Doctor Ni Haixia’s Fourth Lesson: Breast Cancer Is Not a Death Sentence — Reversed Milk Flow Is the Real Root Cause

Patient search terms: what to do about breast cancer / breast lumps / breast tenderness before the period / how to regulate breast hyperplasia / what to do about a diabetic’s rotting foot / constipated for days — what to do / water in the lungs (pleural effusion) / kidney failure with nausea and vomiting / lupus erythematosus / blood cancer (leukemia) / what cancer patients should eat

Corresponding medical names: breast cancer · reversed milk flow · yang unable to enter yin (yang bu ru yin) · cold excess of the Lesser Yin (shao yin han shi) · excess of the Yang Brightness (yang ming fu shi) · the Da Cheng Qi Tang pattern · yang at its extreme gives birth to yin · water transformation (qi hua) · kidney failure · pleural effusion · Gan Sui Ban Xia Tang · Shi Zao Tang

Opening: finishing yesterday’s topic — serious disease, above all breast cancer

This is the fourth lecture of Doctor Ni Haixia’s heart-method series. Picking up the thread of serious disease from the previous lessons, he begins with the part he believes needs to be explained most carefully — breast cancer.

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: In the United States we see this most clearly in the clinic — America is the land of vitamins and the land of milk, and breast cancer patients are everywhere. I ask the patient: when did you first feel the lump in your breast? She says, about half a year ago. Then I ask: Chinese medicine holds that wind is the beginning of the hundred diseases — all hundred diseases arise from wind, and that means the common cold. When you caught a cold, what did you do? She says: I took vitamin C. Compared with our Gui Zhi Tang, vitamin C has no learning in it at all.

The root of breast cancer: a damaged heart and reversed milk flow

Why is breast cancer so common in America? Doctor Ni Haixia’s analysis points straight to two sources — the external cause and the internal cause — plus the damage that lifestyle habits do to the heart.

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: You drink milk every day, and when you get sick with a cold you take vitamin C, and when vitamin C does not solve it you take antibiotics. And this happens more than once — vitamin C itself irritates a woman’s body; I am speaking of vitamin C tablets, not natural sources like oranges or kiwi fruit. Antibiotics and painkillers as well all damage the heart. Add these causes together with the fact that every person carries joy, anger, worry, brooding, grief and fear — Chinese medicine counts one external cause (wind) and one internal cause (the inner emotions); we will not discuss venomous snakes, beasts and insect bites. Under these conditions, the strength of the heart is affected, and it can no longer draw the milk in the breast one hundred percent back down through the Chong and Ren meridians into the abdomen — that is the true reason milk accumulates in the breast.

So the “root” of breast cancer is not in the breast at all, but in the heart: when the heart’s strength is insufficient, the milk that should be drawn downward by the period cannot be pulled down, and it accumulates in the breast.

A woman can be her own best doctor — Doctor Ni Haixia teaches a self-check:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: Every time your period comes, if there is pressure in your chest, the pressure on both sides is even; once the period begins, the pressure gradually eases; and by the time the period stops, the pressure is completely gone — that condition tells you that you are perfectly normal and absolutely free of breast cancer cells. Even if your hand cannot feel it and a scan cannot find it, you can still sense it. But if your breasts swell before the period and, strangely, one place on the left is especially uncomfortable and painful while the right side is only ordinarily swollen — then you open your prescription: Si Wu Tang (Four Substances Decoction) plus dry-fried malt, and it clears the whole thing out at once. If every woman in China did this, breast cancer would be eradicated forever — this is the superior physician treating disease before it arises.

Why is he against biopsy and surgery?

By the time breast cancer patients reach Doctor Ni Haixia, the disease has usually already spread and worsened. Even if they cannot be saved, he tries to extend their lives. But he is firmly against biopsy and surgery, and his reason is a comparison he has seen clearly in the clinic:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: Any physician who has professionally treated breast cancer will understand: if a breast cancer has never been operated on, never had any intervention, and is left to worsen naturally — ask the patient from start to finish, even when it has rotted and smells terrible, does it hurt? No. Not at all. But if you have operated, ask her: does it hurt? Terribly — that is the pain of the wound. If it ruptures naturally, it does not hurt. I have had a lady in front of me whose entire breast peeled away; she pulled the flesh apart and showed me the pus draining from inside, and she felt no pain. Without treatment, even rotting, it does not hurt — and yet this very pain destroys the quality of life of breast cancer patients. When it hurts, she takes painkillers. You think painkillers stop the pain — that is only what you think. They merely lessen it; the pain is still inside, and eventually she needs morphine injections. But the more painkillers you use, the more the heart is damaged. It was precisely because the heart was damaged that she got breast cancer in the first place; if the treatment damages the heart further, the cancer is guaranteed to worsen.

Following the definition of “milk becoming the period,” one can judge during treatment whether the patient is worsening or improving:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: Because it is the heart that manages the transformation of milk into the period, the first question is sleep. If the patient, after starting your medicine — her sleep quality was poor before, and now it improves — you already know you are right. If her period was scanty, or she is past menopause, over fifty, with no period at all, and she was constipated before — after taking the medicine, I would rather such a patient have diarrhea than constipation — because at least the milk has some place to drain out.

