Cerebral Infarction treated with TCM medicinal leeches

What are medicinal leeches(Shui Zhi)?
From the perspective of traditional Chinese medicine, medicinal leeches mainly refer to the dried body of a few medicinal leech species, including Whitmania pigra whitman, Hirudo nipponica Whitman, and Whitmania acranulata Whitman. It is produced in most parts of China. Most of them are wild and captured in summer and autumn. After capturing, it still needs to be washed, scalded to death with boiling water, cut, and dried at a low heat or in the sun. Medicinally Hirudo seu Whitmaniae is used raw or scalded with talcum powder.

Dried whitmania pigra whitman is in the shape of a flattened spindle, 4 to 10cm long, 0.5 to 2cm wide, and with many segments. Back is in the color of dark brown or dark brown and slightly elevated. After soaking the water, it shows visible black spots arranged in five vertical stripes. Venter is flat and brownish-yellow. Both sides are brownish yellow. Front end is slightly pointed and the rear end is blunt. Both ends have a sucker respectively. The former sucker is not obvious while the back sucker is bigger. Its dried body is brittle, slightly fishy, easily broken, and with gelatinous section. Main habitats include paddy fields, rivers, and lakes.

Medicinal leech benefits
1,500 years ago, the Egyptians pioneered the practice of bloodletting with medicinal leeches. In the beginning of the last century, the Europeans were more superstitious and believed that medicinal leech could suck the sick blood from the body so that they turned to medicinal leech therapy no matter what diseases they suffered from. Later this superstitious belief was gradually abandoned with the development of modern medicine.

In recent years the new use of leeches in medicine is getting more and more attention since its salivary glands have been found with anticoagulant hirudin and histamine-like substance that can dilate the blood vessels. As a result, plastic surgeons use medical grade leeches to eliminate blood stasis in vascular occlusion zone after the surgery. By doing so, it can reduce necrosis and thereby improve the success rate of breast tissue transplantation and breast augmentation. What’s more, leeches in modern medicine can greatly improve the success rate of replanting or transplanting fingers, toes, ears, nose, etc. by sucking blood to smooth the vein.

To better know about the leeches used in medicine, first off you’d better figure out what hirudin is. Hirudin is a low molecular weight (7000) polypeptide that consists of 65 amino acids. Hirudin is the most effective natural anticoagulant that is ever known so far. Its anticoagulant, thrombolytic effect, which is also known as activating blood and removing blood-stasis action in TCM, is better than that of heparin. Hence, it shows superior health benefits and promising prospect on dealing with a variety of diseases that lack antithrombin, such as septic shock, Atherosclerosis, Cerebral Infarction, cardiovascular disease, Hypertension, ophthalmic diseases, and so on.