chinese medicine has a good effect on reducing sugar, and Chinese medicine can replace Western medicine. Can you talk to us about whether TCM alone can cure diabetes?
Professor Lin Lan: Chinese medicine has a definite curative effect on the prevention and treatment of diabetes, which has been proven by the clinical practice of traditional Chinese medicine for thousands of years. China's ancient famous doctors relied on simple traditional Chinese medicine to treat diabetes, and achieved good results. However, it is impossible to use traditional Chinese medicine to completely cure diabetes. Even Western medicines, including synthetic chemicals and biologics, are currently unable to completely cure diabetes. This is mainly due to the fact that the pathogenesis of diabetes is still not fully understood, it is likely to be a large class of multifactorial, multi-cause, congenital genetic and acquired complex diseases that play a role. To treat this complex disease, the use of traditional Chinese medicine alone can control some symptoms and pathogenesis, but to achieve the desired treatment effect, comprehensive treatment is also needed, including diet control, physical exercise, psychological adjustment, drug treatment and other therapies. So there's still a long way to go to cure diabetes, and there's still a lot of hard work to keep going.
Q: So what do you think of the effect of TCM in treating diabetes?
Professor Lin Lan: The efficacy of traditional Chinese medicine in the treatment of diabetes is beyond doubt, although its hypoglycemic strength is not as strong as insulin and insulin secretagogues, but it still has a relatively good hypoglycemic effect on type 2 diabetic patients who have not been treated with Western medicine in the early stage. Its advantages are as follows:
First, it has a certain hypoglycemic effect. In the 1990s, I once treated a patient. At that time, he had been looking for me in my outpatient clinic and began to take hypoglycemic Tongmain, and his blood sugar had been well controlled. Later, there was a stage, his blood sugar began to rise, fasting blood sugar to more than seven o'clock, after the meal blood sugar to more than nine o'clock, I want to give him some Western medicine to make blood sugar control better, but he resolutely opposed, insisted on continuing to use traditional Chinese medicine treatment, the result was later re-examination, blood sugar slowly lowered. What do I mean by giving this example, that is, Chinese medicine does have a hypoglycemic effect, and sometimes you will find it very incredible.
Second, the dose or type of western medicine hypoglycemic drugs can be reduced. TCM treatment of diabetes is multifactorial at play. For example, my previous research has shown that Yiqi Yangyin Chinese medicine has a dual regulatory effect on insulin, that is, it has an increasing effect on those with insufficient insulin secretion; for those with excessive insulin secretion, it has a reducing effect, which is now called improving insulin resistance. For patients with type 2 diabetes in China who currently have insufficient insulin secretion and insulin resistance, Traditional Chinese medicine can achieve two-way regulation.
Third, traditional Chinese medicine can improve clinical symptoms. Although chinese medicine has a certain effect on the treatment of diabetes, we still have to treat it objectively, that is, we must face this matter squarely: for those patients with high blood sugar and a relatively long course of illness, we must not simply use traditional Chinese medicine to lower sugar, and we must use Western medicine, otherwise there will be serious consequences, such as diabetic ketosis or even ketoacidosis. Now some people deliberately exaggerate the clinical efficacy of traditional Chinese medicine in order to achieve certain goals, and pit many diabetics, which is very unethical.
Q: In the case that biologics such as insulin have a good blood sugar control effect, what are the advantages of TCM in treating diabetes?
Professor Lin Lan: Indeed, there is no medicine in TCM that can quickly control blood sugar rise like insulin. However, controlling blood sugar is only the first step in the long march to treat diabetes, and the road ahead is still very long. Thanks to the emergence of a large number of modern biologics, blood sugar can be well controlled, which is much stronger than in the era when these preparations were not available. However, relevant studies have found that simply controlling blood sugar cannot fundamentally reverse the process of diabetes, and various diabetic complications will still gradually appear, which will seriously affect the quality of life of patients. Therefore, it is now possible to block the disease process of diabetes and delay or even completely prevent the emergence of various complications of diabetes as a more important topic and the primary concern of contemporary diabetes researchers and scientists. In this regard, there are some methods of Western medicine and Western medicine, but there are not many methods, and the effect is not particularly prominent. In this research field, the advantages of traditional Chinese medicine are very prominent.
Although TCM is relatively gentle in controlling blood sugar and is not as fast and effective as insulin, it has outstanding advantages in preventing complications. To sum up, there are the following points: First, reduce clinical symptoms and improve quality of life. Eliminating or alleviating clinical symptoms is one of the advantages of traditional Chinese medicine in the treatment of diabetic complications, such as the application of traditional Chinese medicine blood circulation and stasis therapy, which can well treat diabetic vascular lesions, reduce pain, numbness and other symptoms, improve the circulation of blood vessels in the affected limbs, protect the function of limbs, and have an irreplaceable role in improving the quality of life of long-term chronic patients. The second is to prevent the occurrence and development of complications. For patients before the middle of diabetic nephropathy, the use of traditional Chinese medicine therapy can reduce proteinuria and delay the progression of glomerular arteriosclerosis.
Q: In clinical work, in the treatment of diabetes, we often use Western medicine for treatment. So how do you think about the combination of traditional Chinese medicine and western medicine in the treatment of diabetes?
Professor Lin Lan: The combination of traditional Chinese medicine and western medicine in the treatment of diabetes is a very practical and the best clinical effect is a treatment plan. This includes two meanings:
First, the combined application of traditional Chinese medicine and Western medicine can not only effectively exert the hypoglycemic effect of Western medicine, but also minimize the adverse reactions and toxic side effects of Western medicine, and at the same time, the amount of Western medicine may be reduced after the application of traditional Chinese medicine. I've made observations about this before. For example, for patients with diabetic lower extremity vascular lesions, insulin or oral hypoglycemic drugs can be used to control blood sugar, and drugs that activate blood stasis and relieve pain can be used. That's what each has in it.
The second is to apply modern scientific and technological means to confirm and reveal the mechanism of traditional Chinese medicine in the treatment of diabetes, and provide a theoretical basis for better treatment of diabetes. Some of the work I have done before, such as the study of the mechanism of hypoglycemic nail tablets in the treatment of diabetes, is to find that Chinese medicine has a certain role in treating diabetes in the clinic, but why there is such a role, it is not enough to use Chinese medicine theory to explain, because our things should also be understood by Western medicine, Chinese medicine theory they do not understand, only through the way of Western medicine can they understand that our things are real, not exaggerated. Through clinical and basic research, we have revealed some of these scientific connotations, which provides a good idea for guiding the clinical practice of Traditional Chinese Medicine.
Source: This article is selected from "The Essence of Lin Lan's Fifty Years of Clinical Experience Inheritance", People's Medical Publishing House, author: Li Mingdi. Edited by Renwei Chinese Medicine.
Disclaimer: The article is reproduced for sharing only, if there is any infringement, please contact us, we will delete it in the first time.
Manuscripts are invited, and submissions are welcome: [email protected].