Transcript for:
Herbs that Tonify Blood

in this video we're going over herbs that tonify blood this is the second section in our category tonifying herbs as always we'll start by talking about the signs and symptoms associated with blood deficiency then we'll talk about the individual herbs in this category then we'll go over some formulas and dueyao pairs where these errors pop up and then we'll do a quick review if you want to follow along you can download the slides or the flashcards links to those are below and this video is brought to you by the TCM study single herb review course so if you're studying for a big test like finals year ends or bores and you want to review all of the single herbs in a quick and efficient manner just hitting on the key points for each herb check out the single herb review course now available on teachable links to that below as well so herbs at tonify blood obviously these herbs are used for cases of blood deficiency so what does blood deficiency look like well to understand it we can think about the systems that are involved with blood and the tissues that are nourished by Blood so of course the main organ dealing with blood is the liver we say the liver stores blood so we can think about what are the tissues related to the liver well first of all we can think about blood going to the head that the liver has to supply that blood up to the head into the face so if there's insufficient blood going up to nourish the head we can see things like dizziness and tinnitus basically like the sense organs of the head are not getting enough blood so we see these kinds of symptoms in the upper body remember that the liver governs the eyes each of the organs goes to a sense organ so the kidney goes to the ears the lung goes to the nose the liver goes to the eyes so the liver is responsible for providing nourishment to the eyes through the form of blood and so if there's not enough blood nourishing the eyes we can see things like dry eyes uh diminished Vision I think is what Bensky says but we can also say floaters in the vision or I think the Chinese term is flowery Vision so little spots in the vision this can also refer to like diminished night vision so if a person has poor night vision it could be that there's not enough blood nourishing the eyes remember the liver also governs the sinews or the tendons each of the the zhongfu uh governs a tissue in the body and the liver governs the sinews or the tendons and so the liver is responsible for supplying blood to the the sine used in tendons so if this is not happening um the sinews can kind of dry out sometimes we use this image of think about a rubber band if you have a new Fresh rubber band it's nice and stretchy but if you leave that rubber band out in the sun it starts to dry out and it's no longer elastic it's no longer flexible it actually becomes very brittle and it's very easy to break and so the same thing can happen if the sinews are not being nourished by liver blood so we can see things like numbness tingling hypertonicity is a is an idol Weissman term and so that means like spasm and contraction of the muscles or even Tremor in the muscles because the the sinews are not being nourished by liver blood we talk about the nails uh we say that the nails are the surplus of the sinews or the liver blooms in the nails uh so this is another thing that different organs like we say the kidney blooms in the hair we say the liver blooms in the nails or the nails are the surplus of the sinews so if those sinews aren't getting adequate blood supply we could get things like pale dry brittle nails and then liver blood also creates blood so menstruation can happen so if you have deficiency of liver blood then we can see certain menstruation issues like delayed Menses as in the period is late um scanty Menses not a lot of blood usually it's kind of thin and pale or even amenorrhea there's just not enough blood to form the period so the period does not happen this is important for fertility issues as well that we need to regulate the menses and sometimes we refer to this as the liver has to supply blood to the Ren and the Chong the penetrating and conception vessels and so sometimes you'll see it this way is that the liver is not supplying blood to the Ren and the Chong and so you end up with irregular Menses or fertility issues so those are our main signs and symptoms that we're going to see that are related to the liver and these this is the main one because the liver stores blood so it's the main blood organ and then our other organ that can be associated with blood is the heart the heart is responsible for moving blood but we can also have such thing as heart blood deficiency and here the big thing we're going to see are Shen problems that the heart houses the spirit the Shen is supposed to come home to the heart the Shen has its Abode in the heart so if the heart is not being properly nourished by Blood it cannot provide that Abode for the Shen and we get Shen disturbance or Shen uneasiness so this could be things like palpitations either your heart is racing or sometimes in TCM we say more like you can feel your heart pounding in your chest like if you get nervous when you're about to give a big speech you can feel your heart pounding in your chest if you feel that at unusual times we could call that palpitations anxiety insomnia if the if the Shen is not coming home to uh it's to the heart and being housed by the heart at night you end up with insomnia and then memory problems like forgetfulness so those are the main things we're talking about in terms of blood deficiency these are two main organs and so when we're thinking about what are the signs and symptoms of blood deficiency this is a way you can remember it you can think about what are the tissues that are associated with blood or what are the tissues that are supposed to be nourished by Blood and so if you have blood deficiency you're going to have that lack of nourishment and you're going to end up with these types of signs and symptoms also in general not really associated with a particular organ but we can have a pale lusterless complexion just because there's not enough blood nourishing the skin so instead of having a a vibrant complexion you have a pale or a withered yellow lusterless complexion like a Vampire the tongue is going to be pale because there's not enough blood nourishing the tongue and the pulse is going to be thin just um when you say thinly mean thin in diameter thin or fine or thready those are all different translations of the word shimai it's just an indication that there's not enough blood to fill the vessel so the vessel feels thin in diameter another thing we can say here is also the pulse might be choppy as well so choppy refers to the smoothness or rather the lack of smoothness in the pulse so if you have a smooth fulling pulse we would say that's slippery if it's not smooth if it can be called rough or choppy and basically again if there's not enough blood to flow smoothly the pulse is going to feel rough or choppy so those are the signs and symptoms we'll see with blood deficiency so we have the slot I think we pretty much uh covered all of this that we have these signs and symptoms that here but if you want to remember these you can relate these either to the tissues that are associated with the liver or the the heart um with Shen disturbance and uh blood going to the Head we also say that blood deficiency may can also lead to internal wind or internal stirring of wind that um sometimes the way we explain this is if you think about the blood vessel as a pipe and if the pipe is not full the pipe is only a third of the way full there's a lot of empty space in there and that allows room for the wind to blow so some of these symptoms like skin sensation problems ning tingling numbness spasm and contraction of the sinew's loss of sensation those can be also uh we can call those wind conditions as well and so blood deficiency can lead to this internal wind and then something we want to pay attention to here is herbs in this category tend to be sticky and clawing and they may cause middle jaw problems this is something we kind of say about all of the tonifying herbs we mentioned this in the tonify chi category but this is especially true for herbs that tonify blood that because blood is more substantial than Chi these herbs are just very sticky sweet cloying they can very easily cause digestive problems so we're going to want to combine these herbs with herbs that regulate tea or herbs that improve digestion just so we can actually digest the herbs so if you're prescribing these herbs you want to pay attention that does the patient have any indigestion upset stomach or all or are these herbs causing loose stools and that might be a sign that you need to modify the formula to make it easier to digest so we look at the properties here herbs at tonify blood are of course sweet in flavor because the sweet flavor tonifies so this is going to be true of all of our categories of tonifying herbs temperature tends to be warm just because um blood has a warming function so tonifying blood herbs tend to be warm channels entered are what we mentioned that the liver stores blood so pretty much all these herbs enter the liver channel the heart moves the blood so a lot of these herbs enter the heart Channel as well or we can have these symptoms of heart blood deficiency the other one we sometimes talk about is the spleen on the one hand we can say that the creation of blood depends on the function of the spleen providing nourishment that we need to be able to digest our food to have the nutrients to create the blood but then we also say that the spleen controls blood as it as in it keeps the blood inside the vessels so that's something we'll occasionally see in this category that some of these herbs enter the spleen Channel as well um so cautions and contraindications these herbs are Sweet Sticky and cloying so overuse