The October 23, 2014 issue of the Chinese Medical Tribune reported a case of a 26-year-old male with ulcerative colitis, who reported that “when he had an attack, he had to go to the toilet 5-7 times a day, and he also had nausea and abdominal pain after eating, and he lost a lot of weight”. The gastroenterology department of the hospital adopted fecal bacteria transplantation, screening the patient’s completely healthy friends and relatives as donors, and doctors extracted beneficial bacteria from the donor’s fresh stool and injected them into the patient’s intestine through endoscopy. After the operation, the patient’s abdominal pain and diarrhea improved significantly.
A recent diarrhea case treated by the author was a female, 70 years old, with colon polyps and pathology of tubular adenoma. She had diarrhea for 3 months after surgery, with 6 or 7 episodes of watery diarrhea from 3:00 am to 9:00 am, and even incontinence; body fatigue, intestinal tinnitus, thirst, and spontaneous sweating; no abdominal pain or distension, no urgency, good appetite, and slight weight loss; occasional small sores on the trunk. The abdomen is soft and the hands are warm and not cold. Repeated use of traditional Chinese medicine was ineffective, including Si Shen Wan. The patient’s severe diarrhea with symptoms of thirst was an indication for Ge Gen; although the illness lasted longer, the whole mental outlook did not show atrophy, and there was a yellow tongue and strong pulse, so Huang Lian and Huang Qin were also used, and in order to relieve his urgent diarrhea, peony was added. It was such a core prescription that completely resolved the patient’s suffering by the time of the third follow-up visit.
The above two cases were diagnosed differently in Western medicine, but brought similar suffering to the patients. From the TCM point of view, there are indeed similarities, and proper treatment can yield positive results.