Cancer treatment: why do we need to combine Chinese and Western medicine?

Cancer is a type of disease that threatens human life and health and is very complex. Except for hair and nails, almost every tissue and organ of the human body can suffer from various types of cancer. The diagnosis is very complicated, and the treatment is equally complicated. 1. At present, it is difficult to rely on a single means to cure cancer, but must rely on comprehensive treatment. At present, except for in-situ cancer at very early stage, which can be cured by surgery, most other cancers are difficult to be cured by a single means. Cancer treatment must be comprehensive. In other words, regardless of Chinese medicine, Western medicine, surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, immunotherapy, intervention, etc., as long as it is conducive to controlling the disease, as long as it is conducive to improving the quality of survival, as long as it is conducive to prolonging the survival time, it is a good treatment. Many western hospitals divide tumor treatment into radiotherapy, chemotherapy, Chinese medicine and biological therapy, which is actually not scientific enough and not conducive to the integration and application of treatment technology. 2. Combining Chinese and Western medicine to fight against tumor is conducive to giving full play to various treatment advantages. First of all, the practice of modern medical development proves that western medical means such as surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, these methods treat tumors with exact efficacy for local control. However, due to the toxic side effects, patients often find it difficult to bear and their quality of life is reduced. Chinese medicine, on the other hand, has precisely advantages in reducing toxic side effects and improving quality of life. Secondly, although radiotherapy and chemotherapy have better local control of tumor, local control does not necessarily prolong patient’s survival, but sometimes shorten the survival time. Therefore, Chinese medicine is needed to increase the effectiveness and sensitivity to achieve the maximum significance of prolonging survival. Once again, the occurrence of cancer is mainly due to the dysregulation of the human internal environment and changes in the cellular microenvironment, resulting in a series of genetic regulation malfunctions, and the human immunity fails to detect and correct such abnormalities in time, which eventually develops into cancer. The main purpose of surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy is – kill! Kill! Kill! But the actual effect is to treat the symptoms but not the root cause. As long as the root cause is not improved, cancer is not killed, but not eliminated. What if we increase the effort to kill again? Then even the patient will be killed by mistake. What about Chinese medicine? It mainly focuses on regulating and treating the root cause, improving the cellular microenvironment and human immune function. Although the effect of TCM is slow, we will see in clinical practice that once the tumor is controlled by TCM, it often does not recur for a long time. And we also require that TCM treatment must be adhered to for a long time in adult and month. In addition, patients are very different from each other in terms of disease type, cancer genesis, and physical constitution. Relying on only a few Western medical methods or drugs, it is difficult to cope with various complex changes, which is the reason why radiation and chemotherapy are not effective. In contrast, the specialty of Chinese medicine is to treat the patient according to the person, place and time, and to identify the subtle changes of the patient, which makes the treatment more targeted and flexible. Therefore, the combination of Chinese and Western medicine can complement each other’s shortcomings with their strengths to achieve the good effect of anti-cancer conditioning.