Medical herbal therapy preparations

Medical herbal therapy preparations are neither herbal ointments made from folk remedies, nor the "purely natural, additive-free" daily herbal products hyped by merchants. Instead, they are preparations made from medicinal plants, prepared through modern pharmaceutical technology, approved by the drug regulatory department, and can only be used in regular medical settings. The core feature is that their effectiveness and safety have been clinically verified, and the entire chain of production, circulation, and use is subject to the medical supervision system.

Not long ago, when I was helping in a dermatology clinic, I met an older lady who rushed in with half a tube of Internet-famous "Medical Herbal Eczema Ointment". She said that after applying it to her child for three days, the rash not only did not go away, but became swollen. I took it and scanned the code on the package. It was just an ordinary cosmetics registration number, without even the most basic drug approval. This is also the misunderstanding that most people have about this type of preparation: Anything with the keywords "herbal" and "medical" can be counted? Not really. The types of preparations you can get in regular hospitals are either marketed drugs with the Z batch number of the National Drug Approval, such as Pudilan Anti-inflammatory Oral Liquid, which is commonly used to treat upper respiratory tract infections, and Jingwanhong Ointment, which is used to treat burns and scalds. ； Either it is an in-hospital preparation developed by the hospital itself, which must be approved by the provincial drug regulatory department before it can be produced. It can only be prescribed in the hospital and cannot be sold externally. For example, the compound lithospermum oil that has been passed down in our department for almost 20 years will hardly blister when applied to a freshly burned wound the next day. Many patients from other places come here by high-speed rail to get it. They can only get two bottles at most at a time. If you apply more, you won’t prescribe it, for fear that someone will take it out and resell it.

When it comes to this, we cannot avoid the differences that have been quarreling in the academic community for almost two decades, and no one can convince anyone. Researchers engaged in phytochemistry are obsessed with "monomer purification" and believe that only by extracting the active ingredients in herbs can the dosage be accurately controlled and the adverse reactions can be clearly understood. Artemisinin is the strongest foundation - At that time, Mr. Tu Youyou extracted the artemisinin monomer from Artemisia annua, which solved the problem of unstable boiling efficiency of raw grass and the inability to use it in batches. It is not an exaggeration to say that this is a benchmark for the modernization of herbal preparations. However, scholars who study traditional prescriptions do not accept this theory. They believe that the core advantage of herbs is the synergistic effect of multiple components. For example, the compound licorice tablets that everyone is familiar with, if only purified glycyrrhizic acid is used to relieve cough, the effect will be reduced, and it is more likely to cause side effects of water and sodium retention. On the contrary, compound preparations made according to the compatibility of prescriptions have increased efficacy and reduced the incidence of adverse reactions by 30%. In the past two years, the two sides have slowly begun to work together. Many newly developed preparations do not pursue 100% monomer purity, nor do they directly grind the raw grass into capsules. Instead, they retain the effective active ingredients and screen out impurities that can cause adverse reactions. This is a new compromise.

I am also a beneficiary of this kind of preparation. In winter, I get cheilitis when the wind blows. Using hormonal ointments tends to leave pigmentation. I rely on the wild chrysanthemum lip balm prepared by our hospital. It costs about ten yuan a pop. It has been very effective after three or four years of use. However, Xiao Zhang, a nurse in the same department, found it spicy after using it once, and her lips remained red for a long time. To put it bluntly, it is due to individual differences. There is really no such thing as "all natural products are suitable for everyone". Another common pitfall is that herbal preparations have no toxic or side effects. Two years ago, the emergency department admitted a patient who was poisoned by taking privately-made Aconite Lizhong Pills. When he was brought here, his lips were numb and he could not speak clearly. Upon investigation, it was found that the homemade preparations were not prepared properly, and the aconitine content exceeded the national standard by more than ten times, which is much more toxic than many chemical drugs.

To put it bluntly, medical herbal therapy preparations are the product of traditional herbal medicine experience and modern pharmaceutical technology. They are easy to use, but they are not as impressive as they are boasted on the Internet. If you want to try it, go to a regular hospital and ask a doctor to prescribe it. Don’t believe those internet celebrity herbal products in the live broadcast room that “cure all diseases”. The chance of being cheated can be reduced by 90%.