More than three hundred Chinese herbs that are used today have a history for usage that bates back 2,000 years. Today Chinese Herbal Medicine is a very refined science of using natural herbs for the treatment of both internal symptoms as well as external applications for joints, muscles and the skin.
To give you a basic understanding of how Chinese herbs are understood, here is a chart of the most basic level categorisation used:
| Taste | Effects & Functions |
|---|---|
| Taste: Sour | Effect: Constricts or consolidates Function: Restores deficiency, heals protracted cough, chronic diarrhoea, seminal and urinary incontinence, treats hypo-metabolism |
| Taste: Bitter | Effect: Clears heat, purges, lowers Qi, improves appetite and reduces dampness Function: Used to treat heat (yang) patterns such as acute stage of infectious disease, arthritis, leucorrhea |
| Taste: Sweet | Effect: Tones, improves, moisturises and harmonises systems of the body, inhibits pain Function: Treats deficiency patterns such as dry cough, dysfunction of gastrointestinal tract |
| Taste: Spicy | Effect: Disperses, circulates, vitalises blood circulation, stimulates sweat gland to perspire, actives the functions of meridians (system of channels that connects internal organs to external organs and tissue) and organs Function: Activates and enhances metabolism, used to activate Qi and improve blood circulation |
| Taste: Salty | Effect: Softens firm masses or fibrous tissue, purges and cleans bowels Function: Treats sores, inflammatory masses, cyst, and connective tissue proliferation |
Chinese Herbs Usage
Chinese herbs are synergistic and require apposing herbs to balance, its like cooking, you will add salt / sugar to certain ingredients to counter excessive flavours. I often get clients who will show me a bottle of a single herb that their chemist has recommended to them for a particular condition, unfortunately they don’t realise that most these products are purely on the shelves to make money and there correct application is for from the understanding of a shop assistant.
Chinese herbs are very effective when used correctly, and when used incorrectly can also cause harm. The other alarming trend I have noticed is the use of Chinese herbs in multivitamins such as woman s Swiss formula to name one of the most common I see in clinic, again application without correct understanding, that can cause many problems.
In our clinic, we offer raw herbs, granulated herbs (crushed herbs into powder) and also in capsule and pill form. We find that 99% of our clients prefer either pill or capsule form, therefore we carry an extensive range of Sun Herbal formulas which we have found to be the best offered in Australia. Sun Herbal offers the highest concentration formulas and we have been getting outstanding results, put the most important part of using Chinese herbs is having a correct diagnosis and correct prescription.
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