Insights and Updates

Zheng Yin Mai Zhi (Symptoms, Cause, Pulse, and Treatment) is a TCM work completed jointly by Qin Changyu (style name Jingming), a famous physician of the late Ming dynasty, and his grandnephew Qin Zhizhen (style name Huangshi); it is well worth reading.Qin Changyu was a…

Sutieye, also called Fanjiao Ye or Tieshuye, is the leaf of the cycad (Cycas revoluta) of the Cycadaceae family. The cycad is a tropical and subtropical plant distributed in China's Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, Yunnan, and elsewhere.Sutieye has the effects of moving qi and relieving pain,…

In China's Yangtze River basin and South China there is a green herbal medicine called Xueyao, commonly used by folk green-herb doctors; it is the whole herb of Nanocnide pilosa of the Urticaceae family. This is not a commonly used Chinese herb, so it is…

Yangmei (bayberry) is a delicious fruit that can also be used medicinally; it has the effects of generating fluids and relieving vexation, harmonizing the center and digesting food, and astringing the intestines to stop diarrhea.Not only the bayberry fruit but also its kernel, bark, and…

Madengcao is the whole herb of Camptosorus sibiricus of the Aspleniaceae family; it is a specific drug for thromboangiitis obliterans that contemporary TCM has discovered from folk remedies. Because this herb is not widely used, most pharmacies do not carry Madengcao, though I have seen…

Among the people around me, not many died from contracting COVID, but quite a few developed aftereffects, and I am one of them. Before infection I occasionally had episodes of tachycardia—three or five times a year, usually caused by poor rest. After the New Year…

The Chinese medicinal Guanzhong is the rhizome and residual leafstalk of Dryopteris crassirhizoma of the Dryopteridaceae family, mainly produced in Northeast China, Inner Mongolia, Hebei, Gansu, and elsewhere. Guanzhong entered medical use early; it is already recorded in Shennong Bencao Jing, the earliest TCM materia…

Chinese people have always known that eating only until 70% full is better for one's health. Animal experiments have also confirmed that caloric restriction can prolong the lifespan of laboratory mice.On August 15, 2016, the journal Nature published a study by Jan Hoeijmakers and colleagues…

When I was a child, I often ate a food called jiaotou—we called it lao jiaotou in my hometown. It can be stir-fried directly or pickled with chopped chili as a pickled vegetable. I had not eaten it for many years; one year, at a…

Spirulina is the algal body of Arthrospira platensis and several other spirulina species of the Oscillatoriaceae family, and can grow in fresh and seawater. Wild spirulina is a planktonic alga, mostly growing in the mid- to low-tidal zone of seawater or epiphytic on other algae…