Chinese Medicine
Chinese Herbs
Chinese herbal medicine developed as part of Chinese culture from tribal roots. By 200 BC, traditional Chinese medicine was firmly established, and by the first century AD, a listing of medicinal herbs and herbal formulations and their uses had been developed.
The first herbal formula classic “Shang Han Len” was written by Zhang Zhong Jing in Eastern Han about AD 200-250. This book has a total of 113 prescriptions. It focuses on the body to feel the cold of the evil caused by a series of pathological changes and how to carry out the method of syndrome differentiation. A single Chinese medicinal herbs classic was written during the Ming Dynasty (1152-1578) by Li Shi-Zhen. It listed nearly 2,000 herbs and extracts. By 1990, the latest edition of The Pharmacopoeia of the People’s Republic of China listed more than 500 single herbs or extracts and nearly 300 complex formulations.
Chinese herbal medicine is main stream of traditional Chinese medicine, which focuses on restoring a balance of energy, body, and spirit to maintain health rather than treating a particular disease or medical condition.
Chinese herbal medicine is not based on mainstream Western concepts of medical diagnosis and treatment. It treats patients’ main complaints or the patterns of their symptoms rather than the underlying causes. They attempt to prevent and treat imbalances, such as those caused by asthma, stress, women’s issues, and other diseases, with complex combinations of herbs, minerals, and plant extracts.
Chinese herbal medicine uses a variety of herbs such as astragalus, ginkgo, ginseng, green tea, and eleuthero (also known as “Siberian ginseng”), lycium fruit (Gou Qi Berry) in different combinations to restore balance to the body. Herbal blends are said to prevent and treat hormone disturbances, infections, breathing disorders, and a vast number of other ailments and diseases.