How does Chinese medicine treat diabetes?
In Chinese medicine, diabetes mellitus can be generally classified into Yin deficiency and heat, Qi and Yin deficiency and Yin and Yang deficiency.
1. Yin deficiency with heat: manifesting as irritability and thirst, dry throat, dry tongue, excessive food and hunger, constipation, red tongue with little fluid and yellow coating, slippery pulse or stringiness. Treatment with nourishing Yin and clearing heat. Winter mulberry leaf, ground bone bark, Xiaochuanlian, smallpox powder, original maitong, and raw earth yellow are used. Lu Hao, Diabetes Specialist, Shanghai Shuguang Hospital East Hospital
2. Qi and Yin deficiency: manifesting as weakness, shortness of breath, spontaneous sweating, aggravated by movement, dry mouth, dry tongue, excessive drinking and urination, five heartburn, constipation, soreness and weakness of the waist and knees, light tongue or dark red tongue, tooth marks on the edge of the tongue, thin white moss and less fluid, or less moss, and weak pulse. Treatment with benefiting Qi and nourishing Yin. Choose yu zhu, made yellow essence, raw astragalus, made lady’s mantle, wolfberry.
3, Yin and Yang two deficiencies: manifested as weakness and spontaneous sweating, cold limbs, waist and knees sore and weak, ear wheel anxious and dry, drinking and urinating, or swelling and less urination, or five diarrhea, impotence and premature ejaculation, light tongue with white fur, sunken and weak pulse. Treatment with warming Yang and nurturing Yin. Deer antler cream, rehmannia, Cornu Cervi Pantotrichum, Xian Ling Spleen, Cistanches, and Cuscuta.
TCM Food Therapy
Principles of dietary therapy
The basic principles of dietary therapy for diabetes in TCM are balanced proportions, taste discrimination, and moderate food intake. The following are the characteristics of a balanced diet.1. The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine: “Five grains are nourishing, five fruits are helpful, five animals are beneficial, and five vegetables are filling”. In the “Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine”: “Five grains are nourishing, five fruits are helpful, five animals are beneficial, and five dishes are filling”. 2. Chinese medicine divides food into four natures: cold, warm and hot. loss”. Therefore, we should maintain a balance of the five tastes of sweet, sour, bitter, pungent and salty. 4, “Drinking food is about”: “good nourishment, first hunger and food, food do not make full, first thirsty and drink, drink do not make too much, food want to number and less, do not want to be full in the hunger, hunger in the full” the requirements for the amount of food is neither “too much “, nor “less than”, over-drinking and over-starvation are diet taboo. Advocate a small number of meals, avoid gluttony.
Food treatment methods
It is advisable to choose foods that have the function of clearing heat and promoting the production of body fluid and nourishing Yin. Such as spinach, radish, bitter melon, winter melon, corn, yam, kiwi, water chestnut, sea cucumber, carp, snail, chicken, duck, goose, rabbit, milk, etc.. Be careful with spicy foods that help heat, such as ginger, pepper, leek, wine, etc. Advocate a light diet and avoid “sweet, fatty and thick”. For those who have phlegm, eat foods that can resolve phlegm, such as radish, pear, almond, loofah, etc., and limit phlegm-producing foods such as pork. For those with blood stasis, you can eat foods that have the effect of activating blood stasis, such as purple eggplant, red cabbage, lotus root, rose tea, etc.
Commonly used foods to lower sugar
Bitter gourd: bitter and cold in taste, has the function of clearing heat and detoxifying, tonifying the liver and kidney, removing annoyance and quenching thirst, and is good at treating thirst. Bitter gourd can be dried and powdered and served with warm water: 30 g of bitter gourd can also be used, decocted in tea and served frequently: or bitter gourd cut into shreds and eaten with meals.
Cabbage: Cabbage is rich in fiber, vitamins and minerals, but also contains insulin-like ingredients, often taken to have a more obvious hypoglycemic effect, but the body is cold people caution use.
Gynostemma: rich in protein, vitamins, flavonoids and ginsenosides, known as “southern ginseng”, has enhanced immunity, anti-fatigue, anti-hypoxia and hypoglycemic effect, on tumors, hypertension and diabetes have certain therapeutic effects, and long-term use without any side effects.
Mushrooms: rich in protein, polysaccharides and trace elements of manganese, zinc, magnesium, selenium and tin, have obvious calming and hypotensive, anti-fatigue, immune-enhancing and hypoglycemic effects, especially for diabetic patients with thin body shape. In recent years, it has been found that monkey head mushroom is rich in fiber and glucan, which has been proven to have significant hypoglycemic effects.
