The Top Three Panacea of Chinese Medicine

Many people have chronic illnesses with many symptoms; often, one feels pain from head to toe, almost as if there’s no painless spot on the body.  Although many of these chronic illnesses aren’t too serious, they drag on and never seem to go away.  At times, the symptoms may worsen, at other times they may disappear, causing the person much distress.  The solution is actually to cultivate and nurture blood within the body, as this will increase one’s chances of recovering from a chronic illness.

                So what is the easiest and fastest way to generate new blood in the body?  Chinese medicine says that the spleen and stomach are essential in the generation of red blood cells.  Therefore, if we want to have sufficient blood in the body, then we must regulate our spleen and stomach organs, making sure that they are running efficiently and are healthy.  Some people eat just a little bit of food, but become uncomfortably full or bloated, resulting in indigestion; others can’t easily absorb the food they eat, resulting in either diarrhea, constipation, an inability to produce sperm, excess production of phlegm, or a tendency to develop muscles easily.  These problems are all a result of the spleen and stomach organs not functioning properly.  Solving this problem starts with fixing the body’s physique, allowing for it to have the right conditions of a healthy spleen and stomach.  Medicine can’t be the first course of action because if there is difficulty digesting and absorbing even grains and vegetables, then there would be even more difficulty digesting and absorbing medicine. 

                Many people familiar with Chinese medicine have weak kidney systems, so they take medicine that helps replenish the kidneys.  But because these medicines are difficult to digest, often times they fail to replenish the kidneys, instead becoming a heavy burden on the spleen and stomach organs.  In this way, the medicine which is supposed to help the body actually becomes a poison to the body’s organs. 

                A lot of people also have excessive heat in their heart and liver organs, so they must take cool-natured medicines year-round to balance this.  But what they don’t know is that taking cool-natured medicines can damage the spleen and stomach the most, especially when the spleen and stomach is already weak.

                If there is one medicine on this planet that I recommend to you, in order to help solve your chronic health and blood deficiency problems, it would be a combination of Chinese yam, Job’s tears seeds, and Gorgon fruit.  This combination is highly effective, and is the most reliable Chinese medicine you can take. 

                For frail elderly people, very young children, and also people whose conditions are very severe, my frequent suggestion is to eat porridge made of those three ingredients: Chinese yam, Job’s tears and Gorgon fruit.  These ingredients may be a little bit hard to find at supermarkets, but if you look around at health food stores or herbal stores, or ask a local practitioner, you may be able to find it. 

                Many people ask, “Is it really effective to just eat porridge? Can it really promote the growth of red blood cells very quickly?” My answer to you is, if the porridge solution doesn’t work, then I’m afraid that nothing else will.  Although normal food produces energy and blood in the body, first we use the energy already present in the body to digest that food.  If the body can’t afford to use that bit of energy to digest the food, then our only solution is to use the three ingredients mentioned, because only they can directly provide us with energy and the source of blood.

                First let’s discuss the benefits of Chinese yam.  Chinese yam has a stable, sweet nature, and doesn’t cause inflammation or excess heat in the body when restoring the body’s energy.  A Chinese medicine book discusses the benefits of the Chinese yam: “….strengthens the kidneys, restores the stomach and spleen, dissolves phlegm and mucus, cures dysentery, and moisturizes the skin and hair.”  Other benefits of Chinese yam include relieving cough and clearing the lungs. For medicinal purposes, it is more common to use dried Chinese yam, although there is fresh Chinese yam available at oriental markets.  At herbal stores, there are usually two kinds of dried Chinese yam: cooked and raw.  It is better to use the raw herb form. 

                Now let’s talk about the Job’s tears seeds—if you’re body tends to have what Chinese medicine calls “dampness”, or a “wet” nature, (such as if you are easily prone to water retention, edema, eczema,), then the seeds of Job’s tears is the best solution for you.  Job’s tears helps the body get rid of excess water, delivering this dampness out of the body.  Job’s tears seed has a slightly cool nature; therefore, it’s not very suitable for people who have excessive coldness within their stomach and spleen, or for people whose four limbs become cold easily.  Some Chinese medicine doctors also says that pregnant women should also abstain from using Job’s tears, because it may affect not only the body’s general fluids, but also the amniotic fluids in the uterus.  Although side effects have not been observed to date, it’s better to stay on the safe side and avoid any risks during pregnancy.

