Can leeches be used as medicine? What are the effects and effects?

Leeches, commonly known as leeches, grow and breed in inland freshwater waters. They are traditional Chinese medicinal aquatic animals. Can leeches be used as medicine? It is understood that it has been recorded in the Classic of Shennong Materia Medica, which has high medicinal value. Its dried products are used in traditional Chinese medicine after bubbling, which has the effects of treating stroke, hypertension, clearing blood stasis, amenorrhea, falling injury and so on.

Zhang Zhongjing's rhubarb worm pill is mixed with rhubarb, worm, peach kernel, tabanus and other drugs to treat the five fatigue deficiency extremely thin, dry blood internal knot, skin nail error, dark eyes, women's amenorrhea and other diseases. At present, this prescription is effective in the treatment of liver cirrhosis. In Biejia decoction pills, Didang decoction, Didang pills, all are equipped with leeches to treat malaria mother, blood storage syndrome. After careful examination of the syndrome treated by leeches in Zhongjing, most of them are the accumulation of blood stasis over a long period of time, need to slowly disappear gradually, and more into the pill powder. According to the ancient literature, although leeches treat a wide range of diseases, they all say that they have the effect of breaking blood and removing blood stasis and passing menstruation, which are used for blood storage, convulsion, accumulation, women's amenorrhea, dry blood tuberculosis, fall injury, eye pain, cloud pannus and so on.

Harvest and processing

Capture in summer and autumn, burn to death with boiling water, dry or dry at low temperature.

Hanging leeches usually use iron wire to pass through the leeches directly while they are alive, so there is usually a small hole in the hanging leeches, and the shape is irregular. After the leech is scalded and dried in the sun, the shape is generally smooth, straight and slightly curled on both sides. Some scalded leeches will multiply a large number of anaerobic bacteria in the body because they are not dry in time, causing them to expand after producing gas, and the appearance is somewhat bulging. Accompanied by tissue cell necrosis, edema, so the efficacy is much less than hanging dry leeches.

For the processed leeches, the ones with natural flat, good dryness, flat abdomen, crisp and easy to break, colloid and glossy section are the best.

Processing

Leech: wash, cut, dry.

Scalding leeches: take the clean leech section and scald it with talc powder according to the scalding method until it bulges slightly.

The efficacy of leeches

Break blood and expel blood stasis, dredge menstruation and eliminate symptoms. The main blood stasis amenorrhea, symptoms of riffraff, fall injury.

1. Treatment of acute conjunctivitis

Use 3 live leeches and put them in 6 ml of raw honey. 6 hours later, take the extract and set aside. Eye drops once a day, 1-2 drops each time. 380 cases were treated, most of them were bilateral conjunctivitis, all of them were cured. The shortest cure time was 1 day and the longest was 5 days. During the course of treatment, there was no adverse reaction except that there was slight pain 1-2 minutes after eye drops. It also has certain curative effect on chronic conjunctivitis and pterygium. (the formula should be used under the guidance of a doctor)

2. For injury caused by falls

Such as internal injury contusion, there are bruising, blood storage, leech file can be used, or calcined (survival) into the end, and then equipped with Panax notoginseng, musk, etc., with wine or warm water to serve, or soak wine internal service.

3. For the purpose of making a living

In the trial of anticancer agents, it is generally used in combination with other anticancer Chinese herbal medicines to make pills and tablets, such as leeches made with seaweed to treat esophageal cancer, but the efficacy remains to be further observed.

4. Antithrombotic

Hirudin is effective for all kinds of thrombosis, especially for venous thrombosis and disseminated intravascular coagulation. Appropriate amount of hirudin could inhibit the formation of carotid artery thrombus in rats and rabbits, and the thrombus formed was smaller than that in the control group.

5. Restore neurological function

Leech can promote the absorption of hematoma, reduce the inflammatory reaction and edema around the brain tissue, relieve the increase of intracranial pressure, improve the local circulation, and is beneficial to the recovery of neurological function in experimental rabbits with acute cerebral hemorrhage. It can also promote the absorption of local experimental hematoma in rabbit ears.

The function of leeches

1. Anticoagulant effect

Hirudin blocks the effect of thrombin on fibrin and hinders blood clotting. Hirudin is not damaged by heat or ethanol. Leeches can also secrete a histamine-like substance, which can dilate capillaries and increase bleeding. The inhibitory effect of alcohol extract of leech on blood coagulation was stronger than that of tabanus, insect and peach kernel, and the effect of hirudin preparation was stronger than that of water preparation. Hirudin 20mg can prevent the coagulation of 100g human blood.

Leech water extract can reduce the whole blood specific viscosity and plasma specific viscosity of rats. Shorten the time of erythrocyte electrophoresis. Clinical studies have shown that leeches can improve the concentration, viscosity and aggregation caused by abnormal hemorheology in patients with ischemic cerebrovascular disease.

2. improve the effect of microcirculation

Intravenous injection of leech injection 2g/kg can promote the absorption of hematoma, reduce the inflammatory reaction and edema around the brain tissue, relieve the increase of intracranial pressure, improve the local circulation, benefit the recovery of neurological function, and promote the absorption of local experimental hematoma in rabbit ears.