Silver fungus and fungus species: rich in protein, crude fiber, vitamins and polysaccharides, low in calories, high in nutrition, with anti-coagulant and anti-tumor effects. The specific acidic polysaccharide it contains has the function of repairing pancreatic islet cells and hypoglycemic effect.
Coix seed: its carbohydrate content is lower than rice, while its protein and vitamin content is three times that of rice, and also contains coixin and triterpenoids, which have anti-cancer, diuretic and hypoglycemic effects, especially for hypertensive and diabetic patients with urination and obesity as the main symptoms.
Yellow eel: warm in nature and sweet in taste, has the effect of tonifying and strengthening the spleen, dispersing the wind and opening up the lung, entering the kidney and lung meridian. Eel contains eosin A and B, which has a significant hypoglycemic effect. Japan has extracted the eel body of these two effective substances, made of new drugs to lower sugar “diabetes clear”.
Common hypoglycemic meal
Bitter melon fried lean pork: 250 g of fresh bitter melon, lean pork 100 g, fried and eaten together.
Astragalus yam soup: Astragalus 15 g, yam 30 g, decoction for tea, 3 to 5 times a day.
Gorgonzola boiled duck: with gorgonzola 100-~120 g, an old duck, the gorgonzola into the belly of the duck, placed in a tile jar, add the right amount of water, cooked for about 2 hours, seasoning to take.
wolfberry stew rabbit meat: wolfberry 30 g, rabbit meat 100 g, put rabbit meat and wolfberry into the pot, add the right amount of water, stew with a gentle fire until 80%, add seasonings until cooked.
Yellow essence meal shreds: yellow meal 200 grams, yellow essence 20 grams, yellow essence soaked in water, cut shreds for use. Eel shredded with starch, smooth into the frying pan, fish out and control the oil. Put the bottom oil, put onion, ginger, stir-fry, pour in wine, soy sauce, yellow essence shreds, fresh bamboo shoots, green pepper shreds, carrot shreds, stir-fry together, then add the slippery eel shreds, stir-fry evenly, point sesame oil out of the spoon can be.
Corn beard lean meat soup: corn beard 30 grams lean meat 100 grams, boil soup, salt to taste.
Watermelon peel and pollen formula: 15 grams each of watermelon peel and winter melon peel, 12 grams of smallpox powder. Add water and decoction, twice a day, half a cup each time.
Silkworm pupa soup: 10 silkworm cocoons with pupae, decoction with water, taken twice a day.
Yam, yucca and white pigeon soup: 30 grams of Chinese yam, 30 grams of yucca, 30 grams of maitake, and 1 white pigeon. Put all the ingredients together in a tile pot, add the right amount of water, boil it on a high flame for 2 hours, season and serve.
Paste formula for diabetes
Paste recipe is a decoction of Chinese herbal medicine, adding gum, deer horn gum, tortoise board gum and other gum medicines, decocted into a paste, according to the need to add icing sugar or syrup, diabetic patients add xylitol and other corrective taste, prepared into a paste. It is a good way to take tonic in winter. However, before taking the cream, you should ask the Chinese medicine practitioner to prescribe according to your own physique and identify the evidence, just like tailoring your body to make a personalized cream that perfectly suits your physiological characteristics.
How to take tonic for diabetic patients
Diabetes belongs to the scope of “thirst” in Chinese medicine. At the beginning of the disease, all patients have different degrees of thirst and drink a lot, eat a lot and have good hunger, describe thinness, frequent urination and weakness. It is a manifestation of dryness and heat in the lung and stomach. As the disease progresses, symptoms of spleen and kidney deficiency or liver and kidney deficiency may appear. Therefore, in the beginning stage of diabetes, the prescriptions for clearing heat and moistening dryness, benefiting qi and nourishing yin can be taken, such as Radix et Rhizoma Ginseng, Radix et Rhizoma Ginseng, Radix Rehmanniae Praeparata, Rhizoma Macrocephalae and Rhizoma Smallpox; in the later stage of the disease, the prescriptions for tonifying the spleen and kidney or nourishing the liver and kidney can be taken, such as Radix et Rhizoma Ginseng, Radix Codonopsis, Radix Astragali, Fructus Lycii, Radix Shou Wu, Colla Corii Asini and Colla Corii Asini. If the patient has foul breath, yellow urine, itchy skin, yellow tongue coating, etc., it is necessary to clear the damp-heat first, and only after the damp-heat is cleared can the tonic be taken.
