Wen/Meng Changhai, The First Affiliated Hospital of Henan College of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Li Fucheng, Department of Endocrinology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Henan College of Traditional Chinese Medicine, recently, some people ask about detoxification and skin care, and ask whether it is suitable to take certain products recommended by advertisements; some patients often struggle with bad complexion and wonder whether there are toxins accumulated in their bodies that cannot be eliminated. Here, it is necessary to know how Chinese medicine is “detoxification”. Detoxification should start with “poison”. Chinese medicine has a rich understanding of toxicity, and the theory involves the cause, mechanism, diagnosis, treatment and medication. Such as the classics of Chinese medicine “Huangdi Neijing” has: “Although there is a big wind harsh poison, not the ability to harm. The “Shaoyang in the spring, cold poison is not in, …… Yangming in the spring, damp poison is not born, …… Taiyin in the spring, heat poison is not born, …… Sun in the spring, dry poison Not born”, “big poison cure, ten to its six, often poison cure, ten to its seven.” The most important thing is that you have to be able to get a good idea of what you are doing. So what exactly is poison? We believe that poison refers to all substances or factors that are harmful to the human body or can have an adverse effect on the human body. Conceptually, we believe that there are four main aspects: First, it refers to the toxicity and bias of drugs or medicines in general. Chinese medicine has the term of major, minor and non-toxic, such as Chinese medicine Xiong Huang, Toadstool, Huang Yao Zi, Half Xia, etc. have toxicity, and even mild drugs also have the saying “it is medicine three points poison”; secondly, it refers to the disease evidence, mostly seen in surgical diseases, such as Dan Poison, Committee poisoning, Yin and Yang poison, tangle waist fire Dan, epidemic poison dysentery, etc.; thirdly, it refers to the cause of the disease, including the ability to produce the organism The third refers to the cause of the disease, including the ability to produce toxic (or toxic) effect on the body of various disease-causing substances, such as the “Nei Jing” have warm poison, wet poison, dry poison, heat poison, fire poison. In addition, there are also epidemic and plague gas, warm poison, poisonous gas (miasma), insect and animal poison, medicine poison and food poison. Poison can be categorized as internal evil poison and external evil poison. External toxins include pathogenic microorganisms such as bacteria and viruses in modern medicine, as well as various environmental pollutants and chemical toxins such as pesticides, fertilizers, noise, electromagnetic waves and chemicals with toxic side effects, etc. They also include the six externally induced perversions (wind, cold, heat, humidity, dryness and fire), hostile qi and miscellaneous qi in Chinese medicine. The endogenous toxins are caused by the loss of harmony between yin and yang of the body, the dysfunction of the internal organs, and the improper operation of qi and blood, resulting in the metabolism of physiological products or pathological products that cannot be discharged in time and accumulate in the body, such as blood stasis becoming stasis toxin over time, phlegm becoming phlegm toxin over time, water transportation malfunctioning becoming wet toxin, and urine congestion becoming urine toxin in the body. In modern medicine, there are many endogenous toxins, such as creatinine, urea nitrogen and other metabolic wastes in the blood, and toxins produced by bacteria in the intestinal tract, etc. On the other hand, physiological substances sometimes cannot play their normal role can also be called toxins. For example, bile is a normal digestive fluid in the body, but when it enters the abdominal cavity and causes peritonitis, it becomes an endogenous toxin. Toxin can be both the cause of disease and the pathological product of the disease process, and as a pathological product, it often acts as a new cause of disease, causing new disease or aggravating the original condition. In this regard, the toxins mentioned in Chinese medicine can be said to be everywhere, which is why people are more likely to combine toxins with medicine, especially Chinese medicine, to form the impression that “whatever is harmful to the human body is poison”. We believe that “poison” is a general description of the nature or extent of the disease, and that it is inappropriate to generalize the theory of poison by calling more serious diseases or virulent and difficult causes poison, while understanding all diseases and evils as poison and all treatments as eliminating poison. Chinese medicine has developed unique theories around poison, such as hot poison, poisonous heat attack, and some special treatment methods, such as vomiting, clearing heat and detoxification, which have a lot of similarities with the eight methods of Chinese medicine: