Let’s take a look this research article first.
Research Article: Clinical Observation of Acupuncture Combined with Traditional Chinese Medicine in Treating Rheumatoid Arthritis (in Chinese), Biansheng Guan, Chinese Journal of Gerontology, August 2005 Volume 25, p907.
Original research article link: Clinical Observation of Acupuncture Combined with Traditional Chinese Medicine in Treating Rheumatoid Arthritis (in Chinese)
Let’s translate the abstract into English and take a look:
【Abstract】
Objective:
To observe the curative effect of acupuncture combined with traditional Chinese medicine in treating rheumatoid arthritis.
Methods:
Treat rheumatoid arthritis with filiform acupuncture combined with oral administration of traditional Chinese medicine, and set up a simple medicine group as a control, and observe the clinical curative effect of the treatment group and the control group.
Results:
The acupuncture combined with traditional Chinese medicine treatment group was superior to the control group in terms of overall curative effect, improvement of clinical symptoms and laboratory indicators.
Conclusion:
Acupuncture combined with oral administration of traditional Chinese medicine has a positive therapeutic effect on rheumatoid arthritis, which is better than oral administration of traditional Chinese medicine alone.
Let’s also take a look at its results:
Translated into English:
| Group | Cured | Very Effective | Effective | Not effective | Overall Effective Rate |
| Treatment Group (50) | 20 (40%) | 22(44.7%) | 7(14%) | 1(2%) | 98.0% |
| Control Group (30) | 5 (16.7%) | 10 (33.3%) | 11 (40%) | 4 (13.3%) | 86.7% |
- The “Control Group” used “TCM formula” called “TwHF” (extract from a Chinese herb: Tripterygium wilfordii) as standard treatment for all 30 patients.
- The “Treatment Group” used more individualized TCM formula plus acupuncture (used categorization according to TCM theory) as special treatment for all 50 patients.
*Using TwHF is similar to MTX treatment but with less side effects. See research paper: Comparison of Tripterygium wilfordii Hook F with methotrexate in the treatment of active rheumatoid arthritis (TRIFRA): a randomised, controlled clinical trial | Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases
If you noticed the result, there’s “cured” result. This is amazing. “cured” means everything gets back to normal and do not need to take any medication.
There’s more research paper that showed the TwHF (extract from a Chinese herb: Tripterygium wilfordii) is effective to treat certain immune inflammatory disease, but still under research for it’s complicated mechanism.
Quote from article: Immunosuppressive and Anti-Inflammatory Mechanisms of Triptolide, the Principal Active Diterpenoid from the Chinese Medicinal Herb Tripterygium wilfordii Hook. f. | SpringerLink
“Extracts of Tripterygium wilfordii hook. f. (leigong teng, Thundergod vine) are effective in traditional Chinese medicine for treatment of immune inflammatory diseases including rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus, nephritis and asthma”.
So far, there are more than 10 different TCM herbal medicine has been approved by Chinese FDA to treat all kinds of arthritis, through restricted clinical trials. However, due to the nature of complexity, scientists still don’t understand how it works in the body, but clinical trials showed effectiveness.
Yet, those TCM medicine been approved are all extracts from herbs. When getting more purified and more universally used, their effectiveness has been decreased from original herbal format, and may increase the potential side-effect. But there’s a compromise between “scientifically proof and standardization” and “effectiveness to cure the disease by natural herbs”.
Compared with some RA’s famous drugs in U.S.A., those herbal medicines are too complicated to understand.
Why? Because the herbal medicine have hundreds and thousands of acting target points to work together simultaneously.
Check this article to see: A huge difference about the targeting points between TCM and Modern Medicine/Drug development.
Above information is just a tip of iceberg for TCM natural herbal medicine’s power.
Now, do you believe that Rheumatoid Arthritis can be cured by natural herbs?
Do you believe that other Arthritis can be cured by natural herbs?
We’ll provide more research-based and clinical-based data for proof that herbal medicine is very effective, but people just don’t understand it yet. Stay tuned…