can cause digestive problems so like I said this is especially true in the tonify blood category that we're going to want to combine these herbs with other Qi regulating herbs like the ones we talked about so faren herbs like that that can um help digest the herbs and help prevent stagnation in the middle Jaw from the Sweet Sticky property of these herbs if you're going to be up there you better not press any buttons you can't press buttons while you're up here and the main action here is to tonify blood and also nourish Yin that blood is a Yin substance so a lot of times these herbs not only tonify blood they tonify Yin as well and then like we said we're going to want to combine these with herbs that move or regulate tea to prevent stagnation and again these are the years we talked about like mushong Chen pi and shahren so those are the properties of these herbs so we look at this category relatively short category but a lot of these herbs are very important and there's a lot to say about them so let's get started with Judy Huang Romania Radix preparada Radix preparada and this is prepared Romania root I actually don't know what Romania wrote is but there are some people who are really into plants when I say this is Romania root they know what that means but to me this is Romania Radix preparata and Judy Huang of course tonifies blood this is one of our main herbs for tonifying blood and it tonifies all the blood all the things that we talked about so we can say for a pale complexion or a pale face dizziness if there's not enough blood going up to the head to nourish The Head and the sense organs palpitations so we're not only nourishing liver blood we're nourishing heart blood as well and especially irregular Menses if there's not enough blood to form the period then we can end up with irregular Menses so shooty Huang is one of our most important herbs for tonifying blood but besides that shuji Huang also has a very important action of tonifying Yin as well so shooty Huang tonifies liver and kidney Yin as well for things like weak low back and legs remember the kidney is in the low back the kidney governs the knee so with kidney in deficiency we can end up with weak low back and legs tidal fever that's fever that rises and Falls like the tide so this might be like hot flashes if there's not enough Yin anchoring the yarn downward it can rise up with tidal fever steaming bone disorder we talked about this in the category herbs that clear heat from deficiency that if you have enough Yin deficiency heat it can actually feel like your bones are steaming so a sensation of heat emanating from the bones night sweats nighttime is the yin time of day so if your Yin is deficient it can't control the fluids and the sweat leaks out nocturnal emissions is a something that we can see in men and I think about this is the same way as night sweats is that um if the Canadian is deficient it can't hold the fluids in but it also can't secure kidney Essence and so kidney Essence leaks out in the terms of nocturnal emissions or seminal emissions and this is also a very good herb for wasting and thirsting disease remember this is something that we call wasting and thirsting disease or dissipation thirst and this is something that we say this is similar to a western diagnosis of uh diabetes that you're very thirsty you drink a lot of fluids but you also are urinating frequently so none of the the fluids stay in there's usually you have hunger as well so chaoka is this wasting and thirsting condition and it can be associated with any of the three gel so you can have um in the upper burner that's a lung condition and the main symptom is thirst you can have shallco related to the middle burner and your main symptom is hunger or you can have shaoka related to the lower burner and your main symptom is Paul urea or frequent urination and so this is going to be an important one by tonifying the kidneys and generating fluids and tonifying Yin we can also treat or wasting and thirsting disorder and then besides that Judy Huang also tonifies kidney Essence as well so tonifies kidney Jing so huerotonifying very much all of the substantial things we're tonifying blood tonifying Yin and tonifying Essence So when you say tonifying kidney Essence uh this can be delayed development like we need kidney Essence in order to grow and strengthen the bones this can also mean if you have a waning kidney essence you can have symptoms of like premature aging so we can see things like premature graying of the hair diminished mental acuity memory loss or impotence and so that's that's a that's expensive don't chew on that and so um that can be a sign of waning kidney Essence as well so some of the things we say here is shooty Huang is prepared Romania the way it's prepared is actually by soaking it in wine and then steaming it and then um when we're talking about our sticky and clawing nature of herbs shooty Huang is especially sticky and cloying I think of all the herbs we have to worry about shooting is probably the the one we have to worry about the most in terms of its sticky clawing nature that can upset digestion so when we have shooting Huang we will definitely want to keep a look out for is the patient starting to experience some indigestion some nausea problems do they get an upset stomach after they take their herbs if they've been taking their herbs for a while do they start to develop loose stools and that's a sign of that this sticky clawing nature of Judy Huang is affecting digestion so it's very common to combine it with herbs like Chen p h Tangerine peel from the regulate Chi category mushong is also from the regulate Chi category or charen cardamom from the aromatic transform dampness category also has an action of regulating qi so when we look at the The Taste is of course sweet because we're tonifying the channels entered are the heart kidney and liver because we're tonifying liver blood but we're also tonifying heart blood to deal with things like palpitations and then we're also um tonifying kidney in and kidney Essence so the entering channels make sense but notice that the dosage is slight is larger than average not slightly larger than average but the dosage is larger than average 9 to 30 grams so not only is this a sticky clawing herb we tend to use a lot of it as well so we that's something we'll want to pay attention to and basically the way I think about this is remember normally we say that heavier herbs or heavier substances tend to have a larger dosage just because we need more of them so our shells and minerals tend to have a larger dosage just because they're denser I think of this in the same way where if you if you have your sample of shooty Huang it's a very heavy thick dense root so it kind of have that has that same property that you need more of it it's not like a light fluffy flower it's a very thick dense root so you need a larger dosage just in order for it to fill up the pot the appropriate amount so just remember that shooty Huang has a much larger than average dosage and so the name Judy Huang means a cooked Earth yellow so shu is a word for prepared like Shang means raw Shu means cooked d means Earth as in like the earth I was going to say sometimes when you when we talk about the five phases we use the word Tu for Earth but that means more like Earth as in soil this means Earth is in like the world and Huang means yellow why does it have that name I don't actually know um but part of this is remember that we learned two versions of Romania root so far so we've learned Huang raw Romania root from the category herbs that cool the blood and now we're learning Huang prepared Romania root in the category herbs that tonify blood so these are herbs that first of all they look very similar like these are technically two different samples but at least for me when I look at these two herbs it's very difficult for me to tell which one is raw and which one is prepared it kind of depends on the supplier that you get it from but these are these are the same herbs just one is prepared in a different way but because of this they have uh very different properties and we'll use them in different ways so in comparing them shangdi Huang the raw herb is cold and bitter so it's very good for clearing heat cooling the blood whereas shooty Huang after it's gone through this preparation process of soaking it in wine and steaming it then it's slightly warm in temperature so we're to use it for a different temperature conditions but in terms of their main action remember shangdi Huang cools the blood it clears blood heat we use this in conditions especially when there's bleeding so in terms of the when being when heat gets into the blood level and we start seeing things like nosebleed vomiting blood blood in the urine blood in the stool or this can be used for menstruation issues like profuse bleeding or prolonged bleeding due to heat shangdi Huang will cool the blood where shooty Huang is more about tonifying blood and treating those signs of blood deficiency that we talked about like pale face dizziness palpitations and menstruation problems but menstruation problems due to deficiency where there's not enough blood to form the period but then what's interesting here is that both of these act both of these herbs have an action of tonifying in but it's slightly different because of this preparation because of this temperature change so we say that shangdi Huang tanifies Ian we're kind of saying more that it tonifies the yin and generates fluid so this is a special useful after you have a febrile disease and the fluids have been damaged or you have dryness and thirst and constipation because heat has damaged the fluids shanghi Huang is more about tonifying in to generate those fluids where shooty Huang is more about tonifying yin and tonifying Essence so this is more like the true Yin of the kidneys or remember we talked about tonifying kidney Essence as in delayed development or premature