Chinese medicine seeks to treat disease without side effects
It was the life most of us only glimpse in gossip magazines: the charismatic producer with dark movie-star good looks and magnetic smile, under contract with a major studio, living in a beautiful home in the Hollywood hills with Tinseltown sprawling at his feet. In 1986, thirty-three-year-old Brandon Elliot had it all. He had a glamorous social life. He had maintained the physical edge he had cultivated in college as a competitive swimmer. An accomplished equestrian, he owned and trained Thoroughbred horses. Competing in horse shows was a focal point in his life.
Then he was diagnosed with the human immunodeficiency virus—known simply by its acronym, HIV—which causes acquired immune deficiency syn-drome,or AIDS.A virus is a minute parasitic organism that is incapable of growth and reproduction apart from living cells. In simplified terms, HIV invades a type of cell called T cells, which are part of the immune system. Once inside the T cell, the HIV virus infiltrates the cell's ribonucleic acid (RNA), which controls protein production in all cells. The HIV virus is able to convert the RNA into its own DNA—an acid that carries genetic information. In addition, the HIV virus replicates within the cell.As more T cells are invaded and more HIV virus is replicated, the T cell count falls. The immune system is weakened and eventually destroyed.
Stephen Hosea, M.D., is in private practice in Santa Barbara, specializing in infectious diseases.5 Dr. Hosea said, “I like to think of the helper cells like the
5. Stephen W. Hosea, M.D., is the medical director for the department of infection control and the assistant academic chief of medicine at the Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital, professor of medicine at the USC School of Medicine, the director of the AIDS clinic for Santa Barbara Health Care Services and medical advisor for the Visiting Nurse and Hospice Care of Santa R Barbara, Inc., board of directors.
conductor of the orchestra. The conductor tells the other cells that are in the orchestra what to do, resulting in a symphonic immune system. When the conductors aren't there, it's just noise and none of the other cells know what to do. They can't work together to create an effective front to fight off infections.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention developed a system of categorizing the progression of HIV to AIDS:
Primary infection. Symptoms of the primary infection start approximately two to four weeks after exposure. The illness is acute and lasts for about one to three weeks. There may be signs of an acute nonspecific viral infection with fever, malaise, rash, joint pain, sore throat, swollen lymph nodes and headache.
Chronic phase. Patients convert to HIV-positive, which is marked by the absence of the signs and symptoms just described. For the majority of in dividuals this chronic phase can last anywhere from seven to ten years. There are always exceptions—people who convert from the primary in fection to the chronic phase in six months and then rapidly to full-blown AIDS—but typically the chronic phase lasts for years while the virus causes the destruction of more and more T cells and replicates more HIV. This results in a progressive loss of immune function.
Full-blown AIDS phase. When a syndrome of opportunistic infections occurs—such as thrush (a fungal infection of the mouth or vagina), herpes simplex (a viral infection of the mouth, genitals or anus) or Kaposi's sarcoma (a skin malignancy)—a person is considered to have AIDS.
When Brandon was diagnosed with the HIV virus, he assumed he would be just another statistic in an epidemic of inexplicable, acute suffering and swift death that was sweeping the globe. His physician wanted to put him on AZT, which had just come out. AZT belongs to a class of drugs called protease inhibitors, which are designed to lower the amount of HIV in the body—referred to as the viral load—thus increasing the number of functional disease-fighting T cells. Brandon flatly refused. Instead of going on AZT, Brandon took steps to clean up his lifestyle, eliminating caffeine, alcohol, processed foods, recreational drugs and other toxins. He ate only organic foods, avoided stress and got more rest.
Eight years later, at forty-one years of age, Brandon was at the height of his career. He was nominated for producer of the year by the Producers Guild. A Hallmark television movie he had produced that year received five Emmy nom-inations and won three. Despite being HIV-positive, Brandon's future seemed paved with gold. Physically he had never felt stronger. He was running, lifting weights and swimming. He was feeling somewhat impervious to the HIV virus. But the turning point would come suddenly and without warning. “I had intentionally lost ten pounds of fat. I was what they call ‘ripped, ’ ” he said. “One day at the gym, I looked at myself and thought, ‘You know, I really do look incredible. ’ In fact, I was in such great shape that I thought I'd start training for a triathlon. The very next day I collapsed and couldn't get out of bed. I knew my T cells were dropping, but I never thought that in twenty-four hours the virus would take over my whole being.”
