Traditional Chinese medicine offers many remedies that are beneficial for diabetes patients. The primary treatment principles are comprehensive (impacting multiple organs) and dialectical (tailored to individual patients).
Traditional medicine does not recognize the term “diabetes”; however, when correlated with clinical symptoms, this condition falls under the category of “thirsting and wasting.” The disease primarily arises from factors such as genetics, improper diet, psychological stress, environmental influences, infections, inappropriate medication use, excessive alcohol consumption, and overwork. These factors lead to dysfunction of the organs, particularly the spleen, lungs, and kidneys, resulting in the onset of thirsting and wasting. For instance, consuming excessive rich and indigestible foods damages the spleen and stomach, impairing their ability to transport and digest food, which leads to stagnation. Over time, this stagnation can transform into heat, depleting bodily fluids and giving rise to illness. Prolonged psychological stress causes the liver to lose its ability to regulate, leading to stagnation of liver qi and the formation of heat. This heat can damage the fluids of the lungs and stomach above while harming the fluids of the kidneys below, thereby inducing thirsting and wasting…
As with other chronic internal diseases, the treatment principle for thirsting and wasting in traditional medicine is:
Comprehensive treatment: This approach starts from a holistic perspective, viewing the human body as a unified whole. Treatment must always consider and adjust the functionality of the affected organs in relation to all other organs. A combination of methods such as medication and non-medication treatments, dietary adjustments, lifestyle changes, and qi gong exercises is utilized…
Dialectical treatment: This means that the choice of medication and therapeutic measures must be based on the specific clinical picture, type and stage of the disease, as well as the individual’s physical characteristics, gender, and age…
To treat diabetes, traditional Chinese medicine employs natural therapies such as medicinal cuisine (food as medicine), herbal teas, massage, acupuncture, qi gong, and health cultivation… This principle is based on the concept of “the unity of heaven and humanity”: humans and nature are one, originating from nature, relying on nature, and evolving alongside nature. Humans are a product and an integral part of nature, and all physiological and pathological changes in the human body are always influenced and governed by natural forces.
Non-Medication Treatments
This includes the use of natural therapies such as acupuncture, acupressure, massage, medicinal cuisine, herbal teas, medicinal porridge, herbal patches, therapeutic baths, and qi gong exercises… The diet should emphasize foods such as corn silk, soy products, black beans, red beans, bitter melon, pumpkin, wax gourd, watermelon, garlic, Chinese yam, onions, celery, carrots, radish, bamboo shoots, chives, tremella, seaweed, pork pancreas, snakehead fish, loach, and sea cucumbers… Regular consumption of herbal teas such as bitter melon tea, southern herb tea, pearl barley tea, monk fruit tea, ophiopogon and coptis tea, and others is recommended. Medicinal porridge like pork pancreas porridge, bitter melon porridge, and others can also be included…
Using Folk Remedies
This method of treatment is simple, easy to access, cost-effective, and effective to varying degrees. The folk experience in treating diabetes is rich but often overlooked and underutilized. For example, using guava leaves, hibiscus roots, mulberry roots, bitter melon, heavenly flower powder, yam tubers, and drinking decoctions made from them; consuming daily juices made from watermelon, carrots, pears, cucumbers, pumpkin, and bitter melon…
Using Single Ingredients: 20 silkworms, cleaned and stir-fried with vegetable oil. 15 g of sour plum, steeped in boiling water to drink as tea. Red beans, with skins, dried, 50 g daily for drinking water. Appropriate amounts of enoki mushrooms, cooked in soup or stir-fried with vegetable oil for daily consumption. 100 g of fresh wax gourd, washed and juiced for daily intake. Fresh carrots, enough for daily juicing. 50 g of cleaned and boiled common reed roots for regular drinking. Fresh pears to be eaten daily. 250 g of pumpkin cooked in soup for daily meals. Dried or sun-dried bitter melon, ground into powder, taken 15-20 g three times daily. 100 g of black sesame seeds brewed for daily consumption. Drink fresh elephant trunk juice or fresh bamboo shoots daily. Brewed burdock root or leaf for tea.
Using Multiple Ingredients: Equal amounts of perilla seeds and mustard seeds, roasted and ground, taken daily with 9 g of mulberry root decoction. 50 g of watermelon seeds, crushed, mixed with water, strained, and cooked with 30 g of rice to make porridge. 2 parts of huai yam flour and 1 part of job’s tears flour mixed together, taken daily with 90 g in boiling water. 5 cleaned radishes, sliced and boiled, used to cook with 100 g of rice for daily porridge. 30 g of rose leaves and 30 g of mung beans, brewed for drinking. 30 g of white kidney bean flowers and 30 g of black fungus, dried and powdered, taken 2-3 times daily, 3-5 g each time. 15 g of green pumpkin peel, 15 g of watermelon peel, and 12 g of heavenly flower powder, brewed for drinking. 500 g of carp, 10 g of green tea, cleaned fish stuffed with green tea, steamed, divided into portions for multiple meals. 100 g of sweet potato leaves, 20 g of heavenly flower powder, and 15 g of schisandra, brewed for drinking. 15 g of tremella (white fungus), 20 g of schisandra, and 25 g of rock sugar, brewed and mixed for drinking.