aging uh situations so those are some of the main differences there and then one of the ways I remember this one is just looking at the root this is a very thick dense root but it's also very black in color so you can think that black is the color of the kidneys so it's good for tonifying all those substantial things like kidney in kidney Essence but also blood because we say that um blood and Essence share the same Source or blood in essence are mutually engendering so the fact that it's a thick sticky black root sometimes somehow that helps me remember that we're talking talking about tonifying blood and tonifying Ian as well so for shooting Huang remember all these things tonifies blood tonifies Yin so this is our main herb for tonifying blood but actually a lot of our kidney Yin tonifying formulas are based on Judy Huang as well so this action of tonifying uh Yin and tonifying Essence is very important to remember about shudi Huang as well so that's Judy Huang prepared Romania our next herb is Angelica sinensis Radix Angelica sinensis Radix and so this one some people will say like oh yeah this is Angelica root and they know what that is but just keep in mind that so far we've learned several different types of Angelica so we learned by juror is Angelica de Huracan here we have dongwei Angelica sinensis we learned a dual Angelica pubicentus Radix so if you'd like to remember Angelica that's fine just realize that we've learned several types of Angelica so far so the main thing we want to know about dongway what makes it stand out is that it has a specialty that it both tonifies blood and invigorates blood so the fact that it has both of these actions makes it very special and it's especially useful for women's health conditions so that's what we're going to be focusing on with dongway so let's go through these one by one so first of all dongway tonifies blood for all those things we talked about like a pale complexion lusterless nails or brittle nails blurred vision if there's not enough liver blood nourishing the eyes we can end up with blurred vision tinnitus palpitations so we're also talking about heart blood as well but really the specialty of dongway is that it's good for menstruation issues so actually I didn't put it this way on my slides but a lot of books will say that dongwei its first action is it nourishes blood and regulates Menses so we should pay special attention to uh dongway's ability to regulate the Menses and treat menstruation issues so things like irregular Menses dysmenorrhea or painful Menses or amenorrhea lack of Menses that there's either not enough blood to form the Menses or there's so much blood stasis that the blood's not coming out so this is uh because it both tonifies blood and invigorates blood donway is very good at treating menstruation issues this one it also has an action of promoting flesh regeneration for long-standing skin wounds or for ab sweces abscesses swellings and pus and this would be a thing where I think we talked about the same thing with Huang Chi astragalus Radix where if you have some sore or some abscess and either there's not enough Chi or there's not enough blood to heal the wound or Too Close the wound then this can help by tonifying Blood and in degrading blood it can help with that I believe this can be used both internally and topically uh for the situation but remember uh Huang Chi has a similar action so it's very common to combine these two herbs together for various uh various issues like this this one I think Bensky puts it under its own separate function but I think this is related to tonifying blood so I put it under the heading of tonifying blood and similar to that dongway also moistens the large intestine to relieve constipation this is for dry stools due to blood deficiency so again if there's not enough blood going to the large intestine there's not enough blood nourishing the large intestine the stools will be dry the the large intestine will be dry and we can end up with constipation so by tonifying Blood this also moistens a large intestine to relieve constipation and this is another one where most books will this is important enough that they'll put it as a separate function and I think this is important because we we will see dongway come up in formulas for constipation due to deficiency but I think that this has to do with constipation due to blood deficiency so I just put it under the heading tonify blood so dongway in terms of tonifying blood it does all those things we talked about but it's really good at regulating Menses it also has this action of regenerating flesh and healing long-standing wounds similar to Huang Chi and then it also moistens a large intestine to leave constipation that's going to come up in formulas like um no I can't think of the name benefit the river decoction it comes up in formulas like benefit the river decoction but besides tonifying blood uh the other important action is dongway also invigorates blood as well so this can be really useful because on the one hand when we're tonifying blood it's very easy that if we just start piling blood in there it's very easy for it to to get stuck and just sit there because Ian is uh blood is thick it's substantial it's a Yin thing so it's very easy when you tonify blood it just kind of sits there so if you have dongway that also invigorates blood that prevents stagnation so that's one advantage here but also just these two things tend to go together especially when we're dealing with those women's health issues that most of the menstruation issues are a combination of blood deficiency and or blood stagnation so here with dongway we have an herb that does both so dongway invigorates blood as well for things like pain due to blood stasis like painful Menses um abdominal pain injury and Trauma so that's another important action that dongway invigorates blood as well and so a few extra notes about dongway Angelica sinensis Radix is dangwei is one of the most frequently used herbs in women's health conditions because of both tonifies blood and invigorates blood so again most of these conditions are either one or the other or both we say that men are based in Chi so we tend to use Chi herbs women are based in blood so they tend to have more blood issues and that's either going to be blood deficiency or blood stagnation here with dongway we have an herb that does both so it's very good especially for OB GYN conditions like irregular Menses or painful Menses either due to blood deficiency there's not enough blood to form the period or blood stasis when that blood is not moving you get a sharp stabbing pain or the um a lot of clots or uh delayed Menses and um irregular periods sometimes long sometimes short things like that postpartum issues tend to be a combination of um deficiency and stagnation on the one hand after you give birth there's still a lot of not baby in there that needs to come out so we call that lochia there can be retention of lochia or during the process of giving birth you just lose a lot of blood and lose a lot of Yin so it's very important to tonify blood to replenish all that blood that's lost but it's also important to keep it moving to move all that other stuff out and this can actually even be used during pregnancy but we have to use it very cautiously because it has this invigorating so there are certain issues that might come up during pregnancy where it may be appropriate to use dongway so I think some books will say that dongway is contraindicated during pregnancy Bensky at least does not have this contraindication there are formulas that we use during pregnancy that contain dongway but we should know that we should be very cautious about its use because it does have that blood invigorating uh property so dongway um it's so popular for Women's Health that sometimes they even put it in tea so this is like a t of they saw say women's dong Kwai tonic that's another way you'll see this herb I think that's the wave Giles version of dongway is Don so it's so good for Women's Health that they'll even put it in tea and this is the one that's kind of funny that was something my Chinese teacher would say is that dongway has such a reputation for being a women's health herb that uh sometimes if they would prescribe a formula with dongway and give it to a man and they get confused they'd like look at their formula and read through the ingredients say oh you must have made a mistake this ER this formula has dongway in it I'm I'm not a woman I don't need dongway I need Korean red ginseng and so it's has such a reputation of being a good herb for Women's Health that some people uh get confused when it's when it's given to male patients uh but there there are very good reasons to give this to male patients even though we say that specialty is in women's health we still prescribe it to men all the time and so one of the issues that come up is um is dongway estrogenic one of one of the reasons we say this is good for Women's Health is it has phytoestrogens in it or it has something to do with estrogen so that makes it a special use for menopausal symptoms so is dongwei actually estrogenic well according to most of the things I've seen the answer is no sometimes what they say is there are certain uh constituents in dongway that will bind to estrogen receptors so it might have a a similar effect but as strictly speaking it is not estrogenic so this was this was the one that I could find that was actually published by a medical journal and so here they say DBT that's dongwei bouchoetong so they weren't using just dongway they were using a combination of dungwei plus Huang Chi which is a very common pair and so they say uh no strict estrogenic bio activities were observed so strictly speaking it doesn't um dongway does not create estrogen or stimulate the creation of estrogen but there are a lot of sources that will say that it has a similar effect by binding to estrogen receptors and then is it safe with breast