01 Introduction: Is Herbal Medicine Really Slow?

Many people believe that herbal medicine is slow in treating diseases compared to the faster results of Western medicine. But is this really the case? The truth is more complex. Herbal and Western medicine have different approaches to treating diseases.

Dr. Guo Yaning, a herbal doctor, once treated a patient with hypertension who had long blood clots in the carotid artery, causing dizziness, weakness, deafness, and insomnia. After a thorough examination, Dr. Guo diagnosed the patient with hypertension due to hyperactivity of liver-yang and prescribed a revitalizing herbal treatment. The patient was advised that recovery could take three months to a year, depending on their constitution and condition.

Western medicine typically uses antihypertensive drugs for immediate effect, while herbal medicine works over several months to a year. This has led to the misconception that herbal medicine is slow.

From this example, people deduced that herbal medicine is very slow in treating diseases. However, some conditions can be treated quickly with herbal remedies:

• Rhinitis: Apply a mixture of powdered dry old loofah and sesame oil in the nose for relief in three to five days.
• Cold and Stuffy Nose: Drink boiled ginger soup and sweat under a quilt for symptom relief by the next day.
• Common Gynecological Issues: Use a decoction of She-chuang-zi (Cnidium monnieri) to rinse the lower body daily for noticeable improvement in a week.
• Stiff neck in the morning: Pinch the Hegu Acupoint on the hand with great strength, no more than five times, and the symptoms will improve.

Based on the above cases, Dr. Guo argued that herbal medicine treatment is not slow.

There are many examples in traditional herbal medicine that can show that traditional herbal medicine treatment is not slow at all. In addition to massaging acupoints, acupuncture, cupping, and hot compresses with ointments are all very effective.

Then why is there a popular belief that herbal medicine treatment is slow?

02 Chronic diseases: A Matter of Time

Most patients who seek herbal medicine are dealing with chronic diseases. Often, they turn to herbal medicine after Western medicine treatments fail. These patients typically have conditions like uncontrolled blood pressure, high blood sugar, rheumatic bone disease, and joint deformity. By the time they seek herbal medicine, their symptoms are usually severe, requiring a lengthy treatment process.

01 Development in Three Stages

Chronic diseases don’t develop overnight. They have a long incubation period and progress through three stages which are the Injury Stage, the Onset Stage, and the Lethal Stage.

01 Injury Stage

Environmental pollution, poor diet, and lack of nutrients lead to the accumulation of free radicals, causing cell damage, and may lead to aging, atherosclerosis and thrombosis, and reperfusion injury of the brain. The body is in a sub-healthy state without symptoms. This stage can last five to ten years. In herbal medicine, this is the stage of “not sick” which should be treated.

02 Onset Stage

Accumulated waste in blood vessels causes serious cell damage, leading to symptoms like hypoxia, heart discomfort, high blood sugar, and high blood pressure. This stage can last about six years.

As more and more waste accumulates in the blood vessels, cell damage becomes more serious, and some lipid metabolites begin to accumulate. When they reach a certain level, they will stick to the blood vessel wall, causing the blood vessel elasticity to weaken, the blood vessel wall to thicken, and the blood vessel to become thin and brittle. Blood circulation is hindered, and then human diseases will appear.

The slow blood flow leads to hypoxia, heart discomfort, high blood sugar, high blood pressure, and high lipid content, memory loss, numbness of hands and feet, and other symptoms.

These symptoms vary from person to person, but there is one thing that is basically the same. The symptoms are very mild, with occasional discomfort.

Herbal medicine calls it “to be sick”, which means that the disease is about to break out and will soon worsen.

A person will typically seek treatment at this point. If the right method is chosen, the condition can gradually improve. Otherwise, it will slowly develop to the third stage.
The time from the second stage to the third stage will be very long, about six years.

03 Lethal Stage

Severe blockage of blood vessels and long-term lack of oxygen lead to critical conditions like dizziness, palpitations, and angina pectoris. This stage is dangerous and can last over ten years.

At this time, the condition is already very serious. The blood vessels typically are blocked by more than 75%. There are plaques of various shapes in the blood, which may gather at any time to completely block the blood vessels.

Due to the long-term lack of oxygen in the heart, it is already in a very dangerous state, an overloaded and exhausted state. Brain cells become extremely fragile due to long-term lack of oxygen, and even atrophy and die in large areas.

The symptoms at this stage are very obvious, such as dizziness, palpitations, and angina pectoris. Of course, some people do not have major symptoms, but regardless of whether there are symptoms or not, this stage is very dangerous.

It does not mean that people will die immediately after entering the lethal stage. It is possible that the symptoms will last for more than ten years, but there may also be sudden myocardial infarction and cerebral infarction.

A few years ago, there was a news report about a 57-year-old man in Beijing who had an argument with someone at the subway station and suddenly fell to the ground and died. This man had some chronic diseases and was already in the lethal stage, but he did not show any symptoms, so he did not pay much attention.

Many people waste a lot of time during the onset of the disease, and only seek herbal medicine treatment when it is in the lethal stage, which can waste more than ten to twenty years.

Therefore, until the lethal stage, the disease has been in the body for more than ten years, and it will definitely not be cured in one or two days. So, it is not that herbal medicine is slow to treat diseases, but that this chronic disease has accumulated too much and too deep.

03 Treatment Attitude: Stay Calm

Treating chronic diseases requires patience. Rushing treatment can worsen the condition. Focus on strengthening the spleen and stomach, and seek reliable medical advice when symptoms appear. Avoid quick-fix solutions that can lead to severe health issues.

For example, untreated femoral head necrosis progresses through four stages, ultimately leading to complete collapse. Herbal medicine can relieve symptoms and prolong life, but miracles are rare. The low cure rate of traditional herbal medicine is due to patients seeking treatment in the lethal stage.

As practitioners of life cultivation, we usually focus on strengthening the spleen and stomach, and we do not rush to seek medical treatment. However, once the symptoms appear, we must find a reliable herbal doctor.

For example, many of us do not pay attention to the early symptoms, the femoral head may gradually become necrotic:

The intact femoral head has sufficient blood. In the first stage, the diseased femoral head is insufficiently supplied with blood. In the second stage, the femoral head without blood nutrition slowly becomes necrotic. In the third stage, the necrotic femoral head gradually becomes smaller or deformed. In the fourth stage, the femoral head finally collapses completely.

If we delay and seek herbal medicine in the later stage, herbal medicine has no good solution. At most, it can relieve symptoms and prolong life. Occasionally, one or two miracles of healing will occur.

As the saying goes: If the King of Hell wants you to die at three o’clock in the morning, who dares to keep you until five o’clock? Even Hua Tuo can’t keep us alive at this Lethal Stage.

The cure rate of traditional herbal medicine is low because most of the patients are chronic patients in the lethal stage.

To be continued in part two.