Hep-C

To be used as a supplement to a balanced diet when there is a Hepatitis C diagnosis.

From the Western scientific perspective, Hepatitis C virus infects the hepatocyte cells of the liver as a "temperate" virus rather than as a "virulent" virus. While a virulent virus destroys the cell it inhabits and is in this way self-limiting, temperate viruses do not kill the host cell but rather continue to infect surrounding cells. The part of the immune system that works best on this type of disease is not the part the produces antibodies which is the "humoral" branch. There is a second "cytotoxic" branch of the immune system that produces T cytotoxic cells that specifically kill or lyse virally infected cells (or tumor cells in the case of cancer.) A successful medication needs to stimulate the cytotoxic side of the immune system to successfully treat temperate viruses as well as cancer.

Hepatitis C infections tend to proceed slowly developing scar tissue with each chronic episode of illness. Patients can survive for a period of 15 to 20 years if not challenged too much by poor diet, emotional stress or alcohol. Any stress on the liver from the virus or from other sources (alcohol, drugs, physical injury, etc.) causes liver tissue damage which is repaired but with scarring as the long term result. Eventually over a period of years (15 to 20), the scarring can be so great that a liver transplant is required.

According to Traditional Chinese Medicine Hepatitis C belongs to the following TCM conditions: damp toxins, costal pain, deficiency-symptom-complex, stasis of the liver (Zhen-Jia, Ji-Ju). These pathologies occur because damp toxins attack the liver and can bring about deficiency of vital energy. This illness presents as a shift from excess to deficiency. Liver stasis and Spleen deficiency can bring about deficiencies of Liver, Kidney and Blood in the Collateral Channels. Most Hepatitis C patients show deficiency mixed with excess.

The goal of this formula is to stimulate the immune system to act directly on the infected cells and also to stimulate the liver to resist stress and to more effectively repair itself without scarring. This formula successfully addresses the wide range of considerations that prevents further infection and liver injury and helps to resolve this disease.