cancer this is something that has come up because people think that because it's estrogenic if we have estrogenic breast cancers that this might make the situation worse and so again this was a study published by the NIH they where they did this or as means Angelica Finance finances we showed that Angelica sinensis is not that stimulatory in breast cancer both in vitro and in Vivo though it should still be used with caution in estrogen receptor positive breast cancer patients so if they're kind of saying strictly speaking it's not that it doesn't have that much of an effect but that may be something you want to be careful of um if you have patients with breast cancer that might be something to be careful of is giving dongway um this is gonna sound kind of weird I feel like I've also had people say that uh dongway can actually help with uh breast enhancement or making the breast um larger or Fuller and that may be related to this estrogen type thing because I think a lot of patients sometimes experience similar things when they go on birth control and so I think it might be a similar thing that their breasts feel bigger or Fuller but I think this is also can be useful in terms of um if there's blood deficiency maybe there's not enough blood nourishing the breast tissue and it tends to shrink so this is something that sometimes women are concerned about after giving birth and breastfeeding that may be by using dongwei to tonify blood that can um help with some of those conditions so dongway very good for Women's Health the other thing is dongway is a root with several different parts there's the head dongweight hole there's the body dangwei shun and there's the tail dong weiwei so the head is the most blood tonifying followed by the body which is still pretty tonifying but also invigorating and then the tail dongwei Wei is most invigorating so this is another way that you can tailor your formula is by using dongwei depending on which action you want to emphasize you can use different parts of the dongway plant so this is something that especially in clinics they tend to have dongway the whole root and then right next to it they have dongwei Wei the tales of dongwei and just know that dongway way is better at invigorating blood where the entire dongway is better at tonifying blood the other thing you should look for if you're ordering dongway or using dongway is this word pien pien means sliced so I made this mistake when I first ordered dongwei that I just went online and said dongway click the button and got uh ordered the dongway and I ended up with the whole dongwei root like that top picture and the problem is when you get the whole route it's kind of a big root and so these roots would weigh like 30 to 50 grams and that was really a problem because I only wanted 10 grams to put in my formula and it's really hard to break up this route there once they're dry they're very solid I think that if you want to slice them the way to do this is you heat them up slowly like it uh put your oven on its lowest temperature or put it in a toaster oven on its lower lowest temperature heat it up very slowly and once it gets warm that softens it and that makes it easier to slice you can actually do the same thing with ginseng root as well I meant to mention that on the last video about ton of YG that if you get a whole ginseng root and it's too big you don't want to use 50 grams of wrench and you only want to use 10 grams of wrenchen a way you can do it is heat it up slowly and that makes a little bit softer and then you can either slice it or I would use um kitchen shears or poultry shears to snip it into smaller pieces so you can do the same thing with dong way if you need to slice it but really when you order it there's usually an option for dongwei pien and here pien just means sliced that means they sliced it at the manufacturer and so that way it's easier to dose it out into 10 gram increments or whatever dosage you want you can break those pieces apart easily so if you're ordering dongwei it's likely you'll want to order dongwei pien that's not a different version of dongway that's not a different preparation of dongway it just means it's sliced into these thin slices and that's probably what your herb sample looks like as well that's dongwei pien so the name dongway is interesting uh guay means to return or to restore we have a very famous formulaipitong restore the spleen decoction that's the same character means to return or to restore or restoration uh dong can mean like to be so like to be restored or state of restoration or state of return so I've heard a couple different stories about this um one story that was in uh in a a Chinese medical food jurors book I think it told this story about there was this guy he was an herbalist and he said I'm gonna go off and uh pick some herbs in the mountains so he he left his wife at home and he went off to to pick a bunch of herbs to resupply his herb shop but once he got into the mountains there was this huge snowstorm and he was stuck up there for like nine years like a really long time it must have been a really big snowstorm um I'm thinking about when uh in Lord of the Rings when they tried to go over uh red horn pass instead they went under the anyway he got stuck up in the mountains and so when he came back he found that his wife didn't actually wait around for him his wife got remarried and so uh he named this route uh don can also mean should have or ought to so he named this route dongway ought to return so he said when he came back um the husband ought to have returned sooner but the wife ought to have waited longer anyway that's kind of a silly story I'm not sure that that actually means anything but for some reason I remember that story but I think a better explanation we can say state of return or state of respiration this is referring to giving this Herb in a postpartum situation that after a woman gives birth the blood and Yin are depleted there can be stagnation there and so often there's a recovery period that I think in China could last up to like six weeks where you just stay in bed after you've given birth and so dongwei will help return the patient to their original state so state of return state of restoration returning you to a state of health after giving birth so maybe that can help you remember that this herb both tonifies blood and invigorates blood those are the two main actions of dongwei after that is by Xiao Pioneer Radix Alba bye Pioneer Radix Alba and this is white peony root so earlier we learned true Xiao red peony root from the cool the blood or from the end invigorate blood category now we're learning by Xiao white peony root so by shop like everything in this category it tonifies blood and this is another one that's especially useful for regulating mensy so some books will say that by Xiao nourishes blood and regulates Menses as its main function and so irregular Menses flooding and spotting So when you say flooding we mean um uh prolonged Menses or profuse bleeding like there's a lot of blood coming out we say spotting that means spotting between periods so flooding and spawning but then accompanied by other signs of blood deficiency like pale lusterless complexion and dull lusterless nails and I think what's especially useful here is we should point out that buy shell is slightly cold in temperature so this is good that we can tonify blood but it's not going to create heat signs as well but then the other important thing about biosh out is it also has this action of relaxing the liver and we say this in a couple different ways ways we can say it softens and Smooths the liver it relaxes the liver we're gonna say it emolliates the liver um and basically what we're talking about here is this is good for pain spasm and cramping especially cramping pain in the abdomen or cramping in the hands feet and legs so I think there's a couple ways we could explain this action of relaxing the liver on the one hand remember you talked about that the liver governs the sinews and so if the sinews are not being nourished by liver blood we can get this condition of hypertonicity of the sinews and this is what we're talking about spasm contraction cramping pain this is hypertensity of the sinews because they're not being adequately nourished by Blood by Yin and blood and so because baishal tonifies liver blood that can nourish this then use and help them relax so that's one way we can think about this function another way you can think about this is just the nature of the liver is that the nature is very angry it's very shouty it's very easy to get a hard Edge think about like a wiry pulse is a pulse with a hard Edge we can have the same thing going on with the liver where if it's there's not enough blood nurse nourishing the liver it gets angry and it gets this hard Edge this is kind of related to the saying that the liver is Yin in form and yang and function so when we say the liver is Yin and form we mean that it stores blood and we want it to be Yin and soft its Yong function is um promoting movement and circulating the chi properly so we can say that if the liver is not uh if there's not enough Yin nourishing the liver the liver becomes deficient and then it can fail in that young action of free coursing and creating smooth movement and so that causes the liver to get hard and has a hard Edge and that's very angry so either way we can think about it we can say that that body shall softens the liver relaxes the liver emolliates the liver and the main application for this is cramping and spasm pain when we get into formula class this is going to pop up basically any time that you have uh this cramping and spasm this could be abdominal cramping that you have middle gel deficiency causing abdominal pain and cramping we use bioshow to relieve the cramping if you have someone that they're vomiting a lot they got sudden turmoil and they're they're vomiting a lot and because of that they start to have