Yang unable to enter yin: a hot cancer site is not a fever

The yin-yang differentiation of breast cancer is clear at a touch:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: The patient’s palms are warm, the backs of her hands are cool, her forehead is cool — that is normal. Now touch the chest — if the site of the cancer is hot to the touch, the patient will tell you it is very hot, while the other side is cool. This heat is not a fever: it is yang unable to enter yin. The yin has solidified — it has formed a yin lump — and yang qi cannot get in, so yang flows outward. In a normal person, yang must contain yin; yin and yang must be bound together. Now the yin has solidified into a stone, yang cannot enter, and instead it oozes out — that is why it feels hot. It is not a genuine high fever; it is a kind of low-grade fever. If you give medicine and the cancer site grows hotter and hotter, it means the yin has not opened, and the medicine is not working; if it grows less and less hot, the medicine is taking effect.

The prescription is adjusted accordingly:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: Your prescription normally includes sheng fu zi (raw aconite) and oyster shell — use one liang of oyster shell; if the effect is not enough, use two. Add strength to the heart: dried ginger and honey-fried licorice must both be used. The breast, the brain, the uterus and the bone marrow all belong to the extraordinary organs (qi heng zhi fu), and at this point you can add raw sulfur — three qian, wrapped, then decocted. With two liang of oyster shell we open up the space of the accumulation; at the same time add zhu ling (polyporus) and fu ling (poria) so that after the lump of the breast is broken up, the water is drained out and the inside will not rot again. When the patient’s heat recedes a little after taking the medicine, you know the effect has arrived. When you are treating a serious condition and an effective result appears, do not change the prescription — this is a question of dosage.

When to attack and when to defend

When one may attack and when one may only defend — Doctor Ni Haixia puts it very practically:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: You attack only when the patient still has strong vitality — she can still stand up and shake your hand, the two of you can chat and exchange pleasantries; that is the moment to attack. When the patient is often gasping for breath, you must be careful in attacking; if she is gasping, attacking may come too late — you must adopt a defensive posture first. The way to defend: when the patient is critically ill, we open up her spleen and stomach — we can use Fu Zi Li Zhong Tang (Aconite Rectify the Middle Decoction), Xiao Jian Zhong Tang (Minor Fortify the Middle Decoction) and the like, strengthening the kidney with kidney herbs, and fortifying the acquired foundation — the spleen and stomach. Once you open the appetite, the patient may be gravely ill, yet her appetite is excellent and she still eats normally — this person will not die. You stand by and wait, watching her eat and her strength recover. Of course you would never have her eat vitamin C; let her eat oranges, even chili peppers — normal food. But all dairy products must be cut out, absolutely — the milk must go.

Dairy includes cheese, pizza, milk and milk candy — none may be eaten. Soy milk is fine, however — and the key is what sugar you add:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: In soy milk you must use cane sugar; white sugar cannot be used. White sugar looks sweet — it is fake; it is industrially refined sugar, its molecules are extremely small. When it reaches your mouth, there are many bacteria between your teeth; the big bacteria in your mouth just happen to eat it, and the metabolic waste they excrete is acid — so besides causing periodontal disease in your teeth, it also causes stomach acid. Cane sugar is excellent: its molecules are so large that the small-mouthed bacteria cannot eat it, and cane sugar is alkaline — when it reaches the mouth it creates an alkaline environment, and in an alkaline environment you will not find any bacteria or tumor cancer cells. So eating cane sugar is cancer prevention, allergy prevention, health. When your tooth aches, you must have eaten refined sugar — eat it and the tooth aches at once; equally, take cane sugar and the toothache gradually disappears — better than a painkiller, because the alkaline environment kills the bacteria; cane sugar alone can kill them, no antibiotics needed.

Cane sugar rescues a rotting foot: a diabetic’s open sore need not be amputated

In an earlier lesson Doctor Ni Haixia told of treating cellulitis — a diabetic’s toe develops a small hole, it suppurates and turns black, about to spread to the bone, and Western medicine says amputate:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: If it were an enemy, I would tell you, amputation it is — go amputate quickly. If it is your relative or friend — do not amputate; quickly soak the foot in water with cane sugar dissolved in it. It is a purely alkaline environment, and at the same time the cane sugar draws out the pus inside. Earlier I spoke of the Bai Zhu Pai Nong Tang (Atractylodes Drain Pus Decoction), using bai shao (white peony) and bai zhu (atractylodes); if there is still pain, you may add herbs that invigorate the blood and dissolve stasis — chuan xiong (Sichuan lovage root), dan pi (moutan bark), tao ren (peach kernel), any of these — and a large wound closes over at once, the pus in the bone all drained out. Why is amputation needed at all? Amputation is needed only because you do not know how to treat it. You think amputation solves it? You are wrong — it was originally a small wound that rotted; is amputation not a bigger wound left behind? And after the amputation, how will that wound close? So after the amputation, when the time comes, they amputate again; and when there is nowhere left to amputate, they amputate again.

