Mr. Xu, 34 years old, whose hometown is in Jilin Province, Northeast China, has been living in Yanjiao for more than a year. He has been frail and sickly since he was a child, and he gets colds and fevers at every turn.
Although Mr. Xu is frail and sickly, he has never had any serious illnesses and seldom goes to the hospital, and if he has a headache or fever, he can take some Chinese medicine, drink a painkiller or fever reducer and soon get well. The only thing is that 4 years ago, he started to have back pain, so he went to a local Chinese herbalist who said it was a lumbar disc herniation and prescribed a packet of Chinese herbs for him to decoct and eat at home. The daily decoction is a time-consuming and labor-intensive task, but in order to cure the disease, he did not care much, after all, Chinese herbal medicine is still cheap. This back pain disease to the big hospital examination and treatment up, the cost is high scary, if the doctor said that surgery, at least 30,000 to 50,000, their hard earned money, and now even the bride price of a bride has not been enough.
The herbal medicine at the beginning to eat some use, lumbar pain relief a lot, and then more and more useless, waist or pain, Mr. Xu remembered the words of the old Chinese doctor, the lumbar disc herniation can not be tired, while taking medicine while working, every day to take medicine this back pain can not be cured, medicine for nothing, the money was also spent in vain. Simply quit your job and rest at home, and focus on decocting medicine every day to cure the disease.
Three years have passed, and the back pain is much better. But in the last month or two, the health condition is not as good as before, the whole body is weak, dizzy and panic, even walking is feeling hard, climbing a floor to stop and rest half a day.
When he finally decided to go to the hospital for a check-up, he found that his anemia was very serious, and his hemoglobin was only 45g/L (normal range 120-160g/L), which was enough to qualify for severe anemia. He heard that the hematology treatment at the Lu Daopei Hematology Oncology Center was high and close to where he lived, so he was admitted to our department last week in order to find out the cause of anemia.
There are many causes of anemia, and the common one is nutritional anemia, which is caused by the lack of iron or blood-forming materials such as folic acid and vitamin B12, mainly due to excessive menstruation or partial diet in women. In addition, there are aplastic anemia, hemolytic anemia, chronic disease anemia, thalassemia, renal anemia, myelodysplastic syndrome and so on.
Because of the poor economic condition of this patient, we first do some basic examinations to look for clues to the cause of the disease from the traces found, and then follow the vine to find the cause of the disease. We avoided the cost of a large network of tests.
The results that came back the next day surprised us. The patient’s abdominal ultrasound suggested that both kidneys had shrunken, and the blood biochemical results showed creatinine 1515umol/L and urea 34mmol/L, which is typical of the uremic phase of chronic renal failure! The patient’s anemia is also very easy to explain, and is known as renal anemia in medical terms. May be mainly related to the following factors: 1. kidney atrophy, by the kidney secretion of erythropoietin reduced, affecting the bone marrow red blood cell production, maturation and release; 2. patients with renal failure, metabolic waste accumulates in the body, affecting the normal operation of hematopoietic function; 3. chronic renal failure patients are often accompanied by nausea, loss of appetite and other gastrointestinal discomfort, affecting the intake and absorption of hematopoietic raw materials in eating and food.
But, a good person, how to get uremia?
We suspect that it may be related to the three years of Chinese herbal medicine that Mr. Xu took seriously, we, just suspect!
Many people have the impression that Chinese medicine is the “treasure” left by our ancestors, and that herbal medicine has no toxic side effects and cures diseases to the root.
Life, sometimes, can really play tricks on people, you think she is an angel, she may be the devil, you think she is the devil, she may be an angel instead!
We retrieved that there are many herbal medicines or proprietary Chinese medicines with renal impairment, mainly including three major categories.
1. Botanicals: mainly include herbal medicines containing six types of toxic ingredients.
①Alkaloids: such as Radix Rehmanniae, Kunming Mountain Begonia, Cao Wu, Chuan Wu, Shan Ciguan, Bei Dou Gen, Qiu Shui Xian, Yi Mu Cao, Castor Seed, Poisonous Mushroom, Hooked, Ephedra, etc.;
②Protein-containing: such as croton, black bean, etc;
③ glycosides: including cardiac glycosides (such as digitalis, entheogen, sea x fruit, etc.), saponins (such as hyoscyamus, Guanzhong, etc.), flavonoid glycosides (such as and hexagonal), anthraquinone glycosides (such as aloe vera) and other glycosides (such as celosia, crow’s nest, make Junzi, iron flat, earth Sanqi, etc.);
④Acids and alcohols: such as Aristolochia, Guanmutong, Fangji, Qingmu Xiang, Tian Xian Vine, Bonesetter, Yaotong, Da Feng Zi, etc;
⑤ Ketones, phenols, sugars, enzymes: such as cottonseed, lacquer tree, saltbush, etc;
⑥containing volatile oils: earthwort, rosin, etc.
2. Animals: mainly including viper antithrombin products (containing snake venom), spotted worm, red maiden worm, green maiden worm (all containing spotted worm), fish bile (containing bile acid toxin), as well as whole scorpion, centipede, leech, toadstool, cicada molting, beehive, etc.
3. Minerals: including Chinese medicine containing arsenic, mercury, lead and other metal compounds, such as: arsenic (containing arsenic trioxide), arsenic (containing arsenic oxide or arsenic sulfide), cinnabar (containing mercury sulfide), staghorn (containing arsenic sulfide), mercury (containing mercury), mithridates (containing lead oxide), white or red ascending dane (containing mercury oxide), bile alum (containing copper sulfate), green alum (containing ferrous sulfate), furnace glycine (containing zinc carbonate) minerals), substituted ochre (containing iron trioxide), etc.
In addition to the above single herbs, there are also some traditional prescriptions that may lead to clinical symptoms such as edema (e.g. Licorice and Dry Ginger Soup, Peony and Licorice Soup, Shenxiang and Hesitation Pill, etc.) or toxic kidney damage (e.g. Siwusan, Yunnan Baiyao, Kusuo Hemorrhoids, Sanpian a Gun, Niuhuang Qingxin Pill, Niuhuang Jiefang Wan, Zhu Shaan Shen Wan, Dahuoluo Dan, Zai Zai Wan, Zhi Bao Zhen, Liushen Wan, etc.) when used improperly.
After the consultation with the attending nephrologist, Mr. Xu was transferred to a kidney specialist for further treatment. First do hemodialysis, as soon as possible through the equipment to discharge the metabolic waste in the body, such as conditions, may have to do a kidney transplant.
The toxic side effects of western medicine are open robbery, easy to hide! And the toxic side effects of Chinese medicine are dark arrows, hard to prevent! Therefore, you need to be careful when taking Chinese medicine, sometimes the toxic side effects of Chinese medicine can be fatal.