                The main function of Job’s tears is to strengthen the spleen and dispel dampness.  Meanwhile strengthening the spleen, it can also replenish the lungs; meanwhile dispelling dampness, it can also dissolve mucus and phlegm. Job’s tears seed can also help alleviate excess heat in the lungs. When used alongside Chinese yam, it is all the more effective.  It is recommended to use 50 grams of each ingredient to make porridge, to be eaten daily.   The question is, why do we have to wait until we are sick to eat this? The porridge itself isn’t necessarily a medicine—it can also be considered as a supplement, a source of nutrition and prevention for getting sick in the first place.  The porridge doesn’t taste bad or like medicine at all.  So even if you are not chronically ill, or don’t have any of the above mentioned problems, I still invite you to try this porridge.  The medicine should not be bitter, sour or taste like medicine—if it does, then that means the quality of your ingredients are not great.  For porridge, it is better to use fresh Chinese yam.

 

                Finally, let me discuss the benefits of Gorgon fruit.  Some people have diarrhea for extended periods of time; others produce too much sperm and are unable to control its outward flow from body; still others urinate too frequently at night, and can’t sleep well because of this.  For these conditions, Gorgon fruit is the perfect remedy. Gorgon fruit also has other benefits, such as stopping pain in the knee and back, enhancing vision and hearing, and when eaten long term it has the ability to promote longevity.  Although it’s a quite common food, its benefits are unusual and highly sought after.   This fruit not only has the ability to stop excess production of sperm, but also helps in increasing sperm production if needed—in general, it can regulate sperm production.  Additionally, it cures inflammation from excess dampness in the stomach and spleen and replenishes the kidneys. 

                Chinese yam, seed of Job’s tears, and Gorgon fruit complement each other perfectly, all three having miraculous effects on the stomach and spleen. However, they all have different specialties.  Chinese yam, for instance, strengthens five organs: the stomach, spleen, kidney, lung, and the liver.  The seed of Job’s tears can clear the lungs, clear excess water from the lungs, help the stomach, and expel dampness. Gorgon fruit, on the other hand, besides strengthening the stomach and spleen, can also stop diarrhea and stop excess sperm production.  Many people grind the three medicines into powder (if you’re using dry ingredients) and then add water to make it into porridge, adding jujubes (red dates) to the mix.  This can help cure blood deficiency, which is benefiting to problems such as anemia. 

                Although these medicines have many benefits, like all other medicines it is not suitable for everyone.  If you have excess heat or inflammation in the liver, stagnant or slow moving blood flow, low amounts of saliva, these three ingredients aren’t recommended for you. Also, if you feel that you don’t urinate very often, if you get easily out of breath in the cold, or are easily prone to constipation when the weather is hot, then the medicine isn’t good for you either.  When you want to put clean water into a fountain, first you must get rid of the dirty, stagnant water.  Likewise, if you want to receive the benefits of this medicine, first you must rid your body of these problems and conditions.  Otherwise, the blood deficiency will not be cured easily.  More will come in later blogs for ways to treat these problems.

Summer—the Perfect Time to Cure Winter Illnesses

In Chinese Medicine, summer is the time to cleanse your body of all the illnesses you’ve accumulated during the long winter months. Chinese medicine expert Sun Si Miao once said: “Great doctors prevent illnesses that may happen in the future; Good doctors prevent the inevitable illnesses of the near future; Regular doctors treat illnesses that are happening or have already happened.”  It is true that good doctors prevent the illnesses of the future, but there are so many possibilities of future illnesses—Chinese medicine doctors, on the other hand, pinpoint exactly which illnesses you are most likely to develop in the future, and work on those instead.  By recognizing the signs and symptoms that the body gives off, one is able to identify the origins of sickness and chase it away before the illness becomes severe or untreatable.  This is done by modifying the body’s conditions so that it isn’t the ideal environment for breeding sickness.  As a result, the body’s problems can be healed without the use of medicine.

                “Winter illnesses” refers to illnesses that easily occur in the wintertime, which are not necessarily ones that have already occurred.  The reason we can say that these “winter illnesses” are most likely to occur is because most people have, in the winter, what Chinese medicine describes as “Lack of Fire Energy”, or lack of internal bodily heat.  The most common signs of this are cold feet and hands, an aversion to the cold, and always feeling fatigued or sleepy.  This means that your body doesn’t have enough heat energy in it; when the body can’t produce enough heat energy, then the coldness is naturally born from within.  People who have this problem are constantly cold, even in the summertime, and pile on blankets and wear socks to go to bed.

