Hi today we are going to talk about the treatment of radiation in TCM and this is quite an unusual topic, but we are, it’s one of the topics that we are getting a really great results, both in the treatment.
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Hello, everybody. And welcome. I would first like to think the American Acupuncture Council to put up this presentation for all of you. And I would like to start with the presentation. I hope you’re all. Hi today we are going to talk about the treatment of radiation in TCM and this is quite an unusual topic, but we are, it’s one of the topics that we are getting a really great results, both in the treatment. And also even in the research that we are following up. Radiation therapy also known as radiotherapy is one of the most common treatments.
In cancer. Almost half of the cancer patients will get radiation therapy. Although, there’s so many advancement in the treatment of cancer, different drugs, et cetera, radiation therapy is just continuing to develop and be there as the, one of the major modalities that are used the cancer care.
And how does it work? Basically radiation is a very high frequency of radiation, which is used and it works in two ways. One, it has a direct effect and direct effect of radiation. It damages the DNA in the cell by producing more and more free radicals, but it is also a. Eh, a larger indirect action by producing the whole area of more free radicals, which are damaging more cancer cells and much less healthy cells.
So this can also give some kind of additional effect to the radiation. When we look at the radiation, we are actually looking at the very high frequency res. If you look here, you see the size of J regular Ray radio radiation. And as we move along, you can see the side that the radiation that we are using in x-rays is here.
And in gamma rays, we are even going to a much smaller size, but x-ray the size. And the frequency of radiation is extremely high, and this will help to understand the effect in Chinese medicine. And one of the side effects of radiation is here. As you can see here in the picture, like a person that is radiated for neck, a very common area for neck cancers or for women with breast cancer.
So you can see the redness appearing there, and this will help us also later to understand the effect of radiation in Chinese medicine. And the side effects of radiation are very much dependent on the doses. The area of which is radiated and also the sensitivity of the surrounding tissues or organs.
And today, the radiation is very exact. So there is less damage to surrounding tissues in the past, there was much greater damage and the radiation side effects, first of all, the main one is really this heat, but there’s also fatigue. And there is some diffused feeling of not of being ill, not being yourself.
Sometimes headaches obviously on the skin, they can be in DEMA inflammation, like in his trunk. So sander. And if the radiation is like to the throat, to the mucus area, then there can be mucositis or dry mouth or dry dryness, wherever the radiation is directed at, the radiation can be directed to any place in the.
The very common thing we see in the clinic is radiation to an in throat, in their throat cancers, but also to the head and to the breast, obviously for breast cancer. But radiation can be done to any tumor. The side effects let’s look at them for a minute from the Chinese medical point of view, the way we view them.
So as you can see, it’s a very stressful. And small frequency of a phrase that penetrates deeply and they’re causing dryness. First of all, dryness to the fluids and dryness to the fluids over a long period of time in Chinese medicine, we’ll create in deficiency, which means a long-term thirst and a longterm inflammation, either the local or even more general.
Radiation in itself is toxic heat. And I think this is one of the key issues when we are teaching oncology acupuncture now to treat and diagnose patient with a TCM in oncology. Toxins is one of the main things we have to consider, because this is a new parameter, a new pathogenic factor, which is not very much obviously mentioned and then aging and the classical Chinese medicine.
So to understand toxins and its effect is one of the key factors. We have a combination of toxins and. And toxins and heat. We’ll also create some cheat deficiency. And if after a long period of time, even Jing deficiency, this deep penetration of the Ray goes deep inside the cell. And obviously also to the DNA of the cell.
But if Chinese medicine we’ll talk about this going deep into the gene level. And so this is the main factors that we are seeing in the. And this is the pathology in Chinese medicine. So first of all, it’s toxic. It is the nature of the x-ray. We see the dryness in many different area. It can be either superficial to.
Dryness or can be deeper. And then we’ll talk about the fluid and fluid production, like on the land, in this and the stomach, which are involved in Flint production. If it’s a very strong radiation, we’ll see in the efficiency, as we talked before, especially if it’s for a larger area, Xi deficiency is a classic and the two deficiency can also extend even four months after the treatments and locally we can see.
