Do you believe in TCM?
Do not initiate such a discussion in the group, once initiated, it is easy to tit-for-tat against the red face of the sword, and even lead to a tearing X war.
The controversy about Chinese medicine has a long history, and the advocates feel that Chinese medicine has been tested for thousands of years, has healed countless people throughout the ages, and there are many cases of relatives and friends around being treated by Chinese medicine, and Chinese medicine is trustworthy!
The skeptics feel that the pharmacological effects of Chinese medicine are not clear, the chemical composition and dosage of various herbs are difficult to calculate, and many things are not clearly explained, which is too metaphysical and unreliable.
But in the future, such controversies will slowly disappear, and the development of science will eventually bring the ideal answer to both believers and skeptics, and modern Chinese medicine is ushering in the era of science.
Unlike Western medicine, which has clear ingredients and clear dosages, Chinese medicine is mostly composed of raw or processed plants (including seeds, berries, roots, stems, leaves, bark, flowers), fungi, minerals and materials of animal origin. But modern research continues to discover and extract active ingredients in Chinese medicine, and some ingredients from Chinese medicine have been developed into modern medicines.
Tu Youyou found that artemisinin became the first Nobel Prize winner in medicine in China, artemisinin is an antimalarial drug extracted from artemisia annua, and Chinese medicine has been used in artemisia annua for thousands of years. Huperzine A, a chemical that helps improve memory and treat Alzheimer's disease, is derived from the Chinese herbal plant Snake-footed Huperzel.
In recent years, the fiery study of intestinal flora has unveiled more mysteries about traditional Chinese medicine. Traditional Chinese medicine nourishes the body, perhaps to adjust the intestinal flora.
ginseng
In the costume drama, as soon as the official nobleman is not in good health, he wants to stew personal ginseng soup to supplement, so what does ginseng supplement? Researchers at Nanjing University of Traditional Chinese Medicine found that the polysaccharides in ginseng can improve the metabolic absorption of specific ginsenosides in the intestine, thereby promoting the reproduction of lactic acid bacteria and bacteroides, and helping the damaged intestinal flora to return to normal.
The study published in GUT by jin Wansu of the Institute of Zoology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences revealed for the first time the mechanism of action of ginseng extract in regulating the intestinal flora to improve obesity, and it turned out that ginseng extract can enrich enterococcus fecal bacteria in the intestine (E. faecalis), which promotes the production of unsaturated long-chain fatty acids - myristic oleic acid (MA), thereby stimulating the thermogenesis activity of brown fats (BAT) and inducing the formation of beige fats, both of which contain organelles that can burn energy, can help reduce fat accumulation and improve obesity.
Reishi mushroom
In 2015, a study from Chang Gung University in Taiwan was published in Nature Communications, where researchers extracted an aqueous extract (WEGL) from Chi Chi (a type of Reishi mushroom), which showed weight loss, improved inflammation, and increased insulin sensitivity in obese mice treated with this extract. Further studies found that the intestinal flora disorders in these mice were reversed and the levels of metabolic endotoxemia decreased.
Kudzu cen even soup
Kudzu decoction, which is used to treat diabetes, has also been shown to have an effect on regulating the intestinal flora, and studies have shown that kudzu decoction contributes to significant enrichment of Faecalibacterium prausnitzii in the intestines of patients, and this bacterial level is inversely associated with glycosylated hemoglobin and fasting blood glucose.
licorice
In Traditional Chinese medicine, licorice is often used to treat sore throat and gastrointestinal disorders. Diammonium glycyrrhizinate is the main component of licorice extract, which can reduce the ratio of phylum Pachychycetes phylum Bacteroides, as well as inhibit the growth of endotoxin-producing bacteria such as Vibrio desulfurization, increase the richness of beneficial bacteria such as Lactobacillus, and have the effect of preventing non-alcoholic fatty liver.
Herbal antibacterial
Many traditional Chinese medicines have antibacterial activities, including cotton grass, magnolia, bitter beans, houttuynia cordata, yellow barberry, purslane, bitter ginseng, honeysuckle, dandelion, turmeric, huanglian, ginseng, etc., which can inhibit the growth of Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Helicobacter pylori, Streptococcus, Klebsiella, Salmonella, Candida and other pathogenic bacteria.
In general, the effects of Traditional Chinese medicine on specific intestinal flora species can be divided into four types: promotion, inhibition, sterilization and new colonization, which can significantly change the structure of the intestinal flora, and the multi-faceted effects of intestinal flora on human health have been confirmed.
In recent years, a large number of research results published in nature, Science, Cell, The Lancet and other top international journals have confirmed that more than 50 kinds of major diseases and chronic diseases such as diabetes, obesity, depression, ulcerative colitis, intestinal cancer, eczema allergy and rheumatoid hypertrophy in China are caused by human intestinal microbial imbalance.
Therefore, studying the interaction between Chinese medicine and intestinal flora, and systematically elucidating the complex influence mechanism between the host, intestinal flora and Chinese medicine, can help screen out microorganisms and active compounds that have important value in the treatment of Chinese medicine, help clarify some of the action paths of Chinese medicine in the treatment of diseases, and make Chinese medicine no longer "metaphysics".
The World Health Organization estimates that about 80% of the world's population living in developing countries rely on Chinese herbal medicines as their main source of health care. Even in developed countries in Europe and North America, Chinese herbal medicines are used as complementary and alternative medicines, and the consumption and demand is also large.
Traditional Chinese medicine is a precious heritage inherited from ancient times to the present, in recent years, the country also attaches great importance to the development of traditional Chinese medicine, vigorously revitalize traditional medicine, intestinal microbiota research combined with traditional Chinese medicine, may help the intestinal flora to help the modernization of traditional Chinese medicine, promote traditional medicine to revitalize.
Resources:
[1] Zhou S S，Xu J，Zhu H，et al. Gut microbiota-involved mechanisms in enhancing systemic exposure of ginsenosides by coexisting polysaccharides in ginseng decoction[J]. Scientific reports，2016，6.
[2] Chang C J，Lin C S，Lu C C，et al. Ganoderma lucidum reduces obesity in mice by modulating the composition of the gut microbiota[J]. Nature communications，2015，6.
[3] Xu J，Lian F，Zhao L，et al. Structural modulation of gut microbiota during alleviation of type 2 diabetes with a Chinese herbal formula[J]. The ISME journal，2015，9(3)：552-562.