A Second Lung Tumor Changed How This Doctor Approached His Health

After being diagnosed with lung cancer, Dr. Tsai Song-yen underwent surgery and chemotherapy. But just a few months later, a follow-up scan delivered another shock: A second tumor had appeared in a different lobe of the same lung.

The experience prompted Tsai, a physician specializing in neurology and environmental and occupational medicine with a long-standing focus on toxicology, to look more closely at his life. He began rethinking everything from what he ate and how he slept to how he exercised and managed his emotions. He also immersed himself in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), searching for ways to rethink his approach to health.

A decade later, the tumor has not recurred. What began as a frightening diagnosis became a turning point—one that led Tsai to radically reconsider how he lived, and what it means to care for health.

Trained in Western medicine, Tsai has always trusted the rigor of evidence-based practice. Yet after the second tumor appeared, a harder question took hold: “I removed the tumor—but I had never asked why it grew there in the first place,” he told The Epoch Times.

He realized the familiar medical path had carried him only so far. “There had to be another window.” Within the pages of “Huangdi Neijing” (“Yellow Emperor’s Inner Classic”)—the foundational text of traditional Chinese medicine—he encountered a principle that redirected his thinking: “treating disease before it arises”—changing the conditions that invite illness long before symptoms appear.

One passage struck him with particular force: “The meridians are that by which one can determine life and death, handle the hundred diseases, and regulate deficiency and excess; they must not be obstructed.” In TCM, the body is understood as a whole, and the meridians as its vital energy channels—intimately linked to life, disease, and the shifting balance of deficiency and excess. Keeping those channels open, Tsai concluded, was not optional.

He shifted his awareness from the tumor itself to the entire system that had allowed it to form. Diet, sleep, movement, and emotion became the new ground of treatment.

Diet is the most concrete change Tsai has made.

Two groups of vegetables appear on his plate almost every day. The first is cruciferous: cauliflower, broccoli, Chinese kale, and cabbage. The second is allium: onions, garlic, and green onions. “These two types are in nearly every meal,” he said.

Cruciferous vegetables are rich in sulfur-containing compounds such as glucosinolates; allium plants likewise contain a range of sulfur compounds. A 2025 meta-analysis found that higher consumption of cruciferous vegetables was linked to roughly an 18 percent lower risk of lung cancer. Separate studies have associated a greater intake of allium vegetables with a reduced risk of non-digestive-tract cancers.

Beyond loading up on vegetables, Tsai follows a low-sugar pattern, keeping carbohydrates to about 30 percent of total calories. As a regular rice eater, he cut his usual rice portion in half—and sometimes to one-third. He replaces the calories he removes with healthy fats: flaxseed oil, camellia oil, olive oil, sacha inchi oil, and perilla oil. Each brings a different fatty-acid profile—flaxseed and perilla oils are high in the plant omega-3 ALA, while monounsaturated fats dominate olive and camellia oils.

When eating out, he often orders blanched greens without oil and adds his own later; if that is impractical, he pairs the meal with a handful of nuts. His protein comes from fish, meat, dairy, eggs, and beans, with a particular preference for mackerel, saury, sardines, and salmon.

On any given day, he aims for about five servings of vegetables—about two and a half bowls of cooked leafy greens—plus seaweed and mushrooms. Fruit is limited to around two fist-sized servings.

He does not demand perfection. “I live a normal, healthy lifestyle 80 percent of the time and allow myself a little indulgence 20 percent of the time,” he said. An occasional cola or scoop of ice cream is nothing to get anxious about.

In addition to diet, Tsai places great importance on maintaining a regular daily routine. He usually wakes around 4:30 a.m. to 5 a.m., starts the day with 1 to 2 hours of exercise, then does calming activities. Afterward, he has a bowel movement and begins eating around 8 a.m. or 9 a.m.

His daily schedule follows the TCM concept of Ziwu Liuzhu, often known as the “midnight-noon ebb and flow of qi.” According to the theory, different periods of the day correspond to the activity of particular meridians and their associated organs. For example, 3 a.m. to 5 a.m. corresponds to the Lung meridian, 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. to the Large Intestine meridian, and 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. to the Stomach meridian.

From this perspective, rising early and engaging in physical activity in the morning is thought to support the smooth flow of qi through the Lung meridian. A subsequent bowel movement and morning meal then coincide with the periods traditionally associated with the Large Intestine and Stomach meridians, respectively.

Emotions became another area of reflection following his cancer diagnosis.

Before becoming ill, Tsai served as the superintendent of a regional hospital while also pursuing a doctoral degree in the United States. He flew to the United States for classes, returned to Taiwan, and immediately immersed himself in work—juggling administrative responsibilities, clinical practice, and academic research simultaneously. He maintained this demanding lifestyle for about five years.

“My own experience is an example of cancer that I believe was related to long-term high pressure,” he said, reflecting on his life before the diagnosis.

The experience also prompted him to pay closer attention to what TCM describes as “emotions and mental states” (qingzhi). In TCM theory, joy, anger, worry, contemplation, sorrow, fear, and fright are known collectively as the “Seven Emotions.” Traditional theory holds that prolonged or excessive emotional disturbances can affect the body’s overall condition.

Later, when treating patients, Tsai became increasingly attentive not only to their physical symptoms but also to the emotional states and interpersonal relationships they had experienced over long periods.

For breast cancer, for example, he would consider a patient’s relationships with a spouse, parents, and other family members. When discussing colorectal tumors, he sometimes points to what he describes as a long-standing “point of unexpressed anger”—feelings that may arise from pressures at work or unresolved interpersonal conflicts.

After experiencing a recurrence of cancer, one of Tsai’s deepest realizations was the importance of first facing his circumstances as they were.

“Don’t resist, don’t escape—you must first accept what has happened. Face it, then find a way forward,” he said.

He often reminded himself of the saying, “Heaven never seals off all paths,” and eventually found himself asking: Where, exactly, is that path?

His answer was: “Heaven is in your heart.”

During that period, he also looked up survival statistics for different types of cancer. Even among cancers with poor prognoses, he found that some people survived for more than five years. He told himself that even if the proportion was small, “I might be among that 2 percent or 5 percent.”

This shift in perspective helped him move away from asking, “How much longer can I live?” and toward a more immediate question: “What can I still do now?”

For Tsai, however, what matters is not simply accepting a diagnosis, but continuing to look for what can still be changed. His own experience has led him to believe that possibility remains as long as one keeps acting. “Since I can do it, everyone else can too,” he said.

By sharing his experience, Tsai hopes to offer a measure of hope and encouragement to those who are still walking their own path through cancer.