Constipation divided into yin and yang: cold excess of the Lesser Yin and dry heat of the Yang Brightness

In Chinese medicine constipation also divides into yin and yang, and the treatments are completely different. The first is cold excess of the Lesser Yin (shao yin han shi):

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: The Lesser Yin pattern has a form we call cold excess. The patient is constipated all the same — perhaps once a week, once in ten days — the urine is clear and white, and after seven or ten days without a bowel movement he is not at all distressed; nothing hurts. The Yang Brightness is a heat pattern, and its urine is yellow and turbid; but if the urine is clear and there is no suffering, this is cold excess of the Lesser Yin. The main prescription of the Lesser Yin is Ma Huang Fu Zi Xi Xin Tang (Ephedra, Aconite and Asarum Decoction); remove the ephedra and change it to Da Huang Fu Zi Xi Xin Tang (Rhubarb, Aconite and Asarum Decoction) — da huang (rhubarb) three qian, fu zi (aconite) two qian, xi xin (asarum) two qian. If you do not know this cold-excess constipation and prescribe Da Cheng Qi Tang instead, the prescription does not match — he will still run to the toilet, but he will run miserably: stomach pain, foot pain. With Da Huang Fu Zi Xi Xin Tang the patient will tell you: in my whole life my bowel movements have never been this good! Why does the fu zi supply the heat? Because in cold excess of the Lesser Yin the intestines have completely stopped peristalsis — the stool is blocked inside and accumulates slowly, with no sense of accumulation and no pain; in dry excess of the Yang Brightness the intestines are still moving, but the large intestine is too dry, without fluids, and cannot push through — that is what produces pain, as the old stool rubs against the intestinal wall. Xi xin can enter the small intestine and, like a root, transport the cold to the surface; dissolving the ice is the job of pao fu zi (prepared aconite). For ten days without a bowel movement, prescribe three qian of rhubarb; for seven days, two qian; for fifteen days, please use six qian.

The second is dry heat of the Yang Brightness — the Da Cheng Qi Tang pattern:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: In dry heat of the Yang Brightness the patient suffers terribly: stomach pain, stool that will not come out, and the emotions turn extremely agitated and anxious. When the Da Cheng Qi Tang pattern is severe enough to cause agitation, the turbid qi of the stool rushes up to the brain, and the patient may run about madly, climb to high places, and sing from the heights. When I was strolling through the old town of Pingyao in Shanxi, a man beside me stripped off his shirt, tied his feet up to his waist, and walked along talking to himself, eyes staring straight ahead — that is exactly the look of the Da Cheng Qi Tang pattern, climbing high and discarding one’s clothes. Da Cheng Qi Tang (Major Order the Qi Decoction): hou po (magnolia bark) two qian, zhi shi (immature bitter orange) two qian, da huang (rhubarb) three qian, and mang xiao (mirabilite) — put these three herbs in the pot and decoct six hundred cc down to two bowls; take the mang xiao, one qian, mixed into the strained liquid. Hou po is tree bark; it governs the large intestine, stimulating it to produce mucus and fluids. Zhi shi is like a small tangerine; it governs the small intestine. Once the fluids are quickly replenished, peristalsis no longer hurts. Da huang is the herb that removes excess — it pushes out the dry retained stool; the stool is very hard, some as big as a fist, hard as stone, and when it falls into the toilet it makes a gurgling sound — at that point, breaking through the hardness depends on mang xiao: once mang xiao goes in, the retained stool is cut apart like jade, slice by slice. With these four herbs the bowels open — not one herb more, not one less. Classical formulas use few herbs with focused power.

There is one more situation: an elderly person of eighty or ninety who lacks the strength to push, the stool dry and blocking the anus in pieces, the anus painful — Da Cheng Qi Tang would be too fast and too harsh for them. Zhang Zhongjing’s method:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: The Shang Han Lun (Treatise on Cold Damage) contains the pig-bile guiding method. Draw pig bile into a hollow bamboo tube, make the front end round and smooth, coat it with a little lard for lubrication, insert it into the anus, and inject the pig bile. If no pig gall bladder can be found, use the honey guiding method — boil honey until thickened, shape it into a cone like a glycerin suppository, insert it into the anus, and slowly guide the stool out. These are all methods of guiding and dissolving. Stool that cannot be brought out can kill a person — many cancers in their final stage look exactly like the Da Cheng Qi Tang pattern; some are purely the Da Cheng Qi Tang pattern with no cancer at all, and whether there is cancer is easily determined by the yin-yang diagnostic method.

The pulse and tongue coating are equally clear-cut: in cold excess of the Lesser Yin the pulse is faint, thin and weak, and the tongue coating is white, thick and moist; in dry heat of the Yang Brightness the pulse is large, strong, hard and forceful, and the tongue coating is yellow, thick and dry — the yellower it is, the darker it becomes, to the point of turning black. Heat at its limit turns black; cold at its limit also turns black, but in cold extremes the black tongue surface is very moist with fluids.

Yang at its extreme gives birth to yin; yin at its extreme gives birth to yang: the stories of two extreme patients

Yin and yang rotate — when yang reaches its extreme, yin is born; when yin reaches its extreme, yang is born; heat at its extreme produces cold, cold at its extreme produces heat. It sounds mystical, so Doctor Ni Haixia tells two real cases.

