What are the functions of medical herbal therapy preparations

The core role of medical herbal therapy preparations is to help improve symptoms and regulate body homeostasis within the scope of approved indications. Some compliant preparations can be used in conjunction with conventional treatments to reduce adverse drug reactions. They cannot replace mainstream treatment options, nor are they a worthless placebo.

When I was doing follow-up work on chronic diseases in the community in the past two months, I also met Uncle Zhang who lives in Building 3. He has been suffering from chronic bronchitis for almost 12 years. As soon as the temperature drops in autumn and winter, he coughs all night long and cannot sleep well. The regular asthma and cough medicines are effective, but his mouth is so dry every time after eating that he has to hug him He slept with a glass of water. Later, the respiratory doctor added a herbal cough preparation approved for medical use. After drinking it for ten days, he said that not only the frequency of coughing dropped by more than half, but his dry mouth was also relieved a lot. Last week, he was seen carrying a birdcage while visiting the morning market in the community.

However, as for the actual value of such preparations, there is still no completely unified statement in the industry. Colleagues with a background in Western medicine often tell me that the action pathways of many components of these preparations are not fully understood, and there is relatively little high-level clinical evidence, so they always feel that their use is not practical enough. However, friends who are clinical practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine feel that many herbal formulas have been used for thousands of years. Tired, now we have carried out standardized detoxification and active ingredient enrichment processing, which has a wide range of effects and safety. Especially for those people who have severe side effects from taking chemical drugs, or who have functional discomforts without any organic disease but who just have trouble sleeping all over the body, it is much more practical than just prescribing a placebo.

To be honest, many people now have a lot of misunderstandings about this type of preparation. They either think that it is herbal and have no toxic or side effects, so they can buy it and eat it at will, or they think that it is all an IQ tax and can be beaten to death with a stick. In fact, both of these are quite extreme. Previously, a young man in his twenties came for consultation and said that he was feeling uncomfortable in his liver area after staying up late and drinking alcohol. He bought the "herbal liver-protecting medicine" recommended by an Internet celebrity and took it for three months. During the physical examination, the transaminases doubled. I took the package and looked at it. I saw that what he bought was not medical at all. Pharmaceutical-grade preparations are ordinary food-grade health products. Not only do they have no standard content of active ingredients, they also add a lot of flavoring additives. In addition, they are not symptomatic due to alcoholic liver damage. Taking them will increase the metabolic burden on the liver. It is purely a waste of money and suffering.

The medical herbal therapy preparations we usually talk about must go through a strict drug and device approval process. There are clear standards for active ingredients, impurity content, and adverse reaction monitoring. They are not the same as the herbal health products sold casually on the market. When you really need to use it, you must follow the doctor's advice and use it with the conventional treatment plan. Don't buy it blindly, let alone stop the conventional medicine prescribed by the doctor and rely solely on this kind of preparation to treat the disease.