In an industry where heterosexual marriage is an essential component to image, and where movie stars and studio executives enter into marriages as arrangements to create an acceptable persona, being gay was one strike; being gay with HIV was anathema. For the next four months Brandon worked at home and lay low in an attempt to hide his illness from his associates at the studio. When a new studio head was hired, Brandon was called in for a face-to-face meeting that he could not avoid. By then he was deathly pale and had begun to lose muscle mass. “I borrowed some makeup from my mother and tried to make myself look healthier,” Brandon said. “She drove me there and waited while I went in for the meeting. I thought I did okay and that I had gotten away with it. But after that, everyone knew.”
Brandon managed to hang on until his contract ran out at the end of the year. But he could not continue the pretense any longer. His hair had begun to thin. The gum tissue around his teeth had receded, exposing the roots, and he had to have eight molars pulled. He had lost all control over his life. “The effects of the virus kept gathering like moss on a stone,” Brandon said. “Once I was headed downhill this illness kept getting bigger and bigger and faster and faster until it rolled over me.” He knew that when the disease went into full swing nothing could stop it. Instead of renegotiating his studio contract, Brandon did his best to put on a brave front, explaining that he had been there long enough and that it was time to move on.
Brandon's immune system had begun to fail. He remained in a self-imposed solitary confinement in his Hollywood hills home for several months. His horses languished in their stalls. He had no energy to devote to his dogs. In the spring, his attorney helped him move to Santa Barbara, a resort town 150 miles north of Los Angeles. Brandon settled into a cottage where his horses were cor ralled right off his bedroom, his dogs were at his side and he had a view of the ocean. His focus shifted to finding good homes for his animals while he steeled himself for imminent death. But he was terrified.
One month after moving to Santa Barbara, Brandon awoke with an intense headache. Slick with perspiration, his heart racing wildly, he crawled on his hands and knees out to his car, then drove himself to the nearest hospital emergency room, where he was diagnosed with meningitis and admitted to the hospital. Dr. Hosea, Brandon's attending physician, started him on antiviral medications and explained that after they cleared up the infection, he wanted to start him on the “cocktail”—the colloquial term for a combination of three or more HIV drugs that work in concert to lower a patient's viral load with the least amount of toxicity.
According to Dr. Hosea, the newer drugs were much less toxic than AZT alone, and the cocktail had proven to be more effective in prolonging life while preserving the best quality of life: “The virus replicates so quickly that it can become resistant to a single drug. It is more difficult for the virus to become resistant to three drugs.” The object of the cocktail was to slow down the replication of HIV so that the T cells, which are constantly replicating, could build back up, which correspondingly builds up the immune system. There is much evidence to support the use of these drugs.“I have seen a fair number of patients who had close to zero T cells but who now have normal numbers of T cells because the drugs have successfully suppressed the virus,” Dr. Hosea said.
Brandon did not go on the cocktail at that time, but went home from the hospital to recover from meningitis. He returned two weeks later, this time by ambulance, struggling to breathe and running a temperature of 105. He had developed Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, one of the dreaded diseases of HIV. Brandon was given an anti-inflammatory drug and prednisone, a synthetic steroid, to treat the complications of pneumonia.
Though his fever came down, Brandon had severe side effects from the prednisone. “My tongue split open from a reaction to the prednisone. So that I could eat, I had to use this glue stuff [which was denture paste laced with cortisone] that I'd squirt on the split on my tongue that would keep it sealed for an hour so I could get food down.” He soon found that he could not discontinue the use of prednisone without suffering from severe muscle ache, chills and fever. “There were times when I had to be held down, I was convulsing so violently. It was like having an exorcism.” But nothing else could be done to keep his fever below 105 degrees, and he was forced to keep taking prednisone.
Dr. Hosea is a spiritually minded, empathic man who is committed to helping the terminally ill and dying. Brandon's confidence in Dr. Hosea combined with a feeling of having nothing left to lose gave him the incentive to agree to go on a cocktail of Crixovan, AZT and 3TC in November 1996.
Eight months into his treatment on the cocktail, Brandon had a realization that was to be a turning point. “When you're so traumatized, your mind shuts down. You're just not aware of anything. One day I was having a moment of clarity and looked at myself. There was no doubt that the virus had affected me, but the drugs had completely destroyed any health or vitality I had left. The insides of my cheeks were ripped open as if someone had taken razor blades to the flesh. I had a quarter-sized hole in the back of my throat. My jaw was swollen on one side to the size of half a baseball. I had gone from having a muscular body to cellulite. My waist had gone from a thirty-one to thirty-eight inches, so I looked pregnant. My eyes were sunken and swollen. My hair was falling out in clumps. My skin was itchy and scaly. If I scratched, the bumps would bleed and spread, like leprosy.”