abdominal cramping pain used by shower if you have cramping in the calves cramping in the hands and feet we'll use buy shell as a way to relax that cramping pain or deal with that cramping and spasm so that's a very important function of buy shell and then kind of a funny one we say that buy shell preserves yin and harmonizes the Ying in the way and this is for things like sweating vaginal discharge or when cold deficiency patterns so this this is related to the fact that by Xiao is sour in flavor so we don't really go so far as to say that by shout induces astringency or checks sweating or stops sweating or stabilizes the exterior we were a little bit softer in our language where we say that bash out because of its sour flavor it can preserve Yin but it has a similar function of where keeping the fluids in to stop sweating and to stop things like vaginal discharge and so the place this mainly comes up is remember at the very beginning one of our first herbs we learned in the warm I could release the exterior category was wager cinnamon twig and so for wager we said that treats a pattern of taiyong deficiency that's an exterior attack of wind cold but there's deficiency on the exterior because the exterior is deficient it can't hold in the fluids so the sweat leaks out but it does so in a way that's insufficient to expel the pathogen so taiyong deficiency is characterized by simultaneous fever and chills neck and body ache and the presence of sweating so for that situation use we use wager for toyong deficiency it turns out we combine gwager with this herb by Xiao so for taiyong deficiency we use a combination of gwager plus by Shall and part of that part of the reason we do that is because biasha is an action of preserving Yin for that fever and chills with sweating so that's what we mean here by when we say buy shall preserves Ian so in terms of harmonizing the Ying in the way you can think that gwager is working more on the exterior to help with uh it has an acridness that pushes the pathogen out but by Shall by its tonifying nature it's tonifying the Ying preserving the fluids and helping keep that sweating in so that's what we mean when we say bye shall preserves you and we're we're kind of referring specifically to its place in this pair of wager plus by Xiao so again this is related to the fact that it's by Shall is sour in flavor so it has this restraining action so then uh down here we say by Shall is incompatible with Lee Lou so if you remember at the very beginning we talked about the 18 incompatible herbs these are combinations of herbs that when we combine two incompatible herbs together that creates side effects that are not otherwise present in either herb alone and we say the 18 incompatible herbs that's really it's three groups of incompatibilities so we have herbs that are incompatible with gonzal which we talked about in the last one we have herbs that are incompatible with futsa which we talked about in the first category here it turns out there's a third category of herbs that are incompatible with lilu so this probably isn't very important because we don't learn the herb Lee Lou it turns out lilu is um uh not a purgative it's in a medic it um it cause it induces vomiting and so there was there was a period of time where this was one of the treatment methods is you could either if you want to get rid of a pathogen you could promote sweating and sweat it out you could promote urination and like guide heat out through the urine like we do with dirtsum you could uh Purge things through the large intestines so like with da Huang if you have a lot of heat Bond you can Purge that heat out through the large intestine there was another treatment method where you could get rid of Evil by inducing vomiting turns out we don't really do that anymore that's kind of gone out of fashion and so we don't learn those vomiting herbs so technically we can say that buy shell is incompatible with lilu but whenever I've gotten questions I've never gotten questions about lilu if they ask questions about the 18 incompatible herbs it's always about which herbs are in compelled with Gonza or which herbs are incompatible with futsa or wuto but this is just something that we can add in there that there is this third category of incompatible herbs lilu um which which induces vomiting and compatible with bashao the other thing we'll talk about here is like we said we learned two versions of pme root we learned Cher Xiao red peony from the invigorate blood category and now here we're learning by Xiao white peony root from the tonify blood category so again these are these are two different versions and they have different properties so both of them it turns out are slightly cold in temperature and in this category that kind of stands out with bi-show that most of our herbs here are warm in temperature but a bioshell is cool in temperature so we can tonify if we have a situation of heat signs but the main difference here is that church out it cools the blood and invigorates blood and so we said this is similar to like a mood on pea that mudon P is in the cool the blood category but it also invigorates blood whereas church out is the invigorate blood category but it also cools the blood so it's more about cooling of blood whereas biosh out white peony is more about tonifying blood and relaxing softening or emolliating the liver specifically to deal with spasm and cramping of the sinews so this is something that we'll need to know the difference the thing is these are these can both be referred to under the generic name just means peony root and so it turns out that way back in the day they didn't differentiate between red peony and white peony they just said peony root and they called it Xiao Yao later in history they started to differentiate between these two different varieties so then we got uh baishal versus churchal and we they have different actions and we use them in different ways but the reason this is important is sometimes when you look at formulas if it's a formula that comes from 1500 or 2000 years ago sometimes the ingredient list it will be listed as Xiao and sometimes people will ask what is Xiao xiaoya is just the generic name for peony and you have to decide whether based on this formula which one do you want to use is it more appropriate to use buy Xiao or chur shall and a lot of times this will actually be in the footnote underneath so if you're in the The Green version he might list out some ingredients and in the in the ingredients list it will say Xiao but then underneath it will be an asterisk that says most practitioners use by Xiao as their form of xiaoyam so that's something to know just if you're copying ingredients out of books and I just say this because I had this come up in clinic in the school Clinic a lot both with students and actually with supervisors as well that if they were writing a formula they might just copy the ingredients out of their Bensky and they get to shout out and they'll say what is Xiao do we have Xiao y'all and I'll have to say yes Xiao is just peony root you need to you need to decide whether you want to buy shower or sure unfortunately sometimes this is actually also actually happened with practitioners as well I remember there was one supervisor that copied the formula out of Bensky and then she said oh I'm gonna modify it by adding by Xiao and then I was like you know that is but it's do you have you have peony in here twice you should really know better so I point this out now so hopefully that won't happen to you that when you're going through formulas if you see Xiao Yao listed as an ingredient don't get confused that's just the generic name for both church out and buy Xiao and if the if the formula is more about invigorating blood you'll probably want to use church out if the formula is more about tonifying blood you'll probably want to use buy Xiao that's something we should know about buy shell the name just means white peony after that is polygoni multi-flory Radix preparata show polygoni multiflory Radix preparata this is a really fun one the name means Mr who's black hair and so there's a very interesting story behind this herb so we'll talk about that but first let's talk about the the functions that hushawoo it tonifies all of those substantial things it tonifies blood tonifies yin and it tonifies Essence and so this has several applications we can say that it darkens the hair the name of this herb is Mr who's black hair so that can help you remember that it is especially good for darkening the hair on the head and I think we also specifically say the hair of the beard as well so it darkens the hair and the whiskers uh strengthens tendon and Bone so we've talked about this before when we say tonify liver and kidney yin to strength and tendon and Bone the tendons belong to the liver the bones belong to the kidney so when we tonify these things like blood Yin in essence we can strengthen tendon and Bone uh there's going to treat internal wind and wind rash due to blood deficiency so I think in the this is the one that Bensky just says it tonifies blood to treat wind rash so itchy conditions skin conditions due to blood deficiency but um at least my teacher said this could also treat internal wind conditions due to blood deficiency remember we said this is something like um you can think of the blood vessel like a tube or a pipe and normally it should be full of blood so there's no extra space in there but if you have blood deficiency that means the the pipe is only a little bit full and that allows room for wind to blow so later we'll get in the category herbs that extinguish wind and we'll talk about one of our causes of wind is blood deficiency well here we have jerhushawu quintanify wind to treat this internal wind stirring but also for external conditions like rash wind rash due to blood deficiency we can also say it preserves Essence because it tonifies Essence um notice that it's also astringent in nature