A Chinese Herb & M.S.

The Wall Street Journal recently ran an interesting story, entitled "MS Drug's Epic Journey from Folklore to Lab" -- the subject being an herb from the traditional materia medica of Chinese medicine, called dong chong xia cao (winter bug summer herb). This "herb" itself is an interesting amalgamation -- it is actually a fungus that grows upon a worm and eventually takes over its carcass as a home. This type of growth is called an endoparasitoid -- not very appealing to the ethical vegetarian!

Dong Chong Xia Cao has a relatively recent history in Chinese herbal medicine: only some 300 years of documented use. It is classified as a Kidney yang tonic, which generally means a warming tonic but this herb doesn't damage yin in the process, so it's not too drying. It is especially known for its use in treating respiratory diseases as it settles coughs & wheezing. In recent decades. it's gained some notoriety for its use in improving Chinese athletes' performance. It is mostly harvested from the provinces of Tibet, Sichuan, & Qinghai, -- where its value has recently increased, even causing little frontier wars over collection rights. Despite its rather "icky" provenance, dong chong xia cao is considered a gentle tonic with very little toxicity.

Multiple sclerosis (usually just known as "M.S.") is a neurological disease of unknown etiology. It was recognized as a disease-syndrome in the 1868, by a famous neurological physician, Jean-Martin Charcot (this doctor conducted wide-ranging clinical work & research in neurological disorders, hysteria and hypnosis). For an unknown reason, the body itself apparently attacks the myelin sheath of the central nervous system, giving rise to a variety of neurological symptoms (changes in sensation, muscle weakness, fatigue & others).

Most modern pharmaceutical drugs are derived from herbs -- often from research that looks at herbs with specific medicinal functions. The working theory is that by extracting what is presumed to be the most "important" element of the herb, and then concentrating, or standardizing it, the resultant product will have an amplified ability to do whatever the source herb does. It's an interesting approach, this idea of isolating the single curative element from a raw material. But what if it's wrong? What if removing one element from an herb -- or one herb from a formula -- reduces its efficacy, or increases its toxicity, or unleashes heretofore unseen side effects? (Note that in this article, the isolated element of dong chong xia cao was too toxic for human use -- despite the herb's actual documented human use!)

Those other elements and additional herbs often have all those functions: they potentiate each other, they neutralize side effects, they negate toxicities, they increase bio-availability. The basic philosophical concept of Asian poly-pharmacy herbalism is of an herbal "community" of herbs working together in those ways inside of a formula that is actually part of the elegant art we call herbalism.

I find it interesting that this article looks at the concept of "retrieving" or "rescuing" valuable drugs from herbs used in medicinal traditions. I wonder what do modern researchers lose by looking at trying to take these traditional "tools" without their operating instructions? Happily, more & more clinical pharmaceutical-based medicine is turning towards the concept of working with polytherapies & the greater strength of combinations -- as for instance, the triple cocktail for HIV, and new malaria treatments.

Off-line Sources

1. Bensky, Clavey, Stoger. Chinese Herbal Medicine Materia Medica, 3rd ed.

2. Wu. Ben Cao Cong Xin.