Chinese medicine tells me to nourish my kidneys, but Western medicine says my kidneys are fine. Who do I listen to?

Tonifying the kidneys is a popular culture that will never go out of style in China. Especially for men in their forties, who are struggling to make ends meet and suffer from frequent and urgent urination, hair loss, decreased sexual function and other problems one after another. Kidney replenishing seems to be the breakthrough to solve these problems in one fell swoop.

Men over 40 are not confused. Tonifying the kidneys is not only about food supplements, but also about taking medicines. According to research, the market size of my country’s kidney-tonifying Chinese patent medicines is as high as 23.6 billion. Data disclosed by Dingdang Kuaiyao shows that kidney-tonifying and impotence-enhancing products rank first among male medications, accounting for 65%.

Many doctors are worried. Zhongzhong warned that kidney-tonifying medicines should not be taken indiscriminately. Western medicine and traditional Chinese medicine have very different views on the kidneys.

01The “kidney” in Chinese medicine is not the “kidney” in Western medicine

I did a bunch of tests, and the results were basically normal. The doctor said, “It’s okay, there’s nothing wrong with me at all.” But I just felt lethargic, unable to wake up, with backache and fatigue, and my body felt like it had been hollowed out.

This is the case for 45-year-old Luo Zhihao (pseudonym). He has been suffering from the above symptoms for almost two months. After a thorough examination at the general internal medicine department of Western medicine, he could not find the cause, so he changed his mind and registered with the traditional Chinese medicine department.

The patient was a female Chinese medicine doctor in her 50s. While she took Lao Luo’s pulse carefully, she looked at his face, eyes, tongue, etc., and she had a clear idea after two or three minutes. The female TCM doctor diagnosed Lao Luo as belonging to the “consumption” category of traditional Chinese medicine. The syndrome differentiation was spleen and kidney yang deficiency, which was simply “kidney deficiency”. She reminded him to take good care of himself and replenish his kidneys.

When Lao Luo heard that it was kidney deficiency, he looked nervous, thinking that he was seriously ill and his sexual ability would definitely be gone. As soon as he came out of the TCM clinic, he entered the nephrology department. “I just saw your TCM doctor and he said I have kidney deficiency. Is there something wrong with my kidneys?”

The doctor who specializes in nephrology couldn’t laugh or cry after hearing what Lao Luo said. Another patient confused “kidney deficiency” in traditional Chinese medicine and “kidney disease” in western medicine.

Why patients have such misunderstandings starts with the different understandings of kidneys between Chinese and Western medicine. The “kidney” in Chinese medicine and the “kidney” in Western medicine are actually two different things.

The “kidney” in Western medicine is what the common people call the “kidney”. It is a pair of visible kidney organs located on both sides of the waist of the human body, mainly belonging to the urinary system.

As the organ that controls excretion in the human body, the kidneys act as the body’s “scavengers” all the time, expelling the waste products we eat, including proteins, sugars, water, etc., from the body through metabolism and utilization. On the other hand, the kidneys also help regulate blood pressure, electrolytes, and acid-base balance in the body, produce red blood cells, and maintain bone health.

Whether the kidneys are good or bad can be known through renal function tests, renal color ultrasound or magnetic resonance (MR), renal puncture and other methods.

The “kidney” in Chinese medicine is not just a tangible organ, but a collection of organs and functions. It is the general term for the kidneys and a series of related functional activities. In traditional Chinese medicine, the functions of the kidneys almost cover the physiological functions of the endocrine, reproductive, urinary, motor-skeletal, nervous, respiratory and other systems in Western medicine. It can be said that it affects the whole body and mainly regulates the whole body. Life activities provide “basic substances” and “motive force”.

 

Therefore, “kidney” in traditional Chinese medicine is a larger concept, larger than and including the category of kidney in western medicine.

02Kidney deficiency in traditional Chinese medicine is not equal to kidney disease in western medicine

“Kidney deficiency” in traditional Chinese medicine and “kidney disease” in western medicine are also two completely different concepts.

The word “kidney deficiency” is used in many advertisements of medicines and health care products. Like Lao Luo, many middle-aged male compatriots are not clear about what kidney deficiency is, thinking that kidney deficiency is a problem with the “kidney” organ.