so this special that it's not only sweet and flavor to tonify the essence it also has an astringent property to hold the essence in so this can be very useful if we're dealing with things like seminal emission nocturnal emission uh impotence vaginal discharge that we want to both tonify Essence but also hold in the essence that's leaking out it's a two for one then we can say this uh Hershey who also moistens the large intestine to relieve constipation but this one if you're going to use it for this function you would probably use it in its raw form so is the prepared version of hershaw if you want to moisten the large intestine you would use the raw version also clears heat toxicity for things like skin infection carbuncle sores boil scrofula all the things we usually talk about with heat toxicity but this one you would only use it in its raw form and so some special things about hershaw this is a very versatile herb partly because it tonifies all these things that tonifies blood Yin and Essence it's also astringent so it can hold in things that are leaking out but it's also special because it's only slightly warm it's almost neutral in temperature so that means we can use it for both heat and cold conditions and this is also special because it's not really sticky or clawing at all whereas with something like shooty Huang we had to worry about its Rich sticky clawing nature could upset digestion and cause loose stools who show it's not doesn't have that sticky glowing nature so we don't really have to worry about it as much as all as much at all so that's another thing that makes stand out um so the name means Mr hoo's black hair so huh means is a surname Mr huh show means actually means head but it can also refer to the hair on your head and ooh means black actually means like Crow or Raven but it's also used to refer to the color this comes up another herbs like tea but the story with this one is is kind of interesting so it goes that there was this man named uh Mr huh or TNR and so TNR was born just constitutionally was born with a very weak Constitution was born with weak kidneys so he uh he had a weak and sore low back he had painful aching knees he had impotence his hair was going gray and he could not have children so of course nobody wanted to marry him and so he just became depressed and he became an alcoholic so he would just drink every day and that only made his his situation worse so one day when he was drunk he passed out and uh in his drunken stupor he rolled over he looked and he saw this Vine and he thought that the way that these Vines were growing looked like two people making love and so he thought this was very interesting he went into town and told the story to a Taoist in town and the dial said this is a sign that probably means you should take this herb as a tonic so Mr Hood went back he uh dug up the vine and got it took its roots and I think he actually he didn't boil it in a decoction he actually steeped it in alcohol because you know he wasn't alcoholic but he started taking this uh route as a tonic steeped in alcohol and what happened is his um it tonified his kidney Essence his back got stronger his knees got stronger his gray hair turned black uh he got married and had like 17 children and so that's why this herb is called Mr who's black hair it's named after the story of Mr hoo who had constitutional uh deficiency of blood Yin and Essence so he took this herb and it made his hair turn black it fixed his kidney Jing problems and he got married and had 17 children and lived to be 180 years old or something like that so hopefully that story uh the name of this herb Mr who's black hair can help you remember that this herb tonifies blood tonophysian tonifies Essence especially for darkening the hair but also for treating those other problems like strengthening tendon and bone for like weak and sore low back weakened weak knees and also tonifying Essence and preserving Essence for things like fertility issues as well so that's black hair oh and also um you might see this in the west go it goes by the name foe tea in supplement shops and things like that turns out this is not a real name this is not a Chinese name what happened is um some people heard about this Chinese herb and they wanted to Market it in the west as a supplement but they thought that her show Wu was too difficult for westerners to say so they just made up a name and they called it faux tea they figured that sounded vaguely Chinese but it was easy it was easier to pronounce so it's kind of like Haagen-Dazs isn't a real word it's just a made-up word that sounds fancy so faux tea you might see it this way it's just a made-up name for who show or show after that is uh assini Cory icola uh ciao assini Cory icola this is ass-hide gelatin uh ass is in a donkey so donkey High gelatin I think it specifically comes from a species of black donkey so he could say this is black ass hide gelatin or donkey glue um so you would take the connective tissue of the specific donkey and boil it down and the collagen would come out and that would form a gelatin or a glue and that's what we're taking and kind of the idea here is because this is an animal product it's closer to like it's closer to humans it's close it's more mimics the blood of our body so animal parts tend to be better at tonifying things like blood and Essence than plant parts because it's um closer to being a living being so urjao and I guess the the things we should pay attention to with ujjao is this one has a specialty of both tonifying blood and stopping bleeding so the combination of those two make it very special so like with dongwei we said it tonifies blood and invigorates blood here with ujjao we say it tonifies blood and stops bleeding which is a very useful combination so uh tonifies blood for things like dizziness pale complexion uh palpitations all of the things we talk about with blood deficiency but what's special here is ujjao also stops bleeding as well for things like coughing up blood blood in the stool but especially menstruation or um uterine bleeding flooding and spotting so profuse Menses During the period and then spotting between periods or even bleeding during pregnancy this is one where I think Bensky doesn't specifically mention bleeding during pregnancy but it turns out we have a very very famous formula for bleeding during pregnancy where uh presents because of its ability to stop bleeding so it autonifies blood and stops bleeding and this can be very useful a very useful combination but then we also say that ujjao tonifies Yin and moistens the lung that long Emoji is kind of creepy I'm not sure I'm going to use this anymore but by time to find in it's for irritability and insomnia after a febrile disease so you get sick you have a wind heat attack and that can damage your Yin and so you get irritability insomnia restlessness uh in the aftermath uh gel cantonify the Yin but also specifically moistens along specifically for dry cough or dry cough with blood in the sputum so this combination of functions makes this a herb or makes a substance very useful because it both tonfire's blood and stops bleeding it's good for both bleeding and deficiency because if we're dealing with something like flooding and spotting or profuse Menses it's very common that these two would go together that if you're bleeding a profuse amount of blood for eight days in a row and then you have spotting between periods it's likely all of that is going to lead to blood deficiency so now here we have an herb that does both it tonifies the blood and stops the bleeding or sometimes we can have bleeding due to deficiency so this so this substance takes care of both so it's a very important for that and also if we combine the other two that it stops bleeding and it's good for moistening the lung and stopping cough put those two together uh is very good for coughing up blood because again it's doing two things at the same time moistening the lung and stopping cough and stopping bleeding it's good for coughing up blood blood so this one because it's a gelatin the dosage is normal but notice it has this special cooking instruction we can say melt in at the end or the the Chinese uh phrase translates to separately warmed to melt so sometimes what they'll do is they might boil some water and melt the gelatin and then add it in to the strained decoction but uh basically What's Happening Here is this is gelatin and so if you just try to cook it with the other herbs what will happen is either it will sink to the bottom of your pot and just burn to the bottom of your pot and not actually get mixed in or it will start to melt and then just stick to the other herbs in the decoction and not actually get dissolved in so you don't want to cook this with the other herbs you want to um after after you decocked your formula and strain it you'll want to in some way melt this in at the end and it turns out that we say melted in legal is not easy to melt if you because usually urge out when you get it it comes in like a block and if you just put that block in there it can take a long time to actually dissolve into a warm decoction even if you're boiling it you can you have to sit there and stir for like 20 minutes I've made that mistake before so what you want to do is or what I've done is um even though we say melt it um first pound it or crush it and so it's more of small pieces or even into a powder the uh I've gotten it comes in like a little foil package that it's foil on one side but then plastic on the other so what I would do is while it's still in that little foil pouch get a hammer and pound at it while it's still in that pouch so it like all the pieces stay in there but pound on it as much as you can to get it into smaller pieces or even a powder and then when you go to melt it in it will be much easier to stir to stir it in and knelt because it's already in a powder or smaller pieces so that would be my recommendation when we if