Can you take Chinese medicine during respiratory illness?

In most cases, Chinese medicine can be taken during respiratory diseases, but it is by no means "anything" or "suitable for everyone". Currently, the consensus and differences on this issue in the field of traditional Chinese and Western medicine are quite clear.

When influenza A was popular a while ago, I had a friend who had a fever of 38.7 degrees. The community hospital prescribed ibuprofen and oseltamivir. She was afraid that the fever would be slow to go down, so she specifically called the respiratory department of a regular traditional Chinese medicine hospital. The doctor took her pulse and checked her tongue. It was due to wind-heat exogenous infection. I prescribed a modified prescription of Yinqiao Powder and specifically told her to take it one hour apart from the western medicine. She took the medicine as instructed and her fever completely subsided in three days. Her subsequent cough and sore throat symptoms also disappeared much faster than those of her colleagues who were infected at the same time. In fact, this combination of Chinese and Western medicine is very common in clinical practice, such as common colds, influenza, acute bronchitis, mild pneumonia, and dry coughs that linger after infection. As long as the syndrome differentiation is accurate, Chinese medicine can alleviate symptoms and shorten the course of the disease, whether used alone or in combination with Western medicine. Many corresponding Chinese patent medicines have also been included in the national guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of respiratory diseases, and their effects are supported by clinical data.

But during my usual rotation in the emergency department, I also encountered many patients whose symptoms were worsened by indiscriminate use of traditional Chinese medicine. Last month, an uncle suffered from mycoplasma pneumonia. He coughed up yellow phlegm and had recurring fevers. I heard from my neighbors that drinking ginger soup and taking warm cough pills could relieve the cough. I took them at home for three days. As a result, when I came to the doctor, I couldn’t stand up straight. The rales in my lungs were more obvious than when I took a CT scan a week ago. He had lung heat syndrome, and all the medicines he took were warm and dry medicines, which was equivalent to adding fuel to the fire. Of course, the more he took, the worse he got. This is also the core reason why many Western medicine colleagues do not recommend that patients take traditional Chinese medicine on their own: many people do not have the ability to differentiate syndromes at all, and cannot tell whether they have wind-cold or wind-heat, deficiencies or positive syndromes. They just take random prescriptions based on online remedies and recommendations from neighbors, and some eat them blindly. What is more, self-prepared traditional Chinese medicines without formal batch numbers may conflict with the ingredients of antibiotics and antipyretics you are taking, and may increase the metabolic burden on the liver and kidneys. There have indeed been cases of liver damage in the past when patients combined multiple compound cold medicines with Chinese medicines of unknown ingredients at the same time.

In fact, if you are really not sure whether you can eat or not, and what you should eat, you don’t have to worry about it at all. Just go to a traditional Chinese medicine doctor or the Department of Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine in a regular public hospital. Tell the doctor your current symptoms and all the medicines you are taking, and let him judge whether it is necessary, what to use, and how to take it at an interval with western medicine. It is much more reliable than trying random medicines at home by looking up information. After all, treating a disease is not like buying Internet celebrity milk tea. Someone else’s prescription may not be right for you.