Letha’s Asian Health Secrets

In the 1990s when a close family member developed breast cancer, I traveled to China to discover why that country has the world’s best survival rate for that disease. I studied herbs and acupuncture in a Shanghai hospital with Dr. Cao, a cheerful, vigorous Chinese acupuncture doctor with over forty years of hospital experience. I witnessed and gave acupuncture treatments for a variety of health complaints ranging from weightloss to everyday aches and pains and chronic depression. Dr. Cao treated, among other conditions, thyroid abnormalities, schizophrenia, and cancer with acupuncture and herbal medicines according to the symptoms, the stage of illness, and the patient’s particular needs.
In large Chinese cities, hospitals specialize in disease treatments: I have visited hospitals for tumor diseases, others for neurological problems including stroke, and in most cases, the hospital pharmacies make their own herbal formulas to fit specific needs of each patient.

I think that Asian women generally handle breast health better than we Americans. Relatively few of them smoke or drink alcohol. The Chinese and Japanese diets are less fat. Throughout my Chinese travels during the 1980s and 1999s, sometimes staying with families, I never saw dairy foods, canned foods, coffee, or artificial foods such as chemical sweeteners, or genetically altered soy products.

If Chinese women develop breast discomforts such as pain, swelling or lumps, or in more serious cases, a discharge from the nipple, a patch of discolored skin or a dent in the breast, they go straight to the acupuncturist/herbalist. No regular mammograms or elaborate diets are provided for the vast majority of Chinese women. In stores specializing in Chinese medical supplies and large superstores I have found bras filled with aromatic herbs that stir breast circulation! Imagine, an herbal bra. You can duplicate the effects by applying organic essential oils to the breast. Lavender is a good one.

I asked Dr. Cao, about an anticancer diet and was told quite simply: Avoid fried and spicy foods and alcohol. Now that American food companies are making headway in China, we should watch to see if their heart disease, diabetes, and cancer statistics will begin to approach ours.

Breast cancer is complicated by hormonal issues and circulation troubled by diet and emotions. It may be a disease of trying too hard and too fast to move into modern life. A celebrated Tibetan doctor Yeshe Donden, one of my favorite teachers who lives in Dharamsala, north India, told me women get breast cancer from wearing tightly binding bras that impair circulation and, more significanatly, from using birth control pills that contain such a high estrogen level that they are banned in the United States.
In Shanghai, a city that is in some ways larger than New York, Dr. Cao said that breast cancer is a disease of melancholy. Women who are often upset, who feel abused or neglected, those who hold a grudge, develop poor circulation in the chest. The underlying problem of emotional discomfort aggravates poor circulation, low immunity, and hormone imbalances.

One very simple prevention remedy that he suggested is a Chinese over-the counter digestive pill, Xiao Yao Wan, which is not a cancer medication but improves many aspects of health and wellbeing. Its ingredients: ginger, mint, bupleurum, atractylodes, peony, dang quai, and fuling ease digestion, chest and rib cage circulation, and help prevent depression and anxiety. Its digestive, aromatic, and diuretic herbs ease the flow of Qi energy (call it circulation) in our emotional and digestive center. It proves again that good digestion is a key to good health.