3. Anti-early pregnancy effect

Subcutaneous injection of 40% leech decoction 2.5~3.0g/kg for 2 days could terminate pregnancy in all stages of pregnancy in mice, including implantation and early, middle and late stages, but had the best effect on early pregnancy; if exogenous progesterone and leech were injected at the same time, it could resist the anti-early pregnancy effect of leeches.

5. Effect on cardiovascular system

Leech can dilate capillaries, improve microcirculation and increase renal blood flow. Its effect on improving microcirculation is similar to that of heparin, but for a short time. The experimental results show that leech can dilate peripheral blood vessels, increase blood flow and reduce vascular resistance, which is similar to that of papaverine hydrochloride.

7. Other functions

Leech can significantly reduce cholesterol and triglyceride in experimental hyperlipidemic rabbits. Hirudin has an inhibitory effect on tumor cells and on the growth of hepatocellular carcinoma in mice. Because leech has high anticoagulant effect, it is beneficial for anticancer drugs and immunoreactive cells to infiltrate cancer tissue to kill cancer cells.

The usage of leeches

Internal service: pill, powder, 0.540 yuan. The Great Dictionary of traditional Chinese Medicine

External use: suck at the place where the disease is placed; or soak the droplets. The Great Dictionary of traditional Chinese Medicine

Oral administration: 1.5 × 3G. -- Chinese Pharmacopoeia

Oral administration: decoction, 3-9g; or pill, powder, 0.5-1.5g each time, large dose 3G each time. "Chinese Materia Medica"

Leech attached prescription

Note: the following formulations should be used under the guidance of a doctor.

1. It is unfavorable to treat a woman through water.

It also treats men with urgent bladder and blood stasis. Thirty leeches (boil), thirty tabanworms (winged, foot, boiled), twenty peach kernels (peeled, pointed), rhubarb thirty taels (soaked in wine). At the end of the four flavors, take five liters of water, boil three liters, remove me, and take one liter of warm service. (Didang Tang in synopsis of the Golden Chamber)

2. Treat the woman with blood stasis in the abdomen

The moon water is disadvantageous, or break or come, the confidant is full of anxiety. Peach kernel 32 taels (soup soaked, peeled, pointed, Shuangren, bran fried light yellow), tabanid 40 (fried yellowish, winged, foot), 40 leeches (fried yellowish), Sichuan rhubarb Sanliao (file shredded and stir-fried). Medicine for the end, honey and pound more than a hundred pestles, pills as big as sycamore. Take fifteen pills with hot wine for each serving. ("Sheng Hui Fang" Taoren Pill)

3. I can't treat menstruation.

Menstruation or postpartum lochia, umbilical abdominal pain. Four taels of cooked Rehmannia glutinosa, 50 tabanworms (without head and wings), 50 leeches (fried yellow with glutinous rice, without glutinous rice), and 50 peach kernels (peeled and pointed). The top is the end, honey pill, Tongzi is big. Each take five or seven pills, hollow warm wine. ("Women's prescription" Dihuang Tongjing Pill)

4. Cure the leakage and keep bleeding.

The leech is sifted, and the wine is taken for a penny, and the evil blood disappears on the second day. ("Qian Jin Fang")

5. Treatment of broken wounds

Leech, new tile baked, for fine powder, hot wine mix a money, eat hectare, pain can, more take, pain stop. Then seal the broken bone medicine and fix it with clamps. ("empirical side")

6. Treat golden sore and damage

Golden sore, damage, falling from high, wood and stone pressure, internal damage and blood stasis, heartache, defecation obstruction, desperate to death. Red leeches (scorched yellow with lime), rhubarb and black Petunia. Each of them is fine powder, three yuan per serving, and mixed with hot wine, such as four or five miles of human travel, and then with hot wine to lead the cow to the end of the second money to urge it, the viscera must turn to evil blood, lump or into pieces, the evil blood will be cured. ("Jiesheng Fang" took the life away.)

7. Treat the pain of bone injury and fracture

Leech (glutinous rice fried yellow to rice), white cotton (ash burning), myrrh (separately studied) and frankincense (separate research) are equally divided into fifteen groups of blood surplus (boy's hair) (ash burning). On the top, take one money above 50, half money under 20, half a word for children, and warm wine. ("Puji prescription" is like a scattered bone.)

Story

There is a story recorded in the book Sou Shen Ji in the Gou Road of the Dunhuang Grottoes: during the Spring and Autumn and warring States period, King Hui of Chu dined with his courtiers, and there was a leech in the pickles, which he wanted to pick out and abandon, but for fear that the cook would be punished, he swallowed it in sauerkraut. Huiwang's cold disease caused by cold evil, vomiting due to leeches, but recovered.

Tao Hongjing, a physician in the Northern and Southern dynasties, also recorded this story: "the king of Chu ate cold vegetables (that is, sauerkraut). When he saw the leeches swallow it, the fruit could be accumulated. Although there was Yin you, it was both physical and physical." There are similar records in Jia Yi Xin Zhuan. Wang Chong's "Lun Heng" in the Eastern Han Dynasty explained that leeches were blood-eating insects, and the King of Chu almost had the disease of blood accumulation.