The first: a female patient of over three hundred pounds, so much flesh that only a third of the chair could hold her — in winter she jumped into ice water and still felt as hot as iron thrust into the water:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: She was thirsty and drank ice; she was unbearably hot — like a massive Bai Hu Tang (White Tiger Decoction) pattern. With Bai Hu Tang I came out swinging: eight liang of gypsum. One dose is nine bowls of water boiled down to three bowls; each bowl is about two or three liang of medicine — I gave her a week’s supply. A week later she came and said: I am even hotter! Before, I held a lot of ice cubes in my mouth; now I have to put the ice cubes in my mouth and chew them. I thought to myself, this is bad — stone dropped into the sea. I changed the medicine, she took it another week, and came back saying: I am hotter still — I was too embarrassed to tell you. Was my direction wrong? By every theory this was definitely Yang Brightness heat; I rarely misdiagnose. Fine — today I will change your medicine: sheng fu zi (raw aconite) three qian, gan jiang (dried ginger) three qian, zhi gan cao (honey-fried licorice) five qian; to drain water, fang ji (tetrandra) five qian and fu ling (poria) — all prescribed to her exact build. Her strength was poor because her weight had injured her bones, so I added bu gu zhi (psoralea fruit) and sheng di (fresh rehmannia) to tonify the kidney, and with kidney tonics one normally opens a diuretic — ze xie (alisma). Why ze xie? The kidney works twenty-four hours a day without stopping; while you tonify it, it is still working — you are eating while working, and it cannot be nourished. Zhang Zhongjing used ze xie in Liu Wei Di Huang Wan (Six-Ingredient Rehmannia Pill) for exactly this reason: while shu di (prepared rehmannia) tonifies the kidney, ze xie drains the urine, giving the kidney a temporary rest — only then can the kidney be nourished. Liu Wei Di Huang Wan has three tonics and three drainers: huai shan (Chinese yam) tonifies the spleen while fu ling drains dampness; shan zhu yu (cornus) tonifies the liver while dan pi (moutan bark) clears the liver; shu di tonifies the kidney paired with ze xie. If you prescribe a pile of kidney tonics without opening a window for the kidney, the kidney is already exhausted working, and having to eat on top of that exhausts it further — nothing is digested, nothing is nourished. So this female patient took the medicine for a week and came back saying: it is now the height of July heat, at noon I stand in the sun wearing three jackets and I am still cold — I gave her such hot medicine, and after taking it she became cold. She said: in my whole life, from childhood to now, I have never been this comfortable. You are cold, and comfortable? She said: you do not know how miserable heat is. She urinated constantly — the truth is the interior was cold; between the heart and the small intestine the cold was like ice, and that interior cold cannot be dissolved except by sheng fu zi. When the cold dissolves, it must have somewhere to drain; cold is ice, dissolved it becomes water, and it kept coming out as urine. She began to lose weight. I said: so do you still want to drink milk? She said: I do not want to be a cow! — on the very first day I drew her a picture: people who drink milk grow up to look like cows. From that day she never drank milk again. This is heat at its extreme giving birth to cold.

The second: a patient of extreme cold, hands and feet icy in winter and summer alike:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: Si Ni Tang (Four Rebellious Decoction) went in; Dang Gui Si Ni Tang (Angelica Four Rebellious Decoction) went in — utterly like stone dropped into the sea, not the slightest sensation. My hands trembled as I wrote; fu zi (aconite) up to five qian, six qian — I dared not go higher. Forget it, I gave up. Then large-dose gypsum went in, and he said: Doctor, in my whole life my body has never been this hot! Eight liang of gypsum — you had never been hot before? Gypsum is a yang herb; yang at its extreme gives birth to yin.

At a deeper level, the insight is yin returning on its own (yin zi hui):

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: When we raise the yang qi, the yin qi rises with it, and the yin returns by itself — when the patient’s disease departs, the yin must return on its own; only when it returns by itself is it a true cure. For example, a dry, parched mouth and thirst: the prescription goes in, fluids are born under the tongue, and the thirst is gone — the fluids have all returned. In the Da Cheng Qi Tang pattern with a dry large intestine, the fluids turn back and the stool becomes normal — Da Cheng Qi Tang is not meant to be taken for a lifetime; take it until your urine turns the color of egg yolk, and you are normal again, because the fluids have returned. Before, besides constipation, the mouth was dry, one had to drink ice water, and the mouth was dry and bitter on waking; now the stool is fine and the mouth is full of fluids and saliva. After the yang qi returns, the yin fluids return by themselves — so yin returning on its own represents recovery. If you do not understand that after yang reaches its limit and returns to normal, yin will turn back, and you blindly nourish yin, you will fail — yin must not be treated by us; it must be allowed to return on its own. That is precisely why we use yang herbs so much. After the patient finishes the medicine, the thirst is gone, and the skin shines with luster from the inside out — the skin becomes beautiful, and you do not need to prescribe skin-beautifying herbs; that is the phenomenon of yin returning on its own.

Leukemia and lupus erythematosus: milk flowing backward into the heart

In Doctor Ni Haixia’s theory, lupus erythematosus and leukemia also belong to the “reversed milk flow” system:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: Green enters the liver, red enters the heart, yellow enters the spleen, white enters the lung, black enters the kidney. The spleen governs transformation and transportation: after digesting and absorbing food, it separates the nourishment into five colors. The red nourishment must enter the heart, the black must enter the kidney. In a patient with kidney failure, the black nourishment cannot enter the kidney, so it runs to the face — dialysis patients all have black faces; one look and you know it is uremia. Milk flows backward into the heart: the red nourishment originally belongs to the heart, but now a portion of the heart has been occupied by milk; the red nourishment has nowhere to stay, so it goes outward, runs to the face, and grows like a wolf rash — patches of red on the face, like the face of a wolf; red eruptions on the hands and body. That redness is not a skin disease; it is the heart’s nourishment being squeezed out by the milk. So the moment you regulate the milk in the heart, all the red patches disappear — instantly, overnight. In the clinic my only obstacle is a lupus patient who is black — I look and still see black; she says her face is very red, and I truly cannot see it. That is my only blind spot.

