Blog

14 OCT 2020

Preventing and Fighting Dengue Fever

As the coronavirus pandemic currently grips the world, everyone is concerned about how to prevent the virus from spreading and revitalise the economy from recession at the same time. However, the current crisis lurking in Singapore is not just the coronavirus epidemic, but another threatening one, dengue fever. The number of cases in Singapore in July this year is five times that of the same period last year. The total cumulative cases have reached 26,300 so far this year.

What is Dengue Fever?

Dengue fever is an illness caused by the dengue virus, which is carried and spread by the Aedes mosquitoes. It can be roughly divided into two categories: one is dengue hemorrhagic fever, and the other is dengue shock syndrome.

Possible Symptoms of Dengue Fever

Although dengue fever death is rare, its symptoms, such as fever, cough, headache, vomiting, abdominal pain, orbital pain, muscle, and joint pain, etc., are severe or even to the extent of shock, so they cannot be underestimated.

At present, there is no drug that can treat this disease. The treatment depends to a large extent on controlling symptoms and avoiding the occurrence of serious complications and the reduction of platelets.

Dengue Fever in TCM

Traditional Chinese medicine refers to dengue fever (commonly known as mosquito disease) as “Dengue fever”, which belongs to the category of “febrile disease”. At different stages of its onset, there are corresponding prescriptions for symptomatic treatment. In Traditional Chinese medicine treatment, it is divided into 4 stages of diagnosis and treatment periods.

1) Fever period
Symptoms: chills and high fever, headache and body pain, vomiting and diarrhea
Treatment: Relieve body heat and remove dampness of the body.
Prescription: Yinqiaosan + Radix isatidis, Huoxiang, mint, skullcap, Ophiopogon japonicus, Scrophulariaceae

2) Rash and bleeding period
Symptoms: high fever, polydipsia, external rash, skin ecchymosis, blood in the stool, vomiting, diarrhea
Treatment: clearing away heat and purging fire, cooling blood, and detoxification.
Prescription: Baihu Decoction + Qingwen Baidu Decoction

3) Shock period
Symptoms: pale face cold limbs, irritability, lower body temperature, lower blood pressure
Therapeutic method: replenishing qi, relieving qi, and relieving adversity.
Prescription: Shengmai san

4) Recovery period
Symptoms: Lack of breath, weakness, loss of appetite, lazy to talk
Treatment method: invigorate the spleen and stomach, nourish qi, and yin.
Prescription: Shenling Baizhu San + Dendrobium, Lentil, Ophiopogon, Malt, Zhimu.

Alternative remedies are also commonly used to treat this disease, especially the following two prescriptions:

1) Papaya Leaf Juice

It is said that using papaya green leaves to squeeze the juice, drink 2 times a day, 1 tablespoon each time, it can improve the production of platelets to fight against the bone pain virus, and also has the effect of repelling fever.

2) Bitter Gourd Stewed Frog Soup

credit @ https://jurongfrogfarm.com.sg/recipe_archive/frog-legs-bitter-gourd/

After washing the 5 small bitter gourds to remove the seeds, wipe them clean without adding water, simmer for 4 hours with 3 frogs, and drink the soup.  Due to the cold nature of frogs and the bitter cold of bitter gourd, those with deficiency of spleen and stomach should be used with caution.