Insights and Updates

After the Minor Snow solar term, the weather turns cold. Following northern custom, radishes and cabbages should be put into the vegetable cellar. Autumn harvest and winter storage—spending the winter in the North makes one feel this all the more deeply. Last year, as soon…

Xiaobanxia Decoction comes from Jingui Yaolue (Essentials from the Golden Cabinet). It uses only two herbs: Banxia (Pinelliae Rhizoma) 1 sheng (modern use: 15 g), fresh ginger 0.5 jin (modern use: 24 g). These are boiled in 7 sheng of water down to 1.5 sheng,…

Banxia Baizhu Tianma Decoction comes from Volume 4 of Yixue Xinwu (Medical Heart Enlightenment), in the section on "vertigo." The author of that book, Cheng Guopeng, explained vertigo as: "Xuan means darkness before the eyes; yun means the head spinning; what the ancients called head-spinning…

Once a reader asked me: why do you always keep thinking about your rural hometown? Wouldn't staying in the city let you help more people? I said to her: in the animal kingdom, some animals imprint on the first animal they see after birth as…

For most cancer patients, the first three years are the hardest. After being diagnosed with cancer, a heavy stone presses on the heart. Many patients become melancholy because of this; at the slightest change in test results, they feel as if the sky has fallen.

Is the Way of Heaven not like the drawing of a bow? What is high is pressed down; what is low is lifted up. What is in excess is reduced; what is insufficient is supplied. The Way of Heaven reduces the excess and supplies the…

Compound Fufangteng Mixture is composed of Fufangteng (Caulis Euonymi Fratris), Huangqi (Radix Astragali), and Hongshen (red ginseng). It has the actions of boosting qi and nourishing blood, and fortifying the spleen and nourishing the heart. It is used for deficiency of qi and blood and…

Zhongjiefeng is the whole plant of Sarcandra glabra, a member of the Chloranthaceae family; it is also known as Caoshanhu (Sarcandra), Jiujiecha, and Jiegu Jinshulan. Folk people named it Zhongjiefeng (literally "swelling-node-wind") because of its efficacy in dispersing swelling and nodules. Traditional Chinese medicine holds…

Shenghua Tang (Generation-and-Transformation Decoction) is an empirical formula of the famous late Ming/early Qing physician Fu Qingzhu, recorded in Fu Qing Zhu Nü Ke (Fu Qingzhu's Gynecology). Fu Qingzhu was skilled in treating gynecological diseases and left behind many empirical gynecological formulas; Shenghua Tang is…

Ankangxin Capsules are an anticancer Chinese patent medicine developed by contemporary TCM. Their main ingredients are eighteen Chinese herbs including Astragali Radix (Huang Qi), Ginseng Radix (Ren Shen), Salviae Miltiorrhizae Radix et Rhizoma (Dan Shen), Ganoderma (Ling Zhi), Psoraleae Fructus (Bu Gu Zhi), Schisandrae Fructus…