Men have their corresponding condition — blood cancer:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: After a man’s sperm is produced, the residual waste travels up the Conception Vessel (Ren Mai) and circles around the corners of the mouth, becoming the beard. When this waste can no longer circle the mouth, it flows backward from the Conception Vessel into the Governing Vessel (Du Mai), causing a man’s blood cancer. In clinical diagnosis, a tender point can be found at the sixth vertebra. Men rarely get lupus erythematosus; most patients are women — the milk lies closest to the heart, the sperm lies farther from it. Unmarried girls can also get lupus erythematosus, because even unmarried they still discharge milk. In treatment, strengthen the heart with sheng fu zi (raw aconite) — and how do you know it is cured? You start shaving every day. When a eunuch’s testicles are removed, his discharge lessens and the waste is gone, so eunuchs have no beard — the testicle is not truly the place where sperm is produced. The true place of sperm production in a man is: the bladder in front, the small intestine behind, and in the gap between the small intestine and the bladder — which Chinese medicine calls the Essence Palace (jing gong) — sperm is produced in the blend of water and fire, for the small intestine’s fire is next to it and the bladder is water. If a man’s feet are cold, the small intestine’s temperature is insufficient, the blood does not transform one hundred percent into sperm, and when he ejaculates you see blood — Western medicine says it may be inflammation; you are wrong, it is too much cold. Give him antibiotics and steroid injections, and you are making a mess of it. I see his feet are cold, prescribe to heat the small intestine back up, and he no longer sees blood when he ejaculates. It is the same for women: the milk descends to the uterus and ovaries, the fire of the small intestine roasts it, and after vaporization it emerges as red menstrual blood; when the small intestine’s temperature is insufficient, the period is pink — white and red mixed together; when the small intestine’s temperature is too hot, the period expels black stasis clots.

The body’s process of water transformation

Doctor Ni Haixia stresses that anyone studying Chinese medicine must thoroughly understand the process of water transformation (qi hua) in the human body as described in the Huang Di Nei Jing (Yellow Emperor’s Inner Classic). Western medicine speaks of blood; he speaks of water and qi:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: We humans drink water — the water goes down into the stomach, the stomach’s heat vaporizes it, and it immediately enters the Triple Burner system, then travels through our extraordinary organs. The water in food we call yin water: when you eat grains and drink pork-bone soup, it enters the stomach for digestion and reaches the small intestine; the small intestine has fire, and its heat equals that of the heart — the same temperature — so it can digest the food. The residue and feces travel in the large intestine; the large intestine holds much water, the water lies above the small intestine, surrounding it, wrapping it — the fire boils the water, and the water vaporizes for the first time, returns through the Triple Burner to the lung. The lighter water goes beneath the tongue — the tongue is the mirror of the heart; beneath the tongue lie the Jin Jin and Yu Ye points, which produce saliva. After the water reaches the lung, besides engendering fluids, it descends from the lung — metal engenders water — and enters the kidney; then the fire of the small intestine vaporizes it a second time, and following the Gate of Life (ming men) fire and the Governing Vessel (Du Mai) it rises all the way to the brain. The dirtier water goes through the ureters into the bladder; and even in the bladder it is not finished — the bladder and the small intestine are pressed together, the bladder’s water is vaporized by the sun-like heat; the clean water engenders wood from the bladder water, and only then does the body release the turbid water inside — that is your urine. You see how many vaporization processes the water passes through before the turbid water is expelled.

With this concept, kidney failure is easy to reason out:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: The kidney’s function may be lost because of very strong antibiotics, toxic kidney failure, or long-term Western drugs — blood-sugar-lowering medicines taken until the kidney fails. Every hour, every day, the lung hands water to the kidney; the kidney says, sorry, I am not accepting it; the lung does not care, it continues its work, and the water stays above the kidney, more and more. So a kidney-failure patient has no urge to defecate, no desire to urinate, and cannot pass urine either. The water slowly accumulates upward and wraps the stomach; the stomach itself is peristalsing, and suddenly much water is blocked inside, so the stomach cannot move, food cannot go down, and nausea and vomiting begin — the first symptom of kidney failure is violent nausea: food goes in and comes right back out. The water rises further to below the heart and below the lung — the place of the diaphragm; Chinese medicine says there is water in the diaphragm space. This place is like a balance scale: when the scale moves, in fact the base is moving; the scale sways, and the person becomes violently dizzy — Western medicine says your middle ear is unbalanced. Nonsense. Chinese medicine treats vertigo by removing the water from the middle diaphragm: this place should be qi — qi is steam, and steam has heat; if cold water sits here, the moment your body sways you start to feel dizzy.

The prescription: Wu Ling San (Five Substances Powder with Poria — gui zhi (cinnamon twig), bai zhu (atractylodes), fu ling (poria), zhu ling (polyporus), ze xie (alisma)) drains the water away, and the head stops spinning. Notice that when draining water, there is no honey-fried licorice — honey-fried licorice stores water; if you are draining water and prescribe honey-fried licorice, it stores water, so classical formulas do not add honey-fried licorice to every prescription. The water above the kidney is refused by the kidney; to make the kidney accept water, rely on Zhen Wu Tang (True Warrior Decoction) — Zhen Wu Tang adds pao fu zi (prepared aconite) and bai shao (white peony); its other herbs overlap with Wu Ling San. Wu Ling San plus pao fu zi, bai zhu, bai shao, and sheng jiang (fresh ginger) equals a combined formula of Zhen Wu Tang and Wu Ling San, taking care of both the water in the diaphragm space and the water above the kidney.