sweating, vomiting, down, warming, clearing, and eliminating, and tonic. Such as the treatment of patients who take toxic drugs and take the Chung vomit method, the treatment of wind and fever colds to clear the heat and detoxification of the method is often used to pungent and cool the surface of the “sweat” method, poisoning patients with syncope of the extremities also commonly used some pungent and warm drugs, weak patients often feel poisonous evil in the drug to remove the evil with tonic drugs, etc.. From a therapeutic point of view, detoxification in Chinese medicine is often not the use of a single method but the organic combination of the eight methods with the actual situation of the patient. So is it possible to say that the theory of “detoxification and skin care” is equivalent to the eight methods of Chinese medicine? Here we need to explain the problem of human skin color change. As some doctrines say, a person’s complexion is bad because the body contains toxins, and the complexion is not glorious unless the toxins are removed. Chinese medicine believes that the human face color and the five internal organs are closely related, such as the heart of its Hua in the face, the lungs of its Hua in the hair, etc., the formation of the characteristic Tibetan elephant doctrine. From the theory of Chinese medicine, the change of human skin color is not only related to the level of human health, but also closely related to weather changes and geographical environment. For our population, a healthy skin tone is red and yellow, bright and subtle. Some people may appear black, white, yellow, but not necessarily sick, may have been so or by the influence of the weather; and then there is the spleen and stomach cold dampness caused by the patient’s face yellow, heart disease patients face red, if this is said to have “poison” is not appropriate. If a jaundiced patient has a golden complexion and yellow skin, it is still relevant to talk about dampness and toxicity. According to the theory of Chinese medicine, the treatment can improve the color of the face while eliminating the disease. For example, if the patient’s face is yellow due to cold and dampness in the spleen and stomach, by warming the spleen and stomach and nourishing the right qi, the face will gradually turn rosy; if the face is sallow, by tonifying the kidney function, the face will return to normal. Is this treatment the same as detoxifying and nourishing the face? In fact, it cannot be equated. What we have to pay attention to is the difference between the colorful eight methods and the propaganda of the doctrine of detoxification and skin care, such as the detoxification and skin care drugs on the market, although there are tonic and other drugs in the middle, but the main ingredients are the ventilating drugs rhubarb, mannite, senna, etc. This determines that the function of such formulas tend to be more of a downward and clear method, and the backward extrapolation of the evil removed by this method, such as accumulation of food, accumulation of stool equivalent to poison, is obviously limited. If this theory is used to detoxify the patient’s face without differentiating the patient’s condition, it will cause harm to the patient because it is not in accordance with the theory of diagnosis and treatment in TCM. Since poison is more involved in the cause, mechanism, evidence and type of disease, the specific treatment of poison should be closely integrated with the needs of the disease, and should be used in a flexible manner with the manifestation of poison in different diseases and evidence. Such as poison caused by heat evidence with detoxification to clear heat rule of law, poison heat caused by the actual evidence with detoxification to attack the rule of law, poison injury to the blood caused by stasis detoxification to clear the stasis of Ying, detoxification of poison brewing dampness (benefit) dampness method, the remaining poison does not go to the patient’s deficiency of vital energy to be supplemented with the agent and so on. Regardless of what method, the fundamental is to reconcile the body’s yin and yang, to get rid of disease and evil, adjust the function of the internal organs. Today’s theory of detoxification and skin care is mainly the use of drugs to promote excretion and metabolism, similar to some of the eight methods of Chinese medicine, which have some similarities in form and connotation. However, it is not the same, because the theory of Chinese medicine talks about the three causes of treatment, rather than the same formula for all people. It can be said that the eight methods of Chinese medicine are as vast as the frontier, while the detoxification of the face only lives in a corner. In life, some detoxification and skin care theories are not enough if they are only used as a gimmick to sell goods; if they are in line with the theoretical requirements of TCM and have good effects on disease treatment, it is definitely a subject worth exploring and is very beneficial to the enrichment of TCM theory.