The youthful, athletic and dynamic film producer Brandon had once been was a dim memory, replaced with a depressed, ravaged man who had barely the energy to navigate the triangle from his bed to the bathroom and the living room. It was true that his T cell count was improving and that the drugs were saving his life. But it was not enough. “I started contemplating suicide,” Brandon said. “I just didn't have the energy or the gusto anymore to live.”
While Dr. Hosea has seen firsthand the benefits of HIV drugs, he is realistic. “One of the problems with the AIDS drugs is that they get approved soon after they show any efficacy, before we understand the toxicities associated with them.” One of the fundamental problems with many Western drugs is the side effects. Although Western pharmaceuticals developed from herbology, as Western medicine became more focused on technology it became less concerned with side effects. Since World War II, more drugs have been made by chemical synthesis—they are chemical imitations of plant medicines. These isolated, pure and extremely concentrated ingredients are highly effective, but they also come with side effects. In spite of efforts by researchers to combat them, side effects can often be an intractable problem. Medication errors and serious side effects account for some seven thousand deaths in the United States each year.
Western pharmacology has constantly searched for an isolated pure substance with the highest degree of potency that will not cause side effects. This ideal has proven to be elusive. What has proven to be true is that the higher degree of purification, the higher degree of side effects. Two thousand years ago, Chinese medicine had an advanced knowledge of chemistry and made efforts to isolate certain ingredients from natural substances. This stage of Chinese medicine reigned for a couple hundred years and then eventually died down. Doctors came to a consensus that mainstream Chinese medicine was to continue to use natural substances in their whole state. The exploration into isolated active ingredients ended there. Natural substances used in their whole state have fewer side effects. Natural substances in their whole state contain ingredients that are meant to interact synergistically and to counteract potential side effects.
As Chinese herbal medicine gains more attention, researchers are turning toward these drugs to isolate their active ingredients. Isolating active ingredients from herbs runs counter to Chinese medicine's basic philosophy of wholeness. An isolated active ingredient does not have the synergistic and buffering properties that it has when it remains in the whole form of an herb. Isolated active ingredients cause side effects and side effects are not tolerated in Chinese medicine. In fact, if side effects occur, the treatment is considered a failure even when the treatment is effective. By using whole herbs Chinese medicine can avoid and alleviate most side effects. To elaborate: a natural plant can contain dozens of active ingredients that all have chemical or physiological effects on the human body. At the same time, the plant may contain some ingredients that have no effect on the body. Within these ingredients are complex interactions. Take the simple saying “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” The truth in this saying lies in the fact that the many active ingredients within the apple interact within the body. We do not completely understand the synergy that occurs with these active ingredients. But we do know that if we isolate all of the active ingredients from an apple and ingest them individually, we will never get the same health benefits as eating the real apple. It is one of the wonders of nature.
Instead of isolating active ingredients, Chinese medicine takes a holistic approach in using natural substances. In other words, Chinese medicine looks at the overall property of a natural substance. For example, if you have cold symptoms and you eat ginger and you feel better, then ginger must have a worthy property. You do not have to know the exact properties of each active ingredient within the ginger. Herbalists need to know how ginger interacts with other herbs in order to be able to put them together in a formula; because of these interactions, Chinese medicine relies heavily on experience accumulated over thousands of years.
Part of the art of herb combining is controlling and minimizing side effects. The undesired aspects of herbs are canceled or balanced out by another herb. In addition, when herbs are combined there can be certain aspects that are not desirable for the particular treatment purpose. However, when properly combined, these aspects are balanced out by other herbs and the desirable aspects reinforced.
While it is extremely dangerous and inadvisable to self-diagnose and treat with Western medicine, Chinese medicine is more forgiving. Taking the wrong herb or combination of herbs may not solve your problem, but most of the time it will not hurt you.
Brandon's case presents a classic example of how people who would have otherwise quickly perished are being kept alive as a result of the technological advances of Western medicine. Brandon's case also demonstrates how vital the quality of life is to our existence. Chinese medicine gives quality-of-life issues top priority by focusing first and foremost on improving or maintaining a pa-tient's sense of well-being.