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: A patient comes into the emergency room: dizzy, nauseated, vomiting, complexion black, hands and feet icy; shine a flashlight into the eyes and the pupils do not move — this is kidney failure. The prescription goes down, and immediately urine starts to come out, the urge to urinate returns, the dizziness stops, the nausea stops, and he can eat. Sometimes I feel I should just stay in the emergency room. Some people run in without vomiting — just dizziness, good complexion, talking loudly, still cursing people — that is definitely not kidney failure; kidney failure goes with no urge to urinate. So we only need to ask: can you pass urine? If you cannot pass urine, it is kidney failure.

Water in the lungs, water below the heart, and water in the uterus

When the lung’s temperature is insufficient, the water that reaches the lung turns cold and stays there, unable to descend — like dark clouds gathered in the sky that never release rain. Two symptoms appear:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: When water stops in the region of both ribs, that is water in the lungs (pleural effusion): the patient cannot lie flat; he must sit up to breathe — the moment he lies down, the water floods up, causing violent coughing, and he must sit up again — this is the Shi Zao Tang (Ten Jujubes Decoction) pattern. We use gan sui (kansui), yuan hua (genkwa flower) and da ji (euphorbia); yuan hua is a flower, gan sui is a stem — the proportions must be careful: kansui two parts, euphorbia two parts, genkwa one part, totaling about one qian — 3.75 grams; for a large, fat patient who has drunk milk for years, use five grams. Put it in capsules and take it, decoct red dates into soup and drink that — take it at six o’clock in the morning; six o’clock is the time the large intestine opens. One dose and it comes out from above and below — vomiting and diarrhea — and the water is drained. Roughly six vomits and six bowel movements at once, from start to eleven in the morning, and it is done; the water will not return. If you drain the water by needle aspiration, one scoop of water out and it comes right back — in the end you still have to take our Shi Zao Tang.

The second kind: water stopping below the heart, in the space between the heart and the spleen — Gan Sui Ban Xia Tang (Kansui and Pinellia Decoction), using sheng ban xia (raw pinellia):

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: Kansui is used most in classical formulas in three places; these are two of them, and the third is gynecology — water accumulating in the uterus. A woman’s abdomen is distended — not the whole belly, but only the lower abdomen, a hard, stiff block; feel it and you might think it is a tumor, but it is not a tumor — it is water stopped in the uterus, and the patient is certainly constipated. Such a woman, even married sixty years, will not bear a child. I once had a patient married six years without a child; she came in, one dose of Da Huang Gan Sui Tang (Rhubarb and Kansui Decoction), and the stool all came out — a single dose was enough; the second month she was pregnant. Brain edema cannot be drained by kansui, liver cirrhosis cannot be drained by kansui — because you used the medicine wrongly. Use it correctly and kansui, genkwa flower and euphorbia can all be used. To prevent brain edema from a brain tumor, you must take preventive measures from the very beginning — the superior physician treats disease before it arises; prevent from the start and there will be no water accumulation.

There is a saying in Chinese medicine: men fear swollen feet, women fear swollen heads — a man’s lower body is yang; when the feet swell, it is the moment yang is about to depart; when a woman’s head swells, it is likewise yang about to depart, losing all primal yang. That is why we pay attention to water and use herbs that secure and tonify yang to make the yang qi return. Diagnostic key: Shi Zao Tang is for pain between the two ribs; Gan Sui Ban Xia Tang is for pain below the heart — both are lung water, unable to lie flat, coughing, short of breath, gasping; ma’am, where does it hurt? Pain in the mouth of the stomach (below the heart) — Gan Sui Ban Xia Tang, prescribed and done; pain on both sides of the ribs — Shi Zao Tang, prescribed and done.

The great principles of treating cancer: cancer cells need cold water — cut off their nourishment

For treating serious cancers, Doctor Ni Haixia summarizes two great principles:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: Cancer, inflammation, any virus — it needs water, but it needs cold water. Remove the cold water, change it to hot water, the environment changes, and the cancer cells cannot survive — we do not need to research something that specifically kills cancer cells. Think about it: for cancer cells to survive inside a patient’s body, they must be stronger than the patient — otherwise how could they live? In order to grow and flourish, they must change the environment into one suited to their survival, and in the end they finish you off. Western medicine invents chemical drugs to kill cancer cells — but the cancer cells are stronger than the human body; before you kill the cancer cells, do you not first kill the person? So when patients really die, they often die on chemotherapy, on the operating table, on radiotherapy. In Chinese medicine’s treatment of cancer, drain the unwanted cold water and vaporize all the water in the body. Second, the supply of food nourishment — cancer cells also need nourishment; that nourishment must be cut off. The worst nourishment, the one I keep writing about online, is the multivitamin — multivitamins are the worst nourishment; all the various vitamins and calcium tablets are frauds, take none of them. Food should be as natural as possible — the more natural, the better. Achieve these two, and the cancer cells have neither water to drink nor food to eat — that is the final strategy of our cancer treatment. Water is yang; food you can see, nourishment you cannot see but know it exists — it is yin. Care for both yin and yang, and the treatment goes smoothly.

But not every cancer can be cured; it depends on what stage it has reached. By the time many patients reach us, their internal organ functions have already been destroyed — we must handle two things: the worsening of the disease itself, and the bodily harm caused by the previous doctors’ mistakes. The disease has already metastasized before it is cured — that is the hardest situation to handle.