How to take ointment prescriptions
The most important thing is not to seek quick results. It is not correct to take a cream prescription several times a day and finish it within half a month, which is often counterproductive. The correct way is to take one spoonful in the morning with boiling water, and add one spoonful in the evening if there is no discomfort after meals or according to medical advice. The seasonal period for starting to take it is generally from “winter” to “spring”, which is about 90 days. It is important to stop taking the cream when you have a cold or indigestion.
Commonly used Chinese medicines
Liou Wei Di Huang Wan: mainly for kidney yin deficiency, heat symptoms are not obvious
Zhi Bai Di Huang Wan: for yin deficiency with heat, heat symptoms are slightly obvious
Qiju Dihuang Wan: mainly for deficiency of liver and kidney yin
Jin Kui Kidney Qi Pill: mainly kidney yang deficiency
Acupuncture treatment for diabetes
Acupuncture is an important part of Chinese medicine. The treatment of diabetes and its complications by acupuncture has been recorded in ancient literature. The modern application of acupuncture and moxibustion for the treatment of diabetes has a remarkable efficiency of more than 75%, especially acupuncture has achieved better results in the prevention and treatment of complications of diabetes.
The acupuncture points and methods: Yin deficiency and heat type were taken from Yang meridian points, namely Diaphragm Yu, Spleen Yu, and Foot San Li, all needled bilaterally, and the diarrhea method was applied after obtaining qi, in order to remove Yang meridian heat; Qi and Yin deficiency type were taken from Yin meridian points, namely Shou Ze, Di Ji, San Yin Jiao and Zhong Gui and Qi Hai points, and the acupuncture was applied with flat tonifying and flat diarrhea method; Yin and Yang deficiency type were taken from Yin meridian points to tonify Yin and nurture Yang, namely Shou Ze, Di Ji and San Yin Jiao, and the tonifying method was applied, and Zhong Gui and Qi Hai were each treated with 3 strokes of ginger moxibustion. Each group was treated once a day, and the needles were kept for 20 minutes, and the needles were performed once at 10-minute intervals. 10 times was considered as a course of treatment, and the next course of treatment was performed at an interval of 3 days.
Moxibustion therapy
Main acupoints: 1, foot three li, middle epigastric; 2, life-gate, body column, spleen yu; 3, qihai, guan yuan; 4, jiaozhong, kidney yu; 5, huagai, liangmen; 6, dazhi, liver yu; 7, xing interval, zhongji, abdominal mourning; 8, lung yu, diaphragm yu, kidney yu.
Ear acupuncture therapy
Main points: pancreas, gallbladder, kidney, marginal middle, interpalpable, sympathetic, and lower pancreatic tip. Supporting points: Sanjiao, thirst point, hunger point.
Skin acupuncture therapy
Method: Mainly percussion on both sides of the spine, with thoracic vertebrae 7-10 as the key percussion site, generally moderate stimulation, once every 2 days, 10 times for a course of treatment.
Water acupuncture therapy
Acupuncture points: 1. T3 pinch spine, pancreas and kidney; 2. T10 pinch spine, pancreas and kidney; 3. pinch spine, pancreas and kidney.
Method: The three groups of acupuncture points are used alternately, with 0.5-1 ml of 0.5% angelica injection or vitamin Bl and vitamin B2 injection for each point, once a day, 10 times as l course of treatment.
Buried thread therapy
Points: Pancreatic Yu, Kidney Yu, Sanjiao Yu (double).
Method: choose 1~2 points each time and use them alternately. 1 time in 10-14 days, 10 times as a course of treatment.
Qigong for the treatment of diabetes
There are more than 30 kinds of modern qigong methods for treating diabetes, among which the internal qi therapy of patients practicing qigong by themselves is more widely used, especially the static exercise is the main one, and the combination of dynamic and static exercise is better. Modern qigong treatment for diabetes is mainly for type 2 diabetes. Qigong has the function of adjusting nerve and endocrine disorders, promoting insulin secretion and improving the body’s sensitivity to insulin; it has the function of improving microcirculation, and also has the function of improving the overall quality of the body and regulating sugar, fat and protein metabolism, so that it can lower blood sugar and blood lipids and prevent and treat diabetes and its complications. Since qigong has the advantages of being easy to learn, safe and effective, it is worth promoting its application.