Why Anti-Inflammatories Sometimes Fail to Cool the Flame
Inflammation is usually tied to bacterial or viral infection. So once diagnosed as pneumonia, bronchitis, enteritis, or other -itis disease, treating with anti-inflammatory, anti-bacterial, anti-viral drugs seems on target, and many patients do recover. Over time, some doctors take yan (inflammation) at the surface meaning — yan is fire, is heat — and pour in bitter-cold heat-clearing herbs, hoping cold can extinguish inflammation. But hopes often fail: a week, two weeks, or longer of anti-bacterial anti-inflammatory drugs and the inflammation does not yield; the disease lingers. Why?
Inflammation is a process of evil-and-right contending. Evil and right form a contradiction. To resolve the contradiction, find the main side. If anti-inflammatory therapy long fails, the main side may be right-qi insufficient, not evil-qi in surplus. If so, attacking the evil alone will not do; we must support right and dispel evil — let right qi recover, evil retreats of itself, and the inflammation resolves.
A social analogy: trouble in a place. If it is the work of a few bad men, remove them and peace returns. If, with the bad men removed, the place is still in turmoil, then we cannot avoid looking to the local moral climate; without lifting the right, no lasting peace is guaranteed.
So in medicine. Anti-inflammatory, anti-bacterial drugs are attack-and-kill agents; they must not be over-used. Over-use injures right qi; right injured, inflammation harder still to resolve. The first task is support right qi, lift self-resistance, restore the right; then without treating inflammation, inflammation resolves of itself. A single herb of a TCM anti-inflammatory formula may have little anti-bacterial action by itself, yet the combined formula often gives remarkable results. That is the mystery.
So in the clinic, do not, on seeing -itis, pour in anti-inflammatory drugs. Distinguish empty / substantial / cold / hot — discern-and-treat — and the results follow.