Live consultation: diagnosing a 52-year-old woman with “lung cancer”

After all the theory, Doctor Ni Haixia sees a 52-year-old female patient live — she has been diagnosed with lung cancer metastasized to the brain. First, the patient tells her history:

This June my stomach was unwell; at Liuzhou People’s Hospital they examined me and removed a polyp. The X-ray showed a little shadow, and the doctor said it was bronchitis — never mind it. Later I coughed and felt my chest tight; I saw a specialist who said the film showed nothing much wrong and prescribed anti-allergy medicine — it did not help. I went to a small hospital and had penicillin injections for a week — treated as pneumonia, and it was not cured either. Then they switched to two weeks of levofloxacin injections — no improvement. At the municipal hospital of traditional medicine, Director Mao said the June film had already shown a problem; take another film right away. They treated it as pneumonia again and hospitalized me; after a week another CT, and then they gave me anti-tuberculosis drugs — I had injections and medicine in the hospital for twenty days, and after discharge continued taking the medicine for another month. Half a month after discharge I was checked again; they said it was absorbing, keep taking it. Another half month later I took a CT and it had become a mass. They called me back for hospitalization and a biopsy; the biopsy said lung cancer. After the biopsy there was no whole-body examination, because I had this symptom — the right side was numb; during the anti-TB week of injections, this place began to go numb; before, only the big toe was numb. Later, after more than a month, the head also began to feel numb.

The diagnostic interview begins:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: First calm your mind and relax. Right now red threads flood both your eyes — red blood vessels climbing up over the eyes — this is extreme dejection and worry. Do not be anxious; anxiety is useless, and half a day of worrying has nothing to do with the disease. Chinese medicine holds that worry harms the lung; the more you worry, the more you harm your lung — you already have a lung problem, and worrying harms it further. Let me ask you a few questions: how is your sleep at night? — Good. Can you sleep through three to five in the morning? — Three to five sometimes a little uncomfortable, a burning feeling inside; I wake up and see it is exactly three o’clock, and once it eases I fall right back asleep. Do you have night sweats? — Not now; before treatment, during hospitalization, the night sweats were severe; now they have stopped. At night do you feel cold or hot? — Fairly hot. Your hands and feet? — Also fairly hot. Does your chest hurt? — Occasionally a little. Besides numbness, does your head hurt? — Occasionally a little. Does your head feel hot or cold inside? — Blind; it does not feel pinched, it does not feel like mine. How is your bowel movement? — Not bad; twice a day. What color is your urine? — A little yellow when I was on the medicine. Do you take multivitamins? — No. Just from the symptoms you have told me, I know you have nothing much wrong at all. From start to finish it was misdiagnosis; many of your symptoms were manufactured by Western medicine. From now on, absolutely do not let Western medicine treat you again.

Doctor Ni Haixia gives her three judgments:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: First, with your present symptoms, your disease cannot kill you; it will not take your life. Second, if we start working from this moment, even if it does not heal, staying as you are for a hundred years you would still be like this — you are alive and well, sitting right here. I can see it in your eyes: you think too much and put too much pressure on yourself. Show me your tongue — the tongue is rather yellow, rather thick, rather dry. Yellow comes from the heart; the pressure inside the heart is high, so we must add some huang lian (coptis). Feel your hand — the heat of the palm can penetrate right through to this place — this is yin containing yang, yang hiding within yin; now yang is retreating and yin is in front, the yang qi is pulling back, and this yin wave can be felt. Compare the temperatures of the palm and the forehead: the forehead is hot and the palm is also hot — that means yang is dispersing outward while yin stays inside; we must make yin and yang join together, yang qi entering yin, and you will be well. You do not need to go back for another check — they have already told you the cancer was excised and metastasized to the brain; there is no worse news than that, so why go back and check again? You just said it clearly: I have symptoms — numbness here, numbness in the big toes of my hands and feet. Take my medicine, and when the big toes are no longer numb, is that not improvement? When the occasional chest pain disappears, is that not recovery? When you sleep through till dawn — before you often woke in the night, now you do not — that means you are well. Many of these symptoms can prove you are well.

Then the psychological guidance — the five-element emotions:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: Joy overcomes worry — fire controls metal. Worry can harm your lung, so joy must overcome worry — you absolutely must be happy; leave the rest to us. Let me tell you a true story of a married couple, published in a London newspaper in 2004. A couple went for a checkup. The doctor told the wife: you came too late — ovarian cancer at the terminal stage, already metastasized to the lungs and brain; you have about a year to live. Then he examined the husband: your arteries are blocked; even bypass surgery would be too late. The couple went home and discussed it: since this is how things stand, we will do nothing — no treatment of any kind. They sold their London apartment for 250,000 pounds and made a list of fifty things to do before death; the first was to sail around the world. They bought tickets on the Elizabeth — one of the largest cruise ships in the world — and traveled everywhere, dancing, drinking and listening to music every night, happier than they had ever been, as if they were young and in love again. Half a year later they returned to England and first went to see the doctor — the examination showed: you have no cancer! Then they examined the husband: his arteries were all open! This is a true story of real people. So you must live joyfully — let go, do not fear death, and we have already won half. Our medicine can cure the disease of your body, but it cannot cure your psychology; that, you must overcome yourself.

