What are the benefits and effects of toad skin?
Toad skin, also known as Chan Yi, Chan Tui and so on, is the skin that the Chinese toad naturally sheds periodically during its growth and development. Textual research shows it is recorded in both ancient and modern herbal literature. In modern times it is regarded as a newly discovered medicinal part of the toad, has been widely used as medicine among the people, and artificial collection has been achieved. Let us take a look below at the benefits and effects of toad skin!
Benefits of Toad Skin
[Nature and flavor] Fishy in taste, warm in nature, toxic.
[Meridian tropism] Heart meridian.
[Effects] Strengthening the body's constitution, breaking up hardness and resolving stasis, fighting cancer and reducing swelling. It is mainly used for esophageal cancer, liver cancer, stomach cancer, lung cancer, intestinal cancer, nasopharyngeal cancer, cervical cancer, breast cancer, lymphoma, various malignant tumors, and so on.
Effects of Toad Skin
1. Toad skin contains hundreds of compounds. Animal test results show that it can treat a variety of malignant tumors. At high doses, its antitumor effect on Lewis lung cancer, H22 liver cancer and S180 sarcoma reaches about 50%, and no toxic side effects were found when mice were given 16 grams of toad skin per kilogram per day, suggesting that toad skin has a certain degree of safety.
2. Toads can be processed into dried toad skin, toad head, toad venom, toad tongue, toad liver, toad gallbladder and other traditional precious Chinese medicines, all of which have good therapeutic effects on esophageal cancer, liver cancer, nephritis, diphtheria and mumps. Toad venom contains dozens of biological components and has the effects of detoxifying, reducing swelling and relieving pain. Modern medicine has found that it has cardiotonic, diuretic, anticancer, anesthetic, anti-radiation and leukocyte-increasing effects that cannot be replaced by other drugs.
3. A survey of folk applications found that toad skin has the effects of clearing heat, detoxifying, reducing swelling and relieving pain, calming, promoting diuresis, and resisting colds and viruses. It also has marked effects on ascites due to liver disease and cancer, and can quickly and effectively strengthen physical constitution and improve immune function, promoting a natural balance in human metabolism.
Identification of Toad Skin
1. Natural toad skin: In fact, when a toad molts, it eats while shedding, so truly wild natural toad skin is almost impossible to obtain intact. Most whole toad skins sold on the market are whole skins obtained with water under artificial intervention, that is, generally water-shed whole toad skins. Natural toad skin is bound to have gaps, but if there are too many gaps it is hard to tell the genuine from the fake. It is best to keep those with a retention rate above 50%, which are better. The genuine product has a strong, proper taste and no irritating odor.
2. Genuine toad skin: Genuine toad skin is the keratinous skin membrane shed by the Chinese toad and others in a natural ecological environment. Toad skin collected under artificial breeding conditions without applying any drug stimulation also belongs to this category. This kind of toad skin is a truly precious raw material for Chinese medicine and can treat a variety of malignant tumors and difficult miscellaneous diseases. The characteristics of genuine toad skin are: the head, trunk and four limbs are complete without defects, damage or holes; the skin membrane is flat and orderly, not messy, like a dorsal view split open along the ventral midline; the color is natural and harmonious, not oily, without stray colors, with a slight crisp fragrant smell and no greasy or other off-odor; the thickness is uniform, as thin as cicada skin and semi-transparent, and it feels soft and comfortable to the touch.
3. Inferior or fake toad skin: Toad skin collected after stimulation with hormone drugs such as “molting agent” is inferior fake medicine. It has toxic side effects and is an unapproved, privately misused inferior product that must not be used indiscriminately. Its characteristics are: the skin membrane is incomplete and fragmentary, with a high rate of broken skin and many holes, basically nothing intact to speak of; the color is dull or even blackened, with an oily appearance; it has a greasy or other off-odor; the feel is uneven in thickness, inconsistent in softness and hardness, with hard lumps patched with fragments or a sense of local overlap, and even impurities deliberately mixed in.