                Why do winter illnesses need to be cured in the summertime then? It’s because people who have winter illnesses, more often than not, have body constitution that tend to be weak to the cold. And depending on where you live, winter may be a bitter and long season, and the outside world is frozen for quite a while; therefore, treating winter illnesses in the wintertime is like hanging your clothes to dry outside on a rainy day—the sickness won’t really go away, because of the nature of the season.  On the contrary, in the summertime when the outside environment is warm, the body will be full of internal heat as well.  Because of this, the cold can easily be dispelled during this time. 

                It’s important to remember that the coldness from winter deposits itself in the body in layers, and wherever the coldness subsides, there is poor blood circulation. This is why, when the weather is especially cold or damp, people tend to feel pain in their joints, or their arthritis may act up. Likewise, if the coldness subsides in the organs, swelling is likely to develop; if it subsides in the meridians, then there will be poor blood circulation to many parts of the body, especially the feet and hands, causing not only cold feet and hands, but sometimes a numb feeling as well.

                The key to dispelling this coldness from the body is to kindle the body’s inner “fire”, or heat energy.  In order to develop one’s inner heat, one must eat foods which Chinese medicine deems as having a “warm nature”.  Some people might think, “Eating warm foods in the summer heat will make me uncomfortable and sick.”  This is true, but eating foods with “warm nature” doesn’t necessarily mean eating foods that are warm.  For example, a common remedy to coldness in the body is a tea made of brown sugar and ginger.  Both of these ingredients are warm-natured, but in the summer you would not drink it as a hot tea, but rather cool it.  However, the tea still retains its warm nature, though it may taste cool, and has the same effects on the body as it would if drank warm.  

                People who don’t sweat easily—or those that, after sweating are vulnerable to cold—can use “Yu Bing Feng San” granules, dissolved in hot water to make a bottle of liquid, then cooled.  It’s recommended to drink a bottle of this daily, because the beverage has the ability to stop excessive sweating, promote sweating if a person doesn’t sweat easily, and also prevents one from being vulnerable to coldness from the wind.  There are so many uses for this beverage, it’s really like killing three birds with one stone rather than two—there’s no harm in trying it.

                Because people are especially fond of eating cold foods and drinking cold beverages during the summertime, the digestive system organs accumulate a lot of coldness.  At this time, the body is easily susceptible to colds, especially ones that are accompanied by high fevers but no sweating.  Sweating is necessary when you have a cold, because the virus is flushed away through the skin pores.  If there is no sign of sweating, the person can take Huo Xiang Zheng Qi teapills.  However, if these are symptoms of a heat stroke, this medicine is not effective, so make sure it really is a cold before using this medicine.

                If you feel that your stomach is always cold, and even in the summertime you feel the need to eat hot foods in order to warm your body and stomach, you should take “Fu Zi Li Zhong” teapills.  This medicine also is effective for people who are afraid of wind and the cold in general.  It is also quite beneficial to use moxa on Zhong Guan, Guan Yuan, and Zu San Li .  A lot of people dislike the smell and smoke of moxa—it’s not bad for your health, but you don’t have to use it.  There are many other solutions, so it’s best to find one that you feel comfortable with and enjoy using.

                If you feel coldness on your back, use the Gwa Sha method on your back. It’s best if you soak your feet in hot water while doing this.  Afterwards, drink a bowl of hot ginger and red date tea, or pepper and Daikon radish soup.  These ingredients can be commonly found in oriental supermarkets.  

                Another effective method is making yourself sneeze, which has been described in a previous blog.  This is one of the best ways of alleviating cold symptoms and dispelling inner cold from the body.

                Many people say that they are easily cold, but when taking warm-natured medicines their bodies collect too much inner heat, the symptoms including swelling of gums and teeth and blisters on the face, and then they must take cold-natured medicine, and the cycle starts all over again.  Why does this happen? It’s because your body’s has excessive cold on the surface, and when you take warm-natured medicine, the body is like ice wrapped around fire—the outer cold is not dispelled, and you are left with excessive heat on the inside.  The solution to this is using the Gwa Sha or cupping method on the back in order to “break the ice”, then taking warm-natured medicines or foods to dispel the coldness.

                Of course, this blog is only to advise and inform you about all the solutions available—it’s up to you and your doctor to decide which, if any, to use, and which ones are most suitable to your lifestyle and body type.  There isn’t a perfect solution to anything, only ones that best suit your condition. 

Future Blog: How to keep Yourself Fit in the Season of Fall