The prescription is Bai Hu Tang (White Tiger Decoction) modified:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: Based on your history, the previous hospitals followed the Western scattergun approach — now pneumonia, so give you a volley of penicillin; then they say tuberculosis. Do you know how strong anti-TB drugs are? In the clinic, many people taking anti-tuberculosis medicine develop liver failure within a month; when liver function is gone they need a liver transplant. You were lucky not to reach two months. In my judgment you do not have lung cancer at all — your lung disease was manufactured; made by human; you should never have had this illness. The medicine I prescribe — call Mr. Li or a little child to drink it; even someone without lung cancer can drink it. If it were chemotherapy? — your husband has no lung cancer; let him do a round of chemotherapy — the doctor would say, why would a normal person do chemotherapy? Chemotherapy kills many people. My medicine can be taken by anyone, even without lung cancer. Bai Hu Tang contains honey-fried licorice and jing mi (round-grained rice) — three qian of the rice is enough, to increase the fluids of the stomach and intestines. We also add zhi zi (gardenia) and dou chi (fermented soybeans) — yesterday I went to the ancient town of Yangmei; there was a man there who makes very good dou chi, so our household dou chi will be given to you — have you ever heard of anyone dying from eating dou chi? You only hear of people getting rich selling it. Decoct the prescription in water down to three bowls; afterwards make adjustments: if a cough appears, add wu wei zi (schisandra); if the phlegm is mostly white, add ban xia (pinellia); if the phlegm is mostly yellow, add xing ren (apricot kernel); if the patient drinks and still feels thirsty, add tian hua fen (trichosanthes root); if the lung pain is severe, add zhi shi (immature bitter orange) three qian, and if the pain is worse, up to five qian. For the numbness of the head and this side, add ge gen (kudzu root) to the same prescription — when ge gen is used heavily, six, eight qian, even one liang, facial wind-stroke phenomena recede at once. Ge Gen Tang (Kudzu Decoction) is Gui Zhi Tang plus ge gen and ma huang (ephedra) — wind-stroke of the Tai Yang is Gui Zhi Tang, cold damage of the Tai Yang is Ma Huang Tang, warm disease of the Tai Yang is Ge Gen Tang. The Jin Gui Yao Lue (Essentials from the Golden Cabinet) also discusses warm disease: it does not mean a warm environment, but a patient who catches a cold while the body itself is warm and streaming with sweat — that is warm disease. A child who runs and plays every day, sweating heavily, and catches cold in that state of heavy sweating — that is the Ge Gen Tang pattern.

The standard for judging the medicine:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: Take my medicine until your head and face all feel cold, and only the palms and soles are warm — right now you feel your head is hot; if while taking my medicine the heat increases, stop taking it — at that point you would still be deceiving me; but if the head and face turn cold and the hands and feet stay warm, the medicine is right. Keep taking it until the red threads are gone, and at the same time you sleep through to dawn every night, eat three regular meals, have good energy and strength, and each morning when you look in the mirror the red threads of the eyes are gone and the tongue coating has turned white. When we feel the pulse: in a woman, the left-hand pulse is the blood pulse and the right-hand pulse is the qi pulse — a woman’s blood should be greater than her qi; in a normal man the right-hand pulse should be greater than the left. The cun (inch) pulse is the yang pulse, the chi (foot) pulse is the yin pulse; yin and yang must be coordinated: within the yang pulse there must be yin — when you feel the yang pulse it should be a little smaller than the yin pulse; within the yin pulse there must be yang — the yin pulse is comparatively larger. Do not memorize the twenty-eight pulses and the Ping Hu Mai Jue (Mirror of the Lake Plain Pulse Classic); memorize all day and still cannot feel a thing — useless. A well-written book is always the simpler the better. There is also the pulse that runs to the bone: if something is growing in the lung, when you press the pulse down to the bone, the pulse is still jumping inside — something is growing there. Even though the film found a shadow, found a white spot, and the biopsy said lung cancer, it shows not the slightest sign of growth. Your pulse runs between five and six beats per respiration — slightly fast, and we consider that fine. By pulse standards, five beats per respiration is normal; over six or seven is more dangerous; at eight and above, nine or ten, danger can come at any moment. Your sleep is occasionally poor — you are making a mountain out of a molehill.

Finally, the examination of the back — tenderness at the third vertebra:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: Draw a line between the two shoulder blades; the third vertebra is about here. Miss Wen, I will press with my finger — where do you feel the most pain? — Here. Good. Remember: while taking my medicine, someone will press here for you every week; tell us whether the pain has increased or decreased. The day you take my medicine and press here again, with the same force, and you no longer feel this vertebra especially painful — when it feels the same as the others, you are well. Conversely, if the more you take, the more it hurts here, stop taking the medicine. When we are doctors, no doctor dares tell you one hundred percent he can cure a disease. A mature doctor — if I cannot help you, I withdraw and hand the chance to another doctor, rather than let the patient waste money and time. That is basic ethics.

Closing: be happy, and you have already won half

At the end, Doctor Ni Haixia repeatedly tells that female patient — whether the disease can be cured is half medicine and half heart:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: You never had lung cancer to begin with — it was manufactured for you inside the hospital. Even if it has spread to the brain, it does not matter; do exactly as I say. I am returning to Taiwan the day after tomorrow; as long as Instructor Liu tells me your red-thread eyes are gone, I will know you have come back. That condition in your eyes is called hong si guan jing (red threads flooding the eyes) — the look of a prisoner being led out to be beheaded. Do not be afraid: you have committed no crime, and you will not die. If you truly died, the cause of death would have to be your own depression — and second, the fault of the earlier doctors. Have you felt happier today? Much happier — you must be happy. When you are happy, we will win.

Compiled from Doctor Ni Haixia’s fourth lecture on the heart-method of Chinese medicine — breast cancer, the yin-yang differentiation of constipation, the theory of yin and yang, and the treatment of serious disease, presented by Doctor Luo Dalun.