In July 1997, Brandon learned about Chinese herbs from an AIDS volunteer and sought out treatment at a clinic where Dr. Han was consulting. Dr. Han recognized that Brandon's illness had been caused by the External Cause HIV virus. The HIV virus is considered Li Qi—a highly contagious External Cause. His External Causes and the medical conditions they resulted in had deeply altered Brandon's Energetic systems. He was severely Kidney Energy deficient. Kidney Energy in Chinese medicine provides the most important part of vitality. Kidney Energy has two sides, Yin and Yang. The Yin side is the Cooling, calming, nourishing side, and Yang is the Warming, active, functional side. Brandon's Kidney Energy was deficient on both sides. Nearly all his Energetic systems were depleted, and on top of that there was a tremendous amount of Toxin stagnation. Part of the stagnation was from the virus, but part of it was clearly from the side effects of the medications he was on.
“Dr. Han gave me herbs to cure my fever,”Brandon said. “I thought, oh sure. I'd been to every top doctor on the West Coast and nothing was going to shake this.” To his great surprise Brandon began to improve immediately. “I could feel the fever lifting, and I cried with joy. I started feeling stronger every day.” During this time, Dr. Han also weaned Brandon off the prednisone. Three weeks after beginning the herbs, Brandon's Shen became strong enough that he accepted an invitation to a party—where he met his current partner. Brandon began living again, and his Vital Energy returned.
Dr. Hosea learned about and was convinced of the benefits of Chinese herbal medicine through the positive experiences of his patients. “My personal R approach is to support anything that helps my patients,” Dr. Hosea said. “With AIDS, we can treat the pneumonia and the meningitis, but we can't effectively treat the nausea, the diarrhea or the other side effects of the medicine. I clearly remember when Brandon began the herbal medicines. He tolerated the medicines better, looked better and he was gaining weight.” Dr. Hosea is one of the many Western doctors who have learned about the benefits of Chinese medicine from their patients and who are now beginning to consult and work together with Chinese doctors on their patients' treatment plans. “My patients have taught me the benefits of Chinese medicine. It is something we are just not taught about in Western medicine at all. I have been pleasantly surprised to find out that patients have sought out herbal medicines and are getting good results from it when I wasn't able to help them with Western medicine.
“Chinese medicine has been around a lot longer than Western medicine, and they know a lot more about dealing with symptoms than does Western medicine. Western medicine often uses a hand grenade to kill a fly. Eastern medicine does a much better job of paying attention to the subtleties of symptoms and dealing with them to get people back into balance. It is the integration of Chinese medicine and Western medicine, including meditation and prayer, that creates a holistic picture.”
Throughout Brandon's illness, a belief in a higher power and purpose stayed with him. Before his HIV progressed to AIDS, he had attended retreats at a Buddhist temple. “I found myself feeling good while I was there, but I knew that my good health was not going to last forever,” he said. “On one visit to the temple, I picked up a book in my room. In it was a newspaper clipping from India, dated July 1895—which was the same month I was there, but nearly one hundred years before. It said: ‘Dear Sir, We feel bad about your illness, and we know it's considered terminal. But we know that hope is on the horizon, and we know that you will be well. A cure is being developed. Don't hold any fear. Know that we are all thinking about you and that you will be fine.' Throughout my illness, even when I couldn't get out of bed that message stayed with me.”
Brandon and his partner recently bought a ranch in Santa Barbara. Against the window-framed backdrop of the cloudless sky and deep blue Pacific Ocean, Brandon looked very much the athletic, dynamic Hollywood mogul. Instead of producing, Brandon has turned to writing screenplays, which allows him more free time. “When I was really low, I would go to the market and people would step in front of me to reach for something, or push their cart in front of me, or beat me to the checkout line. I was aware that the world was moving so much faster than I was, and I no longer felt like part of the world. But the down-and-outers, the alcoholics, the drug addicts, the old people, the really sick people, were on my frequency. They would be the only ones who would smile or talk to me. Like little voices of the underworld. As soon as I started getting healthy, they disappeared. During everything I went through, it was as if voices were telling me I had more to do with my life. I promised that if I got healthy again, I would do what I could to help people who have fallen through the cracks.” Several days a week, Brandon volunteers as a counselor to the homeless. “I see people that are in the shape that I was in. All they need is just a little bit of assistance to get them to that next place where at least they can function to go to the next step.”
Six years after Brandon began Chinese herbs, he looks healthy and vi-brant—having gone from the brink of death to balance and vitality on a combined treatment plan of Western drugs and Chinese herbs. He also works to raise funds for herbal treatments as part of the recovery process. “Herbs were the major part of my recovery, and I want to share that with others.”