And which can affect like the tender masculine Meridian in the area that is being radiated. And we look at the supply of the tender muscular Meridian to the area, the classical combination of points, which are addressing this pathology. So large intestine elect will help to take the heat and it’s a young midpoint, so it will also help to cool.
And also GB 14 is actually for head radiation or neck radiation. It’s when they all the young meridians are joining will help to take the heat out. The excess young for drugs. Again, we’ll use points on the young meaning stomach for the foreign, large intestine. Two, both of them are water points and they’re in reaching back the fluids for inefficiency.
We can add kidney the six and if the radiation is over a long period of time or area with many bones, then we can add gallbladder 13. Which is the viewpoints and for bone marrow and some other kidney points depends on the radiation area. If there’s a general chief efficiency, we’ll do stomach 36. If it’s deeper, we’ll go to the seas and use stomach 30 and, or Lang nine, the gain to help to rebuild back the cheap.
For local area, we’ll use more local effected points, team end points. So let’s give you a kind of a general idea how I will treat the radiation and how we are treating radiation. And when we are teaching them college acupuncture, we start with some general prescription and go into many other options of treating.
One of the very interesting research that was done because there’s many high quality research, which are showing that acupuncture is good, especially for dryness of the mouth of the radiation for patients with head and neck cancers and this dryness. Extreme, and it’s very debilitating and it really create a extreme suffering to this patients.
Imagine that on top of having radiation and having a throat cancer or mouth. Your mouth feels like it’s desert, there’s no saliva or free for the production and because there’s been many evidence that acupuncture is good for it. There was one really interesting research that they want to share with you.
And it’s, they looked in functional MRI on patient. It’s actually not patients. There were just volunteers. I know Gary Dan from Memorial Sloan Kettering, he did this research, so we took volunteer. And punctured them a large intestine to, and looked in functional MRI and the amount of saliva produced and and the real comparing to placebo.
So this was the use of the occupancy was at the large intestine to comparing to a non occupant tree point, just on the side of. And this design is quite a interesting, because they did this time acupuncture, some got the real acupuncture, some got the sham acupuncture. Actually they did the crossover. So this.
People who were in the research in the beginning either got real or shy and then crossed over. And what was compelling was the mechanism, the functional MRI, and also the amount of saliva, the results were quite unusual. And you can see that the patient, whenever they are this, in this respect, the people who are examined when the large intestine two was punctured the area in the.
Which is to do with the saliva production was got more blood and you could see it in there. It was activated, comparing to the placebo point where there was no specific area in the head, in the factional MRI. And as far as salivation, they put the cotton ball in the mouth of this patient. And. Wait it before and after the puncturing of either the real large intestine two or the placebo, and this was very significant higher amount of saliva where large intestine two was punctured.
So it’s one of these beautiful research which shows you how a point. Both has a physical effect and potentially some mechanism of action, how it is working. So the conclusion of the study was that acupuncture in large intestine, two was associated with neuroma activation in the brain, but also was correlated to more saliva production.
I love this research because a lot of time, even as an acupuncturist, we would laugh to see this correlation between the city. What we know and the real finding, and that’s the beauty of research that you can actually look at it finding. Cause what it means. It has a lot of other ramifications than just supporting people with.
And dryness in the mouth due to radiation. It also means that this point is effective to many other conditions of dryness in the mouth. For instance, your grin, which is an auto immune disease, which the mucous membranes that had drying up any other dryness of the mouth which is stemming from different disease or even from in the efficient.
That we see, like for women, with menopausal people who get up at night and have to drink water. So we can use this point in additionally, maybe to kidney six and other points that they discussed to help with this dryness. And why is it working? And that’s, to me, the beauty, and as I say, I teach a lot. I am cology acupuncture.
You’re all welcome. If you’re interested in this field to do join us teaching and. It’s one of the things that we see this strong effect of acupuncture on different side effects in cancer patients. And we can understand why when we look both into research and we look into the Chinese understanding of the point.
