Medical herbal therapy preparations

Medical herbal therapy preparations are neither the much-hyped "panacea" nor a worthless "IQ tax". They are a type of medical product that has been verified by modern medical standards and used in clinical applications in compliance with regulations. It has clear applicable scenarios and boundaries. The current controversy over its value in the academic community mainly focuses on the standardization of ingredients and the level of clinical evidence.

During the three years I worked in the pharmacy department of a grassroots traditional Chinese medicine hospital, the most common problem I encountered was that patients asked if they could use the "herbal miracle medicine" they bought online. The one who impressed me most was Aunt Zhang who came last spring and suffered from recurrent aphthous ulcer. She used to gargle with compound chlorhexidine every time she got sick. It was so bitter that she couldn't even taste the salty taste after eating for two days. Later, I prescribed her the medical dandelion and honeysuckle rinse made by our hospital - the blue bottle of in-hospital preparation that is only sold in the pharmacy of our hospital. She came back for a follow-up visit three days later. The ulcer was basically healed and she said she didn't feel any discomfort at all except for a slight grassy smell.

Of course, I have also encountered many Western medicine colleagues who sneer at such preparations. The core doubts are actually very real: the ingredients of most herbal preparations are complex, and the content of effective substances cannot be quantified as accurately as chemical drugs. The incident of kidney damage caused by herbal preparations containing aristolochic acid that broke out in the past few years has indeed sounded the alarm to the entire industry. Oh, by the way, here is an important point: those "three-no herbal products" that do not have national drug approval and no hospital preparation batch number are not considered medical herbal therapy preparations at all, and problems should not be attributed to regular products.

Traditional Chinese medicine practitioners who support its application pay more attention to the toxicity reduction and synergy effect of compatibility. For example, we commonly use Maxing Shigan oral preparations. The ephedra in it can easily lead to increased heart rate and insomnia when used alone. However, when combined with gypsum, licorice and almonds, the adverse reaction rate of children with exogenous high fever using it to reduce fever is about 3 percentage points lower than that of ibuprofen alone. This is the result of a small sample of clinical statistics conducted by our hospital last year, and it is not a lie.

A mother came to me before and said that after using internet-famous Lithospermum ointment to treat a red buttocks, her child got a rash. When I saw that the one she bought was a makeup brand, it had a lot of essences and preservatives added to it, and the Lithospermum used was unprocessed. Hard Lithospermum itself has a certain irritation. Later, I gave her the medical Lithospermum oil from our hospital, which is a medical device-type dressing soaked in processed Xinjiang soft Lithospermum and passed toxicological testing. The child's rash disappeared after two days of use.

Many people don’t know that formal medical herbal preparations do not actually have a unified “identity”. Some are formal Chinese patent medicines that have obtained the national drug approval number Z, such as the commonly bought Yinhuang lozenges and compound Lithospermum oil.； Some are in-hospital preparations that can only be purchased at the prescribing hospital. These are generally old prescriptions that have been used by hospitals for many years. They have stable effects, but they don’t have enough money to go through nationwide clinical approval. They are very cost-effective. ； There is also a category of herbal dressings with medical device batch numbers, which are mostly used for skin care and wound healing, and are not intended for internal use.

But I never tell patients how versatile these preparations are. The last time I met a young man with acute suppurative tonsillitis, his fever reached 39 degrees and he insisted on drinking Pudilan and refused to take antibiotics. I scolded him directly - for this kind of bacterial infection, antibiotics must be used, and herbal preparations can at best be used as an auxiliary. If you insist on delaying things, you will be the one who suffers in the end. Generally speaking, for mild illnesses such as mild pharyngitis, oral ulcers, first-degree burns, red buttocks in infants and young children, and seasonal dry and itchy skin, using the right medical herbal preparations will not only have good effects but also have minimal side effects. If it is a severe or emergency condition, it is safer to seek the corresponding specialist treatment first.

Nowadays, everyone's prejudice against this kind of preparations is largely caused by unscrupulous merchants. They tout ordinary herbal skin care products as "medical grade" and sell them at dozens of times higher prices. Some even boast that they can cure diabetes and cancer. Don't worry, they are all liars. Interestingly, there was a pharmaceutical research article last year that said that the placebo effect of herbal preparations can account for about 20%. I think this is not a bad thing. After all, if it can make patients suffer less and have no side effects, a proper placebo effect is not unacceptable.

I now have three or four regular medical herbal preparations at home. When my child gets prickly heat, I apply some herbal calamine. When I stay up late and have pharyngitis, I take two silver-yellow lozenges. My mother uses medical astragalus hand dressings when her hands are cracked in winter. They all cost a few dollars or more and are very cost-effective. In the final analysis, it is just an ordinary medical product commonly used in clinical practice. Don't make it a myth or beat it to death with a stick. Use it in the right scenario and choose the one with the regular batch number. That's enough.