you're going to use uh in decoction is don't just throw it in there and expect it to melt you'll probably want to pound it into small pieces first I'm not sure what currently I'm not sure what the status of ujjao is that there was a while where you we could not import and what I heard from an herb distributor was that there was a mix-up with the endangered species list that um some somebody in the U.S import system uh wrote down the wrong name of the the species and they thought that ujjao was coming from an endangered species so a bunch of herb suppliers had to write them and Lobby them to say that no this you have the wrong donkey this is not coming from an endangered donkey this is coming from a very common donkey and so I think they lifted that restriction so for a while you couldn't get it or it's very expensive but I think nowadays there are some ethical concerns here because I think the donkeys are very important to Farmers in Africa and because this herb is very valuable in China there have been people who've been actually stealing stealing the donkeys of African farmers and pirate things pirating them back to China and so I think sometimes there are some concerns about the species isn't isn't technically endangered but uh it could be that there are some ethical concerns around its sourcing of is the use of ujjao hurting these uh African farmers who are they're using their donkeys for farming it's how they it's how they grow food and and are able to feed their families whereas some people are stealing them and putting them on the on the Chinese market so I'm not entirely sure what the status of this one is um I think there are some cases where you could probably use a substitute um if you're just waiting to tonify blood you can do other things like shooty Huang is very good for tonifying blood um but in terms of its actions of both tonifying blood and stopping bleeding I'm not sure we have another herb that does similar it has similar functions you would probably have to use multiple herbs in order to in order to get this function and then also I know that some people will say that um doing things like bone broth it might be something you can try as well that this is something they'll recommend to patients with blood deficiency is uh start making bone broth and soups and this is kind of a similar idea that you're boiling the bones you're getting that collagen out and it and it's very similar I would just say I think this is a good idea it's probably just not as strong as ujjao I think just based on the color that normally when you make a bone broth out of like oxtail or something like that the the broth is very is clear or white I think what's something again that's special about ujjao is its color that's black in color so that's related to kidney Essence so that's something you can try but I would imagine it's not as strong as actually taking uh but it might be more accessible or easier for your patients to do long term so that's uh acini Cory eye color black ass High gelatin oh another way I remember the um the functions of this one is uh one you can think this is donkey glue and so sometimes I think about like if you get a cut and you start bleeding you can actually glue it back together that's that's something we do and sometimes instead of Band-Aids especially on a very bendy part they'll actually people actually use super glue to stop bleeding so you can think that uh is donkey glue so it's good for stopping bleeding and also in terms of moistening the lung you can think that uh comes from donkeys and donkeys are very loud they like that Hee-Haw a lot and make a lot of noise and so maybe that can make you think of the lung and coughing so those are the functions of uh and you can maybe relate it to donkeys and Donkey glue after that is gochita lysiah Fructis gochita lyce fructose this one I actually don't know how to say um because there's this weird rule in Chinese that if you have two third tones in a row the first one turns into a second tone um but here we have three third tones in a row so I'm actually not sure how to say it like is it go like which one it gets turned into a second tone um but it turns out like I'm not very good at tones anyway so gochita Lycia Fructis this is Chinese wolf Berry I'm not sure that anybody calls it that anymore it's just goji berry is what most people call it and so gochita goji berry the important thing to know about this one is it tonifies blood to brighten eyes the gochita has a very famous very special action of brightening the eyes for blood deficiencies so gochita tonifies blood two brighten eyes for poor night vision blurred vision or dry eyes if there's not enough blood going to the eyes the eyes can dry out as well so gochita tonifies blood but we should definitely say it's specialty is brightening the eyes treating these vision problems but gochita also tonifies liver and kidney Yin as well so things we've been saying like sore low back sore knees and dizziness and it also moistens the lung or tonifies lung Yin for things like cough or wasting and thirsting disorder and again this is going to be good for wasting and thirsting disorder because we said there's upper down middle gel and lower jowl the fact that it tonifies lung Yin is good for the upper jowl symptoms like thirst the fact that it tonifies kidney in is good for the lower jaw symptoms like profuse urination so the fact that it's going to both the upper and lower jowl makes this very useful for wasting and thirsting disorder and basically I put these two together because Bensky will put gochita in the category herbs that tonify blood most other books will actually put this in the category herbs that tonify Yin so that's just important to know about gochita is yes it's very famous for tonifying blood tonifying in two brighten eyes but a lot of books will put it in the tonifying category because it tonifies liver and kidney in and also tonifies lung Yin as well and we will see this come up in a lot of formulas for Yin deficiency a lot of liver and kidney in deficiency like a jituan Jin um and things like that so it does come up in a lot of Yin formulas as well so that's what we should remember about gochita tonifies blood too bright and eyes but also tonifies Yin both liver and kidney and tonifies long Yin or moistens the lung so that's gochita goji berry after that is song Shen Mori Fructis song Shen Mori Fructis this is Mulberry fruit so you may have noticed up to now we've learned a lot of different parts of the Mulberry Tree it turns out we use every part of the Mulberry Tree in Chinese medicine so we've learned things like Sanger Mulberry twig song yea Mulberry Leaf in the cool actor to release the exterior category um song by P is the Bark of the Mulberry root and then we even learned um Song Ji Shang is a parasite that grows on mulberry trees and later we'll learn silkworms I think silkworms live on mulberry trees as well so we use all the parts of the Mulberry Tree here we're talking about song Shen the Mulberry fruit and this one tonifies blood and nourishes Yin so for things like dizziness tinnitus insomnia and premature graying of hair dryness and thirst wasting and thirsting disorder and it also moistens the large intestine to relieve constipation so this is another one that Bensky puts it in a tonify blood category but there are a lot of books that will put this in the tonify yin category because it has a because it does have a main action of tonifying Ian as well and this is another one that's special that it's not really sticky or cooling so it's much easier to use long term that we don't have to worry about those digestive problems so that's song Shan not sure this is a very commonly used herb or one we'll see pop-up in formulas very often but just know that it belongs to this category in the tonify yin category so it tonifies blood and in that song Mulberry fruit and our final one here is long Yan row longan RLS long yon Ro longin arlis and this is longan fruit I'm not sure it's very easy to get long and fruit in the west at least fresh I think the the only time I've seen it um even when you go to Asian markets the only time I've seen it is and um you can get it canned as well so I'm not sure how easy it is to get fresh but when we use it as an herb usually get it in its dry form so long yarn roll is long and fruit what you want to know about this one is it tonifies blood to calm Shen so this one it's entering the heart and spleen channels it's not entering the liver Channel it tonifies blood to calm Shen for things like insomnia anxiety palpitation forgetfulness due to heart and spleen deficiency [Music] so this is another one we might have talked about this before when we talked about dots out but kind of the idea here is this is good for both heart and spleen deficiency now remember the emotion associated with the spleen is pensiveness or worry so sometimes over worrying overthinking um can damage the spleen and then it can also create Shen problems as well so long yanrel it's going to the spleen to help the spleen but it's also tonifying heart blood to calm Shen one special note here this is actually not in any textbooks but this is something that one of my Chinese herb teachers told me is that um because long Yan row is warm if you take it long term it can cause certain heat signs so he says after you after you take every two or three weeks take a seven day break before you resume it again just to avoid this accumulation of heat due to the warmth of long unreal I think kind of the idea here is because long yon roll is a fruit people think or it's a food so people think they can just take it and eat as much as they want and it won't really have any side effects so sometimes people get really into Long John row and they like to eat it as a snack and they'll try to eat it every day and we should just know that if you're doing that it can cause heat signs so if you take it for a while take a little bit of a break to um so you