So a lot of interesting people, too. And always been a water point and the large intestine Meridian goes to the mouth, as we know, and it’s a young Ming Meridian, and it was indicated for dryness in the mouth, but also for two sakes and for throat pain 2000 years ago. Now we can see the evidence, how it works and we can utilize it also with more confidence, looking at the risks.
But also understanding more how occupant you can help for patients with cancer. I’m on this beautiful project. When we draw the points with my two colleagues about the human needs, key from Poland, Dr. Babish Kaminski and Annie yell from Israel. And this is just an example of the drawing of the large intestine in Meridian and large intestine two.
And this is just to add to the beauty and understanding of the water production. Eh, around this point, another optional points actually see between 83 and another point, which helps in producing saliva and generally enrich the body fluids in the body. So as we know, large, interesting too, is both a water point is in spring point.
So it has a lot of different Chinese, eh, indication. So both reduce here. Young meaning points like large intestine in stomach of both helping to reduce it, helping to replenish fluids and in a deep way, even to strengthen the kidney and through the internal docs of the same chow. So despite, as you can see as a very large options in helping patients with dryness, But specifically also to treat radiation other points because we are on the treatments of radiation, which are very good for the neck and the patients who have neck and throat cancers is also maybe Lang 11, the Firebird.
And you can use lung five or alleged. This 18 is a local point again, to gain back this Floyd and reduce the heat and the toxic heat, even bleeding a point like large intestine 11, if there is a very stubborn and acute throat pain and a pain in the throat after a day. This was a little bit about acupuncture and the use of acupuncture and the, also the proof for acupuncture points and why acupuncture works so well for ideation, I did also more than 15 years of research into one formula.
And one of the things that we tried this formula, and when we combine it with radiation there is always a few. That herbal medicine, especially willingly they’re fear with radiation. And what we know from this formula, it’s called LCS. One, one is that it’s not that it’s not interfering, but it’s actually working through the same mechanism of actually producing more free radicals.
And also we have proven how it’s kills cancer cells. And does it affect. When we tried it with radiation, and this is a publication that we publish this in one of the very reputable journal. With my colleagues here. And my last colleagues is professor Berger, who is the head of the oncology services in the hospital that just to work Sheba hospital.
So it’s a very interesting publications, which is showing actually the twin. We take this formula here. We showed it the different cancers here. It’s for example, breast cancer in prostate cancer. Because if you actually have a look, you can see the blue line is just radiation alone. And on the side you see the amount of cancer and that is killed.
So the lower you go is the hundred percent of cancers are killed. So this is the, just the radiation. It’s. That the amount that we are using here is killing around 50% of the cancer cells. When we are adding the formula in small dose, it kills much better when we are adding it in higher doses, it much better, but even five.
So this isn’t for example, for breast cancer cells, and this is for prostate cancer cells. So what we see actually in this experiment that we published it, the formula is not just helping him killing cancer cells, but it’s actually even having a synergic effect. Definitely not interrupting. And there’s the whole debate of using herbal medicine together with radiation.
Definitely anything which reduce the amount of free radicals you shouldn’t use with radiation vitamin E for example, vitamin a. But actually it was this herbal formula. This we’ve been researching, we’ve shown not just that it’s not interfering, but it’s actually potentially adding to the radiation effect.
And that’s what we see because it’s similar. We know that the mechanism of action, so we can explain even why. So I’m advocating for people who are using radiation also to use this formula. So we have that. We have acupuncture, we have herbal medicine. All helping patients, oncology patients. So in this presentation, I talked about acupuncture stressing about the, also the mechanism of flagging this thing, do it, how it helps in radiation and other points.
You have quite a nice selection of points that you can use for patients in radiation and the herbal medicine LCS 1 0 1 or protective veil. Is it called? So you have already, I think even from this way, Some key component in ideas of how to help patients with the radiation, especially for the, they can throat.
But generally, if you’re interested in courses, you can look at it the same academy, there is much more information and quite a lot of free information about it. So I hope you enjoy this presentation and I’m wishing you all the best of. And from Shane to Shen thank you. On Friday, we’ll be Tsao-Lin Moy presenting on this channel.
So you will come to watch it. So keep healthy and safe and all the very best buy for me.