All Digestive Issues

       Chinese herbs are especially effective for digestive problems from one end to the other of the digestive system.

• Conditions treated well with Chinese herbs: esophagitis, heartburn, overacidic stomach, gall bladder pain, stomach and intestinal pain, irritable bowel, ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s, and hemorrhoids, these are justsome of the distresses of the digestive system that Chinese herbs are very good at treating.

• Conditions treated by Chinese herbs, but more difficult to treat include: pancreatitis, gallstones, intestinal fibroids and others. Here, Chinese herbs can be used with Western medicines as an adjunctive therapy. (See also section on type II diabetes.)

• Conditions in which Chinese herbs are ineffective: a stomach ulcer, any cancer of the digestive tract, type I diabetes and other serious conditions.

These lists are not definitive, nor are they the last word on what Chinese herbs treat for digestive problems. Other herbalists might disagree, finding that they can treat problems that in my experience it is very difficult if not impossible to treat and conversely find that conditions I have found where Chinese herbs do extremely well, they think them difficult to treat. And, of course, there is an extensive literature written in Chinese and a smaller literature written in English describing and evaluating studies that have researched the effectiveness of Chinese herbs for various conditions.

In general, however, I have found that Chinese herbs, in general, are very effective for digestive conditions, especially for conditions that Western medicine finds especially difficult to treat. Until I was informed by patients and friends who are M.D.s that certain conditions, i.e. colitis, Crohn’s, and other conditions of the large bowel were difficult for Western medicine to treat, I assumed that these were simple treatable conditions, since my success rate treating them was not infallible, but nearly so.

The same goes for heartburn, stomach pain and others. The pharmaceutical drugs for heartburn and stomach pain are among the biggest sellers in the U.S. Again, with Chinese herbs, alleviating and in many cases reversing these as a chronic condition does not appear particularly difficult.

I am personally committed, if they are interested, in training Western digestive system specialists in the use of Chinese herbs. They should have the choice and, therefore, their patients should have available to them natural herbs that are, for the most part, for a variety of conditions, superior in effectiveness than manufactured drugs.

Again, not everything is treated well with Chinese herbs. Nor does everyone get better from the conditions that I believe Chinese herbs is especially effective for. But then again, no medicine is effective for everyone for a particular condition. Some chances are better than others.