Herbs and potassium, and some thoughts...

[Guest guest]

Hi there,

I have a patient that has advanced hepatocellular carcinoma and has

recently been told by the doctor that he has to go on a low potassium

diet (heart and kidneys not looking real good.) Anyway, he was

concerned that the herbs would contain potassium. So I went throught

the formula and looked up the potassium content of the herbs on

James Duke's database (I would very highly recommend this site, and

the author.) and then compared the K content of these herbs against

foods on a low potassium diet to get an idea of what would be OK.

What Im wondering is, it occurred to me that perhaps with a TCM

formula (omitting herbs that are very high in potassium) there would be

a synergistic effect of the formula as a whole as long as the TCM

differentiation was correct? For instance, some of the herbs may be

borderline in terms of potassium content, but you are utilizing a small

amount, and herbs such as licorice actually increase potassium

excretion. Any thoughts from the more learned than I? I will settle

happily for experiences from other practitioners in treating patients

wityh renal failure.

I was also thinking about how, for example, herbs like Dan Shen have

been shown to eg. interact with drugs such as warfarin. Well, if you

think about it logically, Dan Shen invigorates the blood, and so you

would probably not use a herbs that invigorates the blood for a patient

on warfarin in the first place. Its not like modern scientific research

showed up this action that we were grossly ignorant of.

I was also reading a recent article that mentioned how in western

herbalism, herbs that were traditionally used for menstrual disorders are

now being utilized for autoimmune disease, as research has shown that

in some autoimmune diseases, hormones such as prolactin can be

markedly out of balance. I had one of those " Aha! " moments when it

occurred to me that TCM already does this in a sense, because the

same herbs and herbal formulae can be utilized for vastly different

diseases depending on the differentiation. Eg, LR and Ki yin deficiency

could be implicated in both menopause and rheumatoid arthritis.

Do others feel also that with the evidence to date, TCM as a medical

system is intrinsically self-validating? Or has there been some

instances where TCM got it really wrong. (TB aetiology?)

Has anybody written anything on this topic to date?

Any thoughts?

Lea.