During this time of concern and fear regarding the novel coronavirus, there has been a lot of focus in the media on using Chinese herbal formulas to treat its illness. This is largely because the disease seems to have originated in China and Chinese doctors got first crack at treating tens of thousands of patients. A friend of mine recently shared an article with me, one of a growing number of pieces questioning the effectiveness of formulas that haven’t yet been tested in Western-style clinical studies but are being used to treat patients of the coronavirus.
The problem that I see here is that we’re utilizing Chinese medicine the same way do Western pharmaceuticals. The doctors who send pre-made formulas out to be given semi-indiscriminately to all sufferers of COVID-19 are not honoring the diagnostic principles of Chinese medicine (although it must be acknowledged that given the very large number of patients, they don’t have time to do intricate, individual diagnoses). Critics who complain that these remedies have not been tested in a clinical trial are also missing the point that you can’t just give the same formula to 100 people and expect a uniform result. I want to explain how a shift in perception can explain the reasoning behind applying Chinese herbs in this very serious situation.
The first and very basic point is, treating masses of people with herbs and finding the most effective strategies is exactly how Chinese herbal medicine has worked for thousands of years. The ancient texts we still work from were written with vast amounts of empirical data behind them. The Shang Han Lun, for instance, was written in response to an ancient plague or wave of sickness that killed a large part of the author’s family. That doctor, Zhang Zhong Jing, spent the rest of his life trying to understand how the body functions when it’s well and when it is sick, and compiled the formulas we still reference today based on his life’s work. He gave herbs, saw how the body responded to them, recorded the information, and used what he learned to better treat his next patient. Along the way he refined and further developed ideas from previous classic texts and doctors, detailing body function and disharmony.
My next point speaks to the reason I love Chinese medicine in the first place: every patient is unique. When I sit with my patients every week in clinic, I’m checking in with exactly how they’ve been feeling over the past week and where they are at on that day, and I’ll give a formula appropriate to that patient at that time. I might see three different women with menstrual cramps on one day and each will receive a different formula, because her cramps are there for a different reason and she needs different herbs to restore her body to better function and comfort. Taking Midol will force anyone’s uterus to relax, but next month you’ll be reaching for that bottle again. Chinese herbs can help you reach a place you don’t need Midol OR herbs every month by restoring proper function. Same with the coronavirus—we know very well that every patient presents differently. Were I treating COVID-19 patients, I would be treating shortness of breath in one patient, body aches in another, and swollen purple toes in a third. It’s easy to see that three different formulas would be called for.
If the above makes sense to you, then you can probably see why a large clinical trial of an herbal formula to treat coronavirus doesn’t make sense. If you got a large number of COVID-19 positive people to take the same formula, it would probably work great for a few of them but lousy for a lot of others. This doesn’t mean it’s a bad formula, but it would not have been appropriate for those patients at that time. Chinese herbs work to restore function in the body where it has broken down, not to get everyone’s body to be like everyone else’s. I would love to see a world where pharmaceuticals and herbal medicine can exist side-by-side without being compared or mistaken for each other.
Until we have a cure and/or vaccine for COVID-19 any treatments we give, whether they are pharmaceutical or herbal, are going to be palliative. I support offering herbs when possible, but if Western interventions such as intubation become necessary I would never discount them. I am not treating coronavirus patients myself because my practice is currently unable to be open, but I am in touch with several practitioners who are having a lot of success with their patients. If you’re interested in hearing more about anything I’ve touched on above, please comment below. Best wishes for your good health.