One of Asia's chief researchers into cancer-related preventive medicine is the 66-year old Taiwan-born doctor, Chuang Shu-chi, who is currently practicing medicine in Japan. Dr. Chuang Shu-chi has already achieved renown in medical circles for her extensive work with cancer patients and for her own theories of preventive medicine based upon traditional Chinese medical theory and practice.
Dr. Chuang's expertise came of early nurture, tragedy, and unique dedication.
Chuang was born during the Japanese occupation of Taiwan, where her father operated one of Taipei's best-known Chinese-style pharmacies. She started helping with the family business at an early age, first running errands and, by age ten, actually filling prescriptions. At the end of a long day occupied with selecting, measuring, and wrapping the appropriate herbs from the rows of wooden drawers and porcelain jars that characterize traditional Chinese pharmacies, Chuang would shun the usual childhood play. Instead, she would write detailed notes about what herbs were prescribed for different diseases, building an early familiarity and attraction for the art of medicine.
While Chuang's early exposure and interest in Chinese medicine was to influence her eventual career selection, personal tragedy determined her life's purpose. When she was nineteen years old, her father died of cancer. Six years later the same disease claimed her husband, making her a twenty-five year old widow with five children. Because of these personally devastating circumstances, Chuang resolved to spend the rest of her life combating cancer so that others might avoid suffering in the same way.
This decision was difficult to implement. First, she had to support her young children, a task made even more difficult because her husband's illness had exhausted the family savings. She took a demanding but low paying job washing clothes in a university hospital, which barely provided adequate sustenance. She recalls that in those days her family ate only one meal a day, and even then most of the vegetables were gathered from those that were discarded at the market. Beyond working and caring for her children, Dr. Chuang began studying Chinese medicine in earnest.
Her perseverance paid off despite the grueling schedule. She finally passed the licensing exam in Chinese medicine, enabling her to reopen the pharmacy that had been closed since her father's death. But Chuang was not yet satisfied with her medical abilities, especially in the area of modern medicine. Not long after reopening her father's shop, she decided to go to Japan for more studies.
Leaving four of her five children with their grandmother, she entered Tokyo's Keio University in 1954 as a research specialist. With a diet of rice and radish pickles to save time and money, she continued her cancer-related research. Finally in 1961, at the age of forty-one, she was awarded her Doctor of Medicine degree with the completion of a thesis entitled "Reducing the Suffering of Final Stage Cancer Patients."
Cancer research is a complex task cutting across a broad range of medical and scientific specialties. Dr. Chuang's particular expertise is derived from careful study of people's susceptibility to disease and the role of environ mental conditions on the disease process. This orientation has deep roots in the history of Chinese medicine. "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" is a familiar maxim in the West, but for followers of traditional Chinese medicine it forms the guiding principle of medical practice.
Preventive medicine was first expounded in China by the Taoists during the Eastern Chou period (770-256 B.C.), a time when cures from the hands of spirit healers were risky at best. But the philosophy of prevention was developed fully during the Tang Dynasty, particularly by the famous doctor Sun Ssu-miao. He advocated careful regulation of personal activities, including moderate consumption of food and drink and reduced emotional stress. These were considered more effective for maintaining health than all the herbs in the compendium.
But unlike Sun Ssu-miao, who expressed his ideas in abstruse Taoist terminology-a technique sometimes copied by modern "health food" exponents-Chuang has sound statistical research to support her scientific views. During the early stages of her clinical work with cancer patients, she noticed certain similarities among sufferers of the disease. This prompted her to compile a questionnaire which she sent to 36,000 patients suffering from the disease and to families of those who had died from it. A large majority responded, and the results confirmed what Chuang had started to suspect from the beginning of her thesis work on cancer—there were remarkable similarities in the lifestyles of those afflicted.
In the area of diet, she found that most of the patients ate large amounts of meat and refined, chemically-processed foods, but only minimal amounts of fresh fruits and vegetables. In addition, there was a consistent pattern of food consumption among the patients. Most had a small morning meal, if they had one at all, ate a rushed and non-substantial lunch, and then at night, not many hours before sleep, consumed a large dinner including large servings of meat. Chuang's findings from cancer victims reinforced one of the steadfast rules of Chinese preventive medicine: "Eat an early breakfast, a substantial lunch, and little for dinner."
Chuang's statistics also showed lifetime patterns of high stress and emotional upset in the patients, coupled with an almost total absence of physical exercise. Sleep habits and other lifestyle patterns were generally irregular as well. In short, cancer sufferers were doing almost everything that Chinese preventive medicine saw as harbingers of disease.
Chuang's broad range of experience has resulted in a multifaceted approach to preventing cancer. The methods are all directed toward eliminating the susceptibility of the individual to the disease. Many of the by-products of modern industrial society which permeate the environment, such as air pollution, agricultural pesticides, and industrial chemicals, are potential carcinogens and encountered by large masses of people. But why are some people afflicted with cancer and not others? The answer lies, according to Chuang, in individual degrees of susceptibility to disease. She places particular importance on avoiding what she believes is a foreshadowing of all major illness including cancer: the common cold. Citing it as "the root of all diseases," Chuang says she cannot overemphasize the dangers inherent in what most people consider a rather harmless case of the sniffles. When asked what causes the common cold, she replies without hesitation: "It starts with fatigue."
Chuang therefore recommends a healthy diet, daily exercise, and adequate sleep. Consistent with tradition, she advocates a substantial breakfast and lunch, and a modest evening meal. She also advises daily exercise in the early morning, while the air is still fresh, and has developed her own set of exercises for increasing circulation and flexibility, as well as relieving stress and fatigue. She argues against erratic sleeping habits, which decrease the body's resistance to disease, and says that no mailer what, stress from one day should not be carried over to the next.
Chuang's work in Japan gradually achieved recognition, and with the encouragement of medical professionals there she eventually opened her own cancer clinic.
As word of Chuang's work spread throughout Japan, not only did cancer patients begin to crowd her clinic, but also those concerned about cancer prevention. After moving to larger quarters several times, her clinic was in 1978 renamed The Association of International Families to Prevent Cancer. The Association, which has more than 10,000 members, sponsors cancer-prevention programs throughout Japan.
One of her most famous patients only recently became known to the public: Japanese Crown Princess Michiko, who had been seriously ill and had sought numerous specialists to no avail. Due to the sensitive nature of the case, Chuang was requested to keep the information from the press. As Crown Princess Michiko's condition gradually improved, most people had no idea what was behind the transformation. Only this year was the news finally released that the complete turnaround of the Crown Princess' health had been the work of none other than the Taiwan-born Dr. Chuang.
Chuang practices what she preaches, rising every morning well before dawn to meditate, exercise, and take a long walk. Between 5:30 and 6:00 a.m. she begins a large and leisurely breakfast that lasts over an hour. Afterwards, she reads the newspaper then leaves for her clinic where a busy schedule will keep her running until she returns home that evening. Despite her large patient load and numerous additional demands on her time, she maintains a calm composure and even pace throughout the day. Greeting everyone with genuine warmth, her posture is erect, her gait strong and agile, giving her the appearance of a woman many years her junior.
After spending more than thirty years in Japan, writing dozens of books, and helping countless patients, Chuang is preparing to return home to Taiwan. She will leave behind competent and caring people she has trained to carryon the programs she instituted. But she is anxious now to serve her own countrymen. Chuang's story is not just of personal success or dedication to patients. It is also a living example of the time-honored principles of traditional Chinese medicine put to the greatest possible use in the modern world. If the wise and venerable doctors of China past are looking down on her, they cannot help but be pleased.