Fat Turtle Herb Company Profile on Yosan Alumni Page

Nini and I transferred to Yosan University of Traditional Chinese Medicine from another school, and we're glad we did. Take a look!

Pharmacy Term of the Day: 后下 Hou Xia

When you write a Chinese herbal formula and send it to Fat Turtle, it's a little bit like telling the cook exactly how you want your eggs. Over easy? Over hard? Scrambled? Sunny side up? Maybe you want something fancy like benedict?

This is the first in an occasional series highlighting the special instructions you as a Chinese medicine doctor can give to us, the herbal pharmacy, to make sure your patient cooks the formula correctly.

Today we'll be looking at the term "Hou Xia" (hòu xià 后下). "Hou" means behind or at the end. "Xia" means down, lower, underneath. A crude translation would be "throw down at the end", giving you the picture of herbs saved off to the side and then "thrown down" into the pot when the cooking is nearly done.

Some typical herbs that are packaged separately and labeled Hou Xia are:

• Mu Xiang 木香 Aucklandia Radix
  
• Sha Ren 砂仁 Amomi Fructus
  
• Cao Dou Kou 草豆蔻 Alpiniae Katsumadai Semen
  
• Da Huang 大黄 Rhei Rhizoma et Radix (when used as a purgative - when used as a blood mover Da Huang should be cooked together with all other herbs)

The rationale for preparing herbs in this way is that there are volatile oils in these herbs that cook off very quickly. Cooking for 5-7 minutes can release these active ingredients into the formula, while cooking longer than that boils them off into vapor.

The vacuum packing service that Fat Turtle offers necessarily cooks all the herbs together at once, even Mu Xiang and Sha Ren. Does this reduce the efficacy of these herbs? Surprisingly, the answer is no. In fact, the effectiveness may even be increased.

An article published in the Zhejiang Journal of Traditional Chinese Medicine (浙江中医杂志 Zhe Jiang Zhong Yi Za Zhi, Vol‐9. 2005; Weiqing Liang, Junxian Zheng, Jinbao Pu, Kemin Wei) found that extraction of flavonoids and alkaloids from herbs decocted in vacuum cookers is higher than traditional stove top cooking. The extraction of alkaloids from Mu Xiang from traditional cooking was 0.045%, while with vacuum cooking the extraction rate was 0.094% - more than double.

Ginseng Plant

This is a nice picture of a ginseng plant. Note the bright red berries.

Study: Alcohol more lethal than heroin, cocaine

Alcohol does terrible things. David Hasselhoff does too.

A recent study in the British medical journal The Lancet (here's a link to a news story summary) shows that alcohol is more lethal and does more overall harm than heroin or cocaine.

According to Chinese medical theory, alcohol is hot, acrid and toxic. In small amounts it can be beneficial as it moves the blood and warms the channels. Alcohol tinctures are a big part of Chinese herbal medicine, although they're not used extensively in the U.S. In large amounts, however, it can create Damp Heat and cause one to "forget oneself".

Alcohol is processed by the liver. In Chinese medical theory, the Liver is the home of the 魂神 Hun Shen, or ethereal spirit (The Liver stores the ethereal soul - gan cang hun 肝藏魂 from Statements of Fact in Traditional Chinese Medicine by Bob Flaws). If the Liver is working properly qi flows easily in the body and you feel at ease.

("Liver qi stagnation" is a common translation, some would say mistranslation, of 肝氣郁 gan qi yu - Bob Flaws and Nigel Wiseman prefer Liver qi depression as the more accurate translation. "Depression" here does not mean the Western medical condition mental depression - rather it indicates a kind of improper or lower-level functioning of the Liver qi. It may or may not be "stagnated" in the sense of a blockage. With that caveat...)

If, however, Liver qi becomes depressed (see previous paragraph), a small amount of alcohol may help to move things along. This is why people drink in social situations - besides the ritual of engaging in a common activity, the substance itself, in this case alcohol, dissolves barriers and loosens tongues. The key is knowing when to stop... excessive alcohol can lead to ugly situations like this and this.

Is Physiologic Reserve the Biomedical Equivalent of Jing?

Tu Jin Sheng probably has a lot of Jing...

I just found out about this concept called "physiologic reserve." From the New York Times:

Physiologic reserve refers to excess capacity in organs and biological systems; we’re given this reserve at birth, and it tends to decrease over time. In an interview, Dr. Lachs said that as cells deteriorate or die with advancing age, that excess is lost at different rates in different systems.

The effects can sneak up on a person, he said, because even when most of the excess capacity is gone, we may experience little or no decline in function. A secret of successful aging is to slow down the loss of physiologic reserve.

“You can lose up to 90 percent of the kidney function you had as a child and never experience any symptoms whatsoever related to kidney function failure,” Dr. Lachs said. Likewise, we are born with billions of brain cells we’ll never use, and many if not most of them can be lost or diseased before a person experiences undeniable cognitive deficits.

Sounds a lot like Jing, right? Also similar to the function of the extraordinary vessels. Take a look at the full article here.

I Am A Seaweed - Medical Qigong with Dr. Alex Feng

Take a look at Dr. Alex Feng's new instructional DVD, I Am A Seaweed Medical Qi Gong - An Introduction.

This DVD, an original work of Dr. Feng, is an accumulation of his study and teaching of Medical Qi Gong over 4 decades. Qi Gong is an ancient practice that combines mind, body, and awareness of energy to promote health. The first of a series, this DVD presents an introduction to Dr. Feng's classic teaching, I Am A Seaweed Medical Qi Gong. The form introduces the quintessential principles of Qi Gong that will help the practitioner continue to develop in all areas of Qi Gong practice - not limited to one particular style. Its magic lies in its simplicity and yet the depth of the teaching is utterly profound.

越南肉桂 Vietnamese Rou Gui

Watch this video in full screen HD on youtube