What are the functions of medical herbal therapy preparations

Simply put, it is a medical-grade preparation made from effective active ingredients purified from medicinal herbs or medicinal and edible plants. Its core role is to fill the blind spots in the use of conventional chemical drugs in scenarios such as auxiliary disease treatment, postoperative rehabilitation, long-term conditioning of chronic diseases, mild symptom intervention, etc. It can also reduce the incidence of adverse reactions of some chemical drugs when used in combination.

I have been working in a grassroots community pharmacy for almost ten years, and have encountered anywhere from 1,000 to 800 related cases. What I feel most deeply is that this type of preparation is particularly advantageous in treating chronic and easily recurring minor illnesses. Last winter, I met a retired middle school teacher who suffered from chronic pharyngitis for more than two months. After taking antibiotics, his mouth felt bitter and he couldn't even eat. He still coughed so much that he couldn't speak a few complete sentences. Later, I gave him a herbal throat spray approved as a second-class medical device and told him to spray it three or four times a day. Avoid cold, spicy and spicy things. Within ten days, he came around and told me that he could now teach interest classes to children in the community normally, and the foreign body sensation in his throat that had been stuck in his throat for a long time had basically disappeared. There are also many children with recurring chronic eczema. Parents are afraid that using ointments containing glucocorticoids will leave pigmentation and thin the skin, so they switch to medical herbal creams containing purslane and flavescens extracts. They insist on applying them for half a month, and the rash rarely relapses after it disappears.

Of course, this does not mean that this type of preparation is a "panacea". There is still a lot of controversy within the industry about its applicable boundaries. On the one hand, there are clinical research data showing that the recurrence rate of some medical herbal preparations in the long-term intervention of chronic diseases such as allergic rhinitis and chronic eczema is about 30% lower than that of chemical drugs alone; on the other hand, many clinicians have pointed out that there is currently no unified national standard for the content of active ingredients in many herbal preparations. It is accurate, and individual suitability varies greatly. Use by people with allergies may cause redness, swelling, itching and other adverse reactions. In the past two months, I met a little girl who was allergic to dandelion extract. She used a herbal anti-acne cream containing dandelion ingredients. The next day, her face was covered with rashes. She came to us specifically to ask how to deal with it.

There is another common misunderstanding that needs to be mentioned. Many people think that "herbal products are completely harmless" and even believe the propaganda of unscrupulous merchants and use them to replace conventional treatment drugs. This can really cause problems. There was an old man who suffered from essential hypertension. After listening to a salesperson saying that herbal antihypertensive pillows could completely cure high blood pressure, he secretly stopped the valsartan he had been taking for five or six years. Within two weeks, he went to the emergency room because he was dizzy and unsteady, and his blood pressure soared to 180. In fact, to use an inappropriate analogy, conventional chemical drugs are like soldiers on the front line. When encountering emergencies or severe illnesses, you must rely on them to quickly control the disease. Medical herbal preparations are more like a logistics supply team following behind, slowly helping to regulate the body's internal environment and clearing away the soil of recurrence. Only when the two are paired can they play their greatest role.