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Note: today's post comes to us from Jonathan Schell, the driving force behind the Chinese Medicine Database, an online resource for doctors/practitioners, students, scholars, researchers and translators. If you are involved in Chinese medicine on any level and haven't heard of this wonderful resource, you owe it to yourself to check it out.

This was originally a post from the facebook page for the Chinese Medicine Database and has been reprinted in its entirety, with permission.

Today I am feeling especially driven. Maybe it was because I was sick for a week, and maybe it is because of the Tsunami in Japan, but I so passionately want -- to have so many more Chinese medical texts translated! We have the people just waiting to work, but just lack the funds.

I believe that the more texts that we translate, the more face of what we know as Chinese or Asian medicine will be changed. The thing is I need a few hundred people like yourselves to stand with me and bring this to fruition! A number of... you subscribe already, but I ask those of you that don't what would it take for you to subscribe?

I am not asking for me. I have yet to make money on the Database. I ask because what Book makes you salivate enough that you are willing to throw down your $20.00 per month to make it happen? Economy be damned. I believe that we are reaching a pivotal point with our field. We are big enough to be noticed, but not organized enough to fend for ourselves.

And so here it is -- my passionate howl into the vastness of Facebook -- In my opinion we are heading as a profession towards being absorbed. I put a time of 20 years to it. If you talk to people at the schools there is always more emphasis being put on Western techniques and less time in teaching Chinese medicine. The incentives are on merging Chinese medicine with Western medicine. And as with the most recent financial crisis -- we know that the incentives dominate the course of events.

I am not just passionate about the Classics because I am a big history buff, and love to talk about the past. No in fact I am a clinician just like the majority of you. The Classics serve to prod me into other states of consciousness which provides me with alternative insights. But why as a profession should we care about them? Because in my opinion, they are the only leg that we will have to stand on that irrefutably defends the uses for and the mechanisms of Chinese medicine. No person or organization can doubt 2,000 years worth of written material if it is readable in your own language. But if it is another person's language, we in the West have a tendency to think of things as primitive.

So when we are struggling to not be absorbed in 20 years, and we are all struggling -- it will be too late, my friends, to ask that our academics translate the texts to justify our position. There will be no time left, it would be like trying to raise wheat in winter. No, the time to bear the brunt of this work is before we need it, when we are strong and fresh, and not embattled defending our techniques -- loss of this to PT's, loss of that to Chiropractor's, loss of this other thing to MD's.

I am sorry to say that I don't have the $13 million dollars to translate the 400 main texts in my possession, because if I did I would spend it towards that purpose. But each of you has $20.00 and I have $20.00 and over the years 1,000 of us putting together our collective $20.00 will start to make a dent in that $13 million.

In 20 years I want to be able to say to my son, and your children -- "You know -- everyone said it was impossible -- that it would never happen -- but we pulled together as a community -- and WE MADE IT HAPPEN!" That would be truly awesome! And I think would change the face of Chinese Medicine as we know it.

I am one man, with a team of translators ready to work. I ask you whether you believe in the project or not, would you join me -- to say that you were part of it? To say to your children that we made something so amazing happen that it changed the way our profession understands the medicine? I built this system for us, to be used by us, so that we are never in the dark again.

This is what I am passionate about, and the fire to "Get to work" rages inside of me. I am tired of limping along, I want to start this Wonder of the World now!

Register at www.cm-db.com -- each of us can contribute a little bit to this project and together we can make it happen. I give you my word, which in my world means that I will make my word happen.

Mu Xiang Liu Qi Yin 木香流气饮

An acupuncturist called me yesterday and wanted to know more about Mu Xiang Liu Qi Yin. I had never heard of the formula, and we had already established that it wasn't in either the Bensky or Chen formula book, so I did a quick google search. A few scattered references to the formula in one of Macioca's books and a few others came up, but no clues as to the ingredients or dosages. Then I did a search in Chinese. Ta-da!

It's from the Song dynasty text Taiping Huimin Heji Jufang, which also gave us such famous formulas as 四物汤 Si Wu Tang and 四君子汤 Si Jun Zi Tang.

There are actually two formulas given, and as far as I can tell the first one is the original as written in the Song dynasty. The second version has modern dosage amounts (grams rather than liang) so I'm guessing this is the version most people use today.

Here is a translation of the ingredients from the first version of the formula:

• 半夏（汤洗七次）二两，Ban Xia 2 liang
  
• 陈皮（去白）二斤，Chen Pi 2 jin
  
• 厚朴（去粗皮.姜制.炒）、青皮（去白）、甘草、香附（炒.去毛）、紫苏叶（去枝.梗），各一斤； Hou Po, Qing Pi, Gan Cao, Xiang Fu, Zi Su Ye, each 1 jin
  
• 人参、赤茯苓（去黑皮）、干木瓜、石菖蒲、白术、白芷、麦门冬，各四两； Ren Shen, Chi Fu Ling, Mu Gua, Shi Chang Pu, Bai Zhu, Bai Zhi, Mai Men Dong, each 4 liang
  
• 草果仁、肉桂（去粗皮.不见火）、蓬莪（煨.切）、大腹皮、丁香皮、槟榔、木香（不见火）、藿香叶，各六两； Cao Guo, Rou Gui, Peng E, Da Fu Pi, Ding Xiang Pi, Bing Lang, Mu Xiang, Huo Xiang, each 6 liang
  
• 木通（去节）八两。 Mu Tong 4 liang

Here's my stab at the actions:
Original: 调顺荣卫，通流血脉，快利三焦，安和五脏。
Translation: Mediate and organize the Ying and Wei, connect and flow the blood vessels, quicken the triple burner, calm and harmonize the five zang organs.

I'm running out of time here, got to get back to work. I'll translate the rest of it later - including indications and directions. Remember folks, there is a huge amount of information on Chinese medicine that hasn't been translated into English, this is just one formula! Heed the words of Bob Flaws and learn your Chinese - you'll have access to so much more information. It advances the profession and helps your patients too!

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.