ABSTRACT
Diabetes is one of the most common chronic non-communicable diseases. The incidence rate is on the increase year by year. As the disease progresses, it can cause damages to many tissues and organs, such as eyes, kidneys, nerves, heart and blood vessels, which seriously endangers human health. Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has outstanding clinical advantages in the prevention and treatment of diabetes, with distinctive characteristics of diagnosis and treatment. TCM has a long history of understanding diabetes. In recent years, researches on etiology, pathogenesis and treatment have gradually deepened and made certain progress. As early as in the Huangdi Neijing, there is a record of "If people’s lung, spleen viscera (stomach), liver, kidney are weak, they can easily get diabetes". This paper collected and summarized ancient literatures relating to diabetes. According to the basic construction principle of "integration-authenticity-innovation" in the theoretical framework of TCM，the causes of the disease include liver weakness and failure in dredging and regulation，emotional disorder, endogenous heat and dryness, heart weakness, heart Yin depletion, endogenous dryness and heat， spleen deficiency and failure in transportation and transformation， lung injury caused by dryness and heat, dysfunction of body fluid distribution, kidney Yin deficiency, astringent weakness, insufficient Qi transformation for maintaining body fluid metabolism balance. In general, Yin deficiency is the root cause, and dryness and heat are the appearance. A framework for the treatment of diabetes was built with five organs as spatial dimension. This paper summarizes the etiology and pathogenesis of diabetes caused by viscera deficiency, with the treatment of diabetes with the five internal organs as the basic framework. The main methods of treating diabetes are relieving Qi stagnancy in liver, regulating the mood，clearing the heart fire, Yin-enriching and dryness-moistening, reinforcing spleen Yang, invigorating spleen and removing dampness, clearing lung and moistening dryness, nourishing Yin, kidney Yin, warming kidney and promoting Yang. A clear and hierarchical theoretical framework was built as a bridge between the theory of TCM and clinical practice of TCM, in the expectation to provide new ideas for the study of ancient TCM literatures and the treatment of diabetes mellitus with TCM, and contribute to the inheritance and development of TCM theory.