Don't label Chinese medicine poisonous

Traditional Chinese medicine is toxic It is often used instead of being used To ensure the safety of people's medication, traditional Chinese medicine should not be regarded as a western medicine tube, but "medication" should be well managed A young girl took more than 10 bezoar antidote tablets every day for constipation treatment She had been taking them for two years, and the antidote eventually became a poison His hoarse voice, toad like skin and sparse hair show typical arsenic poisoning Does traditional Chinese medicine have poison in the end? "It's a drug that has three poisons It's non-toxic and can't be used as medicine." In the above example, the main ingredients of Niuhuang Jiedu tablet are Niuhuang, Scutellaria, realgar, etc the content of arsenic sulfide in realgar is about 75%, which is the source of the girl's adverse reactions It is not only Niuhuang Jiedu tablet, but nearly half of the Chinese patent medicines listed in the Pharmacopoeia contain toxic ingredients However, these "toxic traditional Chinese medicine" can often treat serious diseases Ye Tianshi, a famous doctor in the Qing Dynasty, is good at using poisonous insect drugs to cure diseases, which is a good story Modern famous doctors treat cancer, arthralgia, stasis and other difficult diseases with "toxic traditional Chinese medicine" The truth is similar to what we often call "attacking poison with poison" However, the toxicity of traditional Chinese medicine has been greatly exaggerated From the uremic event caused by Longdan Xiegan pill to the toxic ingredients detected in Tongrentang and other enterprise products some time ago The toxicity of traditional Chinese medicine has been overstated, and some experts even throw out the view that traditional Chinese medicine is unscientific, outdated and should be banned from the development of traditional Chinese medicine industry In order to alleviate the drug safety anxiety of the common people, the relevant departments have recently issued policies requiring 28 kinds of Chinese patent medicines containing poison to be marked on the drug packaging and instructions However, it is no doubt detrimental to the development of traditional Chinese medicine industry to manage traditional Chinese medicine in such a way Most Western medicines have simple structure and clear effective ingredients, while traditional Chinese medicine is very complex, so it is difficult to label effective ingredients comprehensively and accurately For example, ginseng has been studied by modern methods for more than 100 years, and many ingredients are still unclear Conversely, even if we know the chemical structure of traditional Chinese medicine, we don't know what role it has in clinical For example, ephedra, according to the theory of "four Qi and five flavors" of Chinese medicine, has three effects of sweating, antiasthmatic and diuretic However, ephedrine, the effective component of ephedrine, has only antiasthmatic effect, without the effect of sweating and diuretic In other words, the effective ingredients can not fully reflect the efficacy of traditional Chinese medicine In addition, the principle of traditional Chinese medicine is different from that of Western medicine, and the usage is also different The idea of managing traditional Chinese medicine with western medicine will increase the hidden danger of traditional Chinese medicine On the one hand, even non-toxic traditional Chinese medicine is not necessarily safe As Xu Lingtai, a famous doctor in the Qing Dynasty, said, "although licorice and ginseng are used by mistake, they are all poisons." And the requirement that Chinese medicine be labeled with toxic ingredients will make people mistakenly think that taking the so-called "non-toxic Chinese medicine" does not need to consult a doctor, which may cause drug abuse, or even eating accidents! On the other hand, "toxic Chinese medicine" if used well, can reduce toxicity and increase efficiency, cure disease The toxic label will scare away patients and make them miss the opportunity to cure; in clinical practice, doctors using "toxic traditional Chinese medicine" will shrink their hands and feet, and when they encounter patients who do not understand, it may also lead to tension between doctors and patients It can be seen from this that traditional Chinese medicine is toxic, not overused, but often overused To ensure the safety of people's medication, traditional Chinese medicine should not be regarded as a western medicine management, but should be well managed Only in this way can we truly eliminate the "crisis of trust" of the public in traditional Chinese medicine, and let the ancient traditional Chinese medicine industry pass on healthily for the benefit of the people.