Herbal Acne Medicine

This herb is bitter, cool, and slightly acrid. It enters the heart, liver, and gall bladder channels to clear heat and toxins as well as nodules. It expels externally contracted wind heat as in the common cold. Due to its broad-spectrum antibiotic effect, Lian Qiao acts as an anti-inflammatory, lowers fever, protects the liver, stops vomiting, helps blood circulation, and promotes urination.

Da Huang - Rhei Rhizoma (Rhubarb)

This root is bitter in taste, cold in nature, and is attributive to the spleen, stomach, large intestine, liver, and pericardium channels. It drains heat and clears away toxic materials, clears damp heat, cools and invigorates the blood, eliminates stagnant blood, and purges knotted heat and stool from the colon. As a result, Da Huang is used as a laxative, antiphlogistic, and haemostatic in the treatment of constipation, diarrhea, jaundice, gastrointestinal hemorrhage, menstrual disorders, conjunctivitis, traumatic injuries, superficial sores and ulcers. It is also applied externally for thermal burns.

Huang Qin - Scutellariae Baicalensis (Scute or Chinese Skullcap)

Huang Qin is a bitter, cold, cooling and detoxifying herb for heat patterns that enters the heart, lung, gall bladder, and large intestine channels. It has antibiotic-like qualities that act as an anti-inflammatory and a calmative. A primary herb for damp heat conditions, especially of the upper body, it is indicated for symptoms of yellow phlegm, including phlegm with blood, high blood pressure, diarrhea, acute dysentery, jaundice, urinary tract infections, and skin diseases. It can also be used during pregnancy to help calm fetal restlessness. scute, as it is commonly called, is excellent for liver yang rising (hypertension) with symptoms of irritability, red eyes, and flushed face.

Zhi Zi - Gardeniae Jasminoidis (Happiness Herb, Gardenia Fruit)

This bitter, cold, and dry herb purges heat, disperses fire, dispels damp heat, cools blood, and resolves bruises. Gardenia fruit enters the liver, lung, and stomach channels to clear heat and calm irritable emotions. It drains dampness and cools the blood thereby stopping bleeding. It is used for fever with irritability or restlessness, insomnia, delirium, and urinary tract infections. It is effective for any bleeding in the mucous membranes, such as the nasal passages, the bowels, or the urinary tract. Topical uses include treatment of abscess, bruises, injury, irritability, sprains, and swellings. When used topically it also relieves swelling and congested blood due to trauma

Chi Shao - Paeoniae Rubra Radix (Red Peony Root)

This root invigorates the blood and deals with early stages of abscesses, boils, skin blotches, and bleeding. It is a sour, bitter, slightly cold herb that enters through the liver and spleen channels. Chi Shao has three distinct functions. It vitalizes the blood and mildly eliminates blood stasis, it clears heat, and it cools the blood and eliminates liver fire. This herb is also quite popular for use in Trauma formulas. It exhibits anti-inflammatory, anti-spasmodic, and anti-bacterial actions. This makes it suitable for acute injuries where there is redness, swelling and pain.

Bai Xian - Cortex Dictamni Dasycarpi Radicis (Dictamnus Root Bark)

Bai Xian is bitter and salty in taste, cold in property. It is attributed to the spleen and stomach channels. This herb clears away heat and eliminates dampness, dispels wind for relieving itching and detoxification. It is used for damp heat sores, carbuncles, and rashes. It also has a strong anti-fungal effect.

Mu Dan Pi - Moutan Radicis Cortex (Moutan)

It is a cool in temperature, spicy and bitter to taste cooling and detoxifying herb for heat patterns. Mu Dan Pi clears heat and cools blood , invigorates blood circulation and dispels blood stagnation, clears rising liver yang, and drains abscesses, both internal and external. It is also used in conditions such as firm masses/tumors and in bruises from traumatic injuries. It enters the kidney, heart, and liver channels.

About Chinese Medicine

Traditional Chinese Medicine is the oldest, most comprehensive, safest, and most effective medical system in the world. It has sustained the health of the world?s longest ongoing civilization for over five thousand years. Its premises may be conceived as inductive rather than based in cause and effect. Practitioners have recorded in medieval archives that span for more than three thousand years of medical history their results of meticulous clinical research that support such claims. This medicine is deeply rooted in the primordial principles of the "Tao", a harmonious balance of Yin and Yang.

While modern medicine might view disease as a malevolent external invasion by an enemy that must be destroyed, Traditional Chinese Medicine (T.C.M) would tend to see it as a state of depletion or vacuity, establishing vulnerability and allowing malevolent agents to enter the body and cause disease. Treatment protocol in T.C.M. would be directed toward what is referred to as the "root" of a disease rather than aggressively attacking superficial manifestations or symptoms. Since Chinese medicine is a whole person medicine, the root of the disease might be found in the physical plane (viscera, trauma, or genetic, etc) but most frequently on the inspirational or spiritual plane (the seven passions: anger, joy, preoccupation, grief, fear, fright, and rage).

There are more than 2000 items listed in Chinese herbal pharmacopoeias, but only about 350 are used in general practice, and less than one hundred are regarded as indispensable in formulating the most popular prescriptions. When applying these herbs in treatment protocol, the primary focus is to support the rehabilitation of natural functions of the body and its mechanisms. This can be accomplished through the application of strategies like tonify, transform, regulate, drain, release, clear, expel, calm, and relieve.

This differs from modern medicine which tends to replace, augment, supplement, and remove. For example, in the case of menopausal syndrome, modern medicine approach would be to augment or supplement sex hormones (estrogen and progesterone) in order to stabilize the blood levels of these messengers. In T.C.M. the approach is to tonify all glands and physiological mechanisms responsible for the production of these hormones to prevent blood levels from fluctuating thereby allowing the patient to experience a gradual withdrawal without dominating symptoms.

In closing, Chinese herbal medicine may take a bit longer to achieve desired results than with Western medicine, but it will ensure longer-lasting benefits without the potential for long-term side effects.