Gao Sande, a traditional Chinese medicine physician and deputy director of the infertility department of Guangzhou Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital, said that kidney deficiency is a concept of traditional Chinese medicine and does not exist in Western medicine. Traditional Chinese medicine believes that the kidney is the foundation of the internal organs and controls the growth and development of a person’s life. Kidney deficiency is a phenomenon that inevitably occurs with aging.

 

Generally speaking, when a man is about 40 years old, kidney qi begins to decline. By about 64 years old, kidney essence is insufficient and kidney deficiency occurs. Deficiency will show symptoms related to kidney-related functional decline, such as hair loss and white hair, loose and falling teeth, soreness and weakness of the waist and knees, hearing loss, tinnitus and deafness, increased nocturia, and decreased sexual function.

Gao Sande reminds that if you don’t pay attention to health care, staying up late for a long time, being tired, nervous, stressed, and overindulging in sex, etc., will accelerate these “aging” and cause the symptoms of kidney deficiency to appear earlier and more violently.

There are many types of kidney deficiency, which vary from person to person. Liang Wen, chief physician of the Department of Traditional Chinese Medicine at the Second Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, said that the so-called kidney deficiency mainly refers to the deficiency of kidney essence, qi, yin and yang. It is mainly divided into kidney yin deficiency, kidney yang deficiency, kidney qi deficiency, kidney essence deficiency and kidney qi deficiency. These 5 types of symptoms are not fixed.

To put it bluntly, kidney deficiency is an abstract concept, which actually refers to the low overall function. Kidney deficiency can occur in a variety of diseases, including not only kidney disease in Western medicine, but also cardiovascular disease, blood disease, etc., or there may be no organic disease at all, showing low function.

“Kidney disease” in Western medicine clearly refers to problems with the kidney organ, including primary glomerulonephritis, secondary kidney disease, renal tubular disease, chronic renal insufficiency, uremia and other kidney diseases.

Kidney disease is very hidden in the early stages, and patients often feel nothing. However, a routine urine test for less than 30 yuan can help detect the most common abnormal indicators of chronic kidney disease such as hematuria and proteinuria. If you are combined with high-risk factors such as hypertension, diabetes, coronary heart disease, smoking, obesity, family history, etc., it is recommended to conduct urine routine, blood routine, renal function, and urine protein to creatinine ratio tests every six months to one year to detect renal damage early.

Therefore, kidney deficiency in traditional Chinese medicine cannot be equated with kidney disease in Western medicine. Kidney deficiency does not necessarily have symptoms such as proteinuria, hematuria, and renal failure. Patients with kidney diseases such as nephritis and renal failure in Western medicine may have kidney deficiency, but not all kidney diseases have symptoms of kidney deficiency.

03 Don’t take medicine indiscriminately. Tonifying the kidneys does not mean “tonifying yang and aphrodisiac”

Kidney deficiency does not equal erectile dysfunction (ED). However, doctors have found that many men blame “kidney deficiency” for poor sexual function, and even think that tonifying the kidneys means “tonifying yang and strengthening yang”.

According to a survey of more than 700 ED patients by Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, only 32.9% were caused by kidney deficiency.

Liang Wen pointed out that sometimes kidney deficiency does affect sexual ability, but poor sexual function does not necessarily mean kidney deficiency. It may be related to other reasons, such as dampness and heat in the liver and gallbladder, which requires doctors to use dialectical medication according to the patient’s specific situation.

 

Even if it is clear that it is kidney deficiency, the drugs used to replenish the kidneys are different for different types of symptoms. Doctors remind that most of the kidney-tonifying products on the market are aimed at patients with kidney-yang deficiency. However, for people with kidney-yin deficiency, taking them will not only have no effect, but will also cause some side effects or worsen the condition. Even the classic Liuwei Dihuang Pills are not suitable for everyone.

At present, the treatment plans mentioned in TCM monographs related to kidney deficiency and guidelines related to erectile dysfunction generally divide kidney-tonifying and aphrodisiac drugs into two categories: traditional Chinese medicine and chemical drugs. Among them, Chinese patent medicines are mainly used to tonify the kidney, which are divided into: medicines for warming and tonifying kidney yang, medicines for nourishing kidney yin, medicines for nourishing yin and yang, medicines for nourishing kidney and heart, medicines for tonifying kidney and liver, medicines for tonifying kidney and spleen, medicines for tonifying kidney and lungs, medicines for tonifying kidney and strengthening astringency. Kidney-tonifying and bone-tonifying drugs and other kidney-tonifying drugs; chemical drugs are mainly used for erectile dysfunction.