Do not make any changes in your health program without consulting your doctor
If you are seriously ill, you need to see a health care professional to work with you and follow your healing progress. People with HIV/AIDS have varying degrees of sensitivities and must be carefully supervised.
Stool, hair and blood tests can determine if you have (1) high levels of accumulated heavy metals in your system, (2) sensitivities to foods or (3) dysbiosis, which is an imbalance of the healthy and unhealthy bacteria and yeast in the gut, any of which may be weakening your immune system and draining your energy. See page 431 for a laboratory that can refer you to a health care provider in your area who does these types of tests. If you test positive for any of these factors, your health practitioner can treat you on an individual basis.
Modify your diet
Follow the nutritional guidelines for environmental illnesses on page 168. See chapter 21 for recipes for HIV.
Take extra care to cook foods well to defend against salmonella and E. coli bacteria.
Many AIDS patients can benefit from the extra phytonutrients, probiotics and electrolytes from fresh vegetable juices and/or super green food. However, raw vegetable juices can be too stimulating for weakened digestive systems. If you use raw juice or super green food, do so under the supervision of your doctor. See page 294 for instructions on making fresh vegetable juice.
Detoxification can be hard on the body. Follow the detoxification program on pages 291–296 only under the close supervision of a health care practitioner.
The following herbs and foods have been shown to have either antiviral or immune-strengthening properties or to help treat the symptoms of AIDS.
Antiviral Herbs and Foods
Aloe vera
Asparagus
Bitter cucumber
Dandelion greens
Fava beans
Garlic
Ginger
Mung beans
Seaweed
Small Chinese red beans
Turmeric
Immune-Enhancing Herbs and Foods
Astragalus
Chinese yam
Codonapsis
Lycium fruit
Poria mushroom
White wood ear mushroom
Herbs and Foods That Have Both Antiviral and Immune-Enhancing Qualities
Pearl barley
Shiitake mushroom
Water lily
Herbs and Foods to Treat the Recurring Diarrhea and Digestive
Weakness Commonly Seen in AIDS
Kudzu root
Lily palm
Lotus seed
Pearl barley
Poria mushroom
Herbs and Foods to Treat the Weight Loss and
Dehydration of AIDS
Asparagus
Mung beans
White wood ear mushroom
Herbs and Foods That Treat the Loss of Appetite
Associated with AIDS
Bitter cucumber
Hawthorn berry
Lotus palm
Mary Enig, Ph.D., an internationally recognized biochemist in the field of fats and oils and an authority on trans fatty acids, reports that eating coconut is thought to reduce the viral load of HIV. Coconut oil contains lauric acid, which is converted by the body into monolaurin. Monolaurin is thought to solubilize the lipids in the virus envelope, causing its disintegration.According to Dr. Enig's research, some of the pathogens inactivated by monolaurin include HIV, measles virus, herpes simplex virus and influenza virus, as well as several kinds of bacteria. Dr. Enig suggests a diet containing about 24 grams of lauric acid, which can be obtained from 3 1/2 tablespoons of coconut oil, 10 ounces of pure coconut milk or 7 ounces of raw coconut per day. Since allergies to coconut are caused by the proteins, if you are allergic to coconut you can safely eat coconut oil.
Chinese herbs and Western supplements
Human growth hormone is now being used by some Western doctors to prevent muscle wasting and to rebuild lean body mass in HIV patients. Discuss using human growth hormone injections with your Western doctor. See more about this hormone in chapter 19.
Deer Velvet Antler is an important Kidney Yang tonic that enhances strength and rebuilds lean body mass in HIV patients. Deer Velvet Antler must be used under the supervision of a Chinese doctor. Discuss using Deer Velvet Antler with your Chinese doctor to stimulate the natural production of human growth hormone to rebuild wasted muscle mass. See more about Deer Velvet Antler in chapter 19.
Find a health care practitioner to give you injections of B vitamins, intravenous vitamin C or a “Meyer's cocktail,” which is a combination of calcium, magnesium, vitamin C and B complex.
Routinely, take the immune-modulating formula discussed on pages 103–104.
Routinely, thirty to forty-five minutes before breakfast, lunch and dinner take 1,000 milligrams free-form amino acids.
Routinely, before and after each meal, take the digestive formulas found on page 102.
You can use Chinese medicinal herbs in recipes to boost your immune system. See chapter 21 for recipes. You can also take Chinese herbal formulas and Western supplements specifically formulated for HIV. To purchase herbal formulas log on to ancientherbsmodernmedicine.com.