Nephritis Formula 1980.12.14

Nephritis Formula 1980.12.14

In the winter of 1979, I treated more than 20 patients with chronic nephritis in Lanzhou, all of whom were stubborn cases that had been treated for a long time without success. As winter arrived and the weather suddenly turned cold, about half of these 20 patients relapsed. After thinking about it, I realized that the cold of winter affects both the external environment and the internal body. External cold triggers internal cold, causing nephritis to flare up suddenly! This shows that the protein in nephritis is related to cold. According to “The Essential Treatise on Supreme Truth” in the “Plain Questions,” “cold is hot,” so using hot medicines to treat this recurrence is in line with the principle. I’ve already seen cases where using 15g of cinnamon to treat nephritis resulted in a sudden reduction in protein, which confirms this theory. After further consideration, I decided to use the four well-known basic formulas—Siwu, Zengye, Baoyuan, and Liuwei—as the first part of the treatment for nephritis; then use peach-red Siwu, sanling, and ou shu to activate blood circulation and remove stasis as the second part for treating chronic nephritis; use su ye, cicada slough, and motherwort to reduce protein, and polygonatum as a wonderful remedy for the kidneys, while astragalus is used to tonify qi and replenish deficiency.

Composition: astragalus, polygonatum, sanling, ou shu, cicada slough, motherwort, su ye, angelica, chuanxiong, peach kernel, safflower, white peony, raw rehmannia, white grass root, white snake tongue herb, cornelian cherry, mountain yam, danpi, fu ling, alisma, quinoa, seven-leaf one-flower, codonopsis, cinnamon.

Mnemonic: Gold, two, three, four—white yuan, six, real seven.