don't get those heat signs and then resume so that's something you do with long gone real I'm not sure that long and fruit is popular enough in the west that this would ever be an issue but that's uh from a Chinese perspective that's something that a caution they say and the name of this one is interesting long Yan row means dragon eye flesh so long means Dragon we've learned this before with herbs like long Dan Sao Dragon gallbladder herb or if you've just watched Kung Fu Panda and the first one the bad guy is tylom which means Great Dragon or sometimes uh Bruce Lee had the nickname xiaodon little dragon so long means Dragon Yan means flesh means I ro means flesh like a rogue way um rule it means flesh or it means meat so um sometimes this comes up in cooking like juegro is twice cooked pork the row means flesh or meat but when we also say like the spleen governs the flesh that's the character we're using is row so dragon eye Flash and probably the I'm assuming the name comes from when you look at the fresh fruit instead of the dried fruit but when you look at the fresh fruit this is what it looks like when you cut it in half and it has that pit in the middle the the fruit is white and the pit is a darker color so I'm assuming that's why they call it dragon eye flesh is when you slice the the fresh fruit in half but anyway Long John row what we should remember about this one uh basically its only function is tonifies heart blood to calm Shen so think about long yonral as a Shen calming herb so those are our herbs that tonify blood I kind of said it was a short category but there's a lot to say for each one so this ended up being a long video but those are herbs that tonify blood what I like to do now is talk about some formulas and weigh out pairs now this is not meant to be a formula class we're not going to go in depth into formulas but if you're studying these herbs then maybe seeing these herbs come up in formulas that can help give these herbs some context and that can help you understand some of the signs and symptoms associated with blood deficiency and that can help you understand how these herbs get combined with herbs that we've already learned so we can also use this as a way to review other herbs from herbs one two and three so let's just briefly look at a few formulas so first one is for substance decoction Su Tong for substance decoction and this is for blood deficiency and or stagnation so our main formula for tonifying Chi is sujunsatong for gentlemen to auction our main formula for tonifying blood is for substance decoction and so this is for blood deficiency so we can see seeing our signs um that we talked about before things like dizziness blurred vision lusterless complexion in the nails so there's not enough blood going up to the head so we get dizziness there's not enough blood nourishing the eyes so we get eye problems there's not enough blood nourishing the skin and the nails are the surplus of the sinews so we get lusterless complexion and lusterless nails generalized muscle tension we are talking about how the liver um the liver is associated with the sinews or is associated with the tendons so if there's not enough liver blood going to the tendons we can get this generalized muscle tension it's like your tendons are a rubber band that have dried out so instead of being nice and soft and flexible they're stiff and brittle insomnia palpitations this is there's not enough hot blood nourishing the heart a thin body lacking strength to you it's like your anemic you're a like a pale vampire um just because you don't have enough nourishment irregular Menses with little flow so there's not enough blood to form the mentee so we have scanty Menses the tongue is pale the pulse is thin because there's not enough blood to fill up the vessel so the pulse is thin in diameter and it could be choppy as well like there's not enough blood in order for it to flow smoothly so we end up with a rough or choppy pulse Suman so you can see mostly what we did here is we just took a bunch of herbs that tonify blood and put them together so and dongwe all come from this category herbs that tonify blood so those are there to tonify blood and then what's interesting is we also add in a little bit of Chuan Chong to invigorate blood remember Chuan Chong is from the invigorate blood category it moves both Chi and blood and um kind of the idea here is on the one hand we could say this is for both blood deficiency and blood stagnation we're addressing both but kind of like we said that blood is a very Yin substance so when you start using these um these kind of thick dense sticky tonifying herbs you can start tonifying blood and it's very easy for the blood to just sit there and not do anything because it's very Yin and so we need a little bit of moving as well to make sure uh to prevent stagnation so dongway has an action of invigorating blood as well but then we throw in a little bit of chuanjong to invigorate the blood so we can say that we're tonifying blood but we're using some movement to prevent stagnation or another way we can think about it is there's this saying that in order to ton of in order to generate New Blood the old blood must first be transformed so there's this idea that you have to move out the old in order to bring in the new so we're using some invigorating herbs to transform that old blood and then we're using some tonifying herbs to generate new blood but anyway we can see subutong this is just a good way to illustrate these are the signs and symptoms we typically see with blood deficiency and these are some herbs that we use for uh General blood tonics for substance decoction and this is going to form the basis of a lot of other formulas that you see going through formula class another one that's interesting is there's actually a patent uh called sure um and this is a this is just something that you can buy that it's manufactured in China and they import it show True this is a general tonic and it's specifically for um darkening the hair so that's why it's named after husho Wu but you can see a lot of our ingredients there uh hushawu dongway detonify blood Huang Jing we learned in the last category but remember it has a also has an action of tonifying Yin and tonifying Essence some books will put huangjing and a tonify Yin category shooty Huang because it tonifies Yin blood in essence Chuan Chong again they're creating some movement and then see at the very end we have some sha Ren cardamom so like we said that these herbs are very sticky and cloying they can very easily cause digestive problems they can very easily cause stagnation so you often want to have something in there that can help move things along so in this formula we have this example of adding charen to regulate middle jalchi to make sure that we don't end up with those digestive problems from the sticky clawing nature of these herbs so this is something that if you want to ton of high blood tonify Essence darken the hair and the person doesn't want to cook herbs you can get some shooutur I think this is very common to get in uh defined in at least Chinese herbal pharmacies but also maybe in supermarkets time Asian supermarkets as well um that this is another option for if you don't want to cook herbs you can just take this tonic it's a it's soaked in alcohol it's an alcohol-based one so you just have to make sure your patient is okay taking alcohol uh another week uh something we know we didn't talk about this yet but this dwyao pair chai hoopless by Xiao I think we talked about I didn't put it in here but we talked about the dwayo pair uh uh gwager plus uh baishao that wager plus buy child is good for that taiyong deficiency condition where we have fever and chills with the presence of sweating we can use gwager to release the exterior but we can use buy shell to hold in the sweat we have another common way up here here chai who plus by Xiao and these are both acting on the liver so remember chai who blue plural is from the cool lacquer to release the exterior category but besides releasing the exterior it also has a function of moving Liberty or relieving liver constraint we combine it with bioshao which is a tonifying blood and has an action of softening and emolliating the liver so these two go very well together when we have that liver cheese stagnation when we add that saying the liver is Yin in form and yang in function this pair is taking care of both of those aspects when we say the liver is Yin and form we're using the bi-show to tonify liver blood and soften and relax the liver and then we're using chai who because it's accurate it can move liver achieve so if the liver is deficient it can fail in its function of free coursing so here we're using a combination of herbs that tonifies the liver and moves Liberty so this is a very important way out there that we'll see come up in several formulas one of those formulas is blue plural powder to dress the liver here we have that way up here chahu plus baisha this is where liver cheek constraint things like flank pain stifling sensation in the chest deep sign when you or your patients size a lot it's like they're trying to expand their ribs so they can move the liver cheat through the liver Town suppressed emotions and feelings of frustration and anger and then we also have some rebellious uh stomach cheese signs that if the liver if there's liver constraint that can attack horizontally into the stomach cause some stagnation and cause the stomach g to Rebel back upwards but here this is just an example of that dwayup here chai who plus by Xiao another example of this is a very famous formulao-san rambling powder or free and easy wander to caution so Xiao Yao song is a very famous formula and it's based on this way up here chai who plus Bai Xiao so that's an accolation of baishao another application of baishao is for cramping remember we said that part of softening the liver is it's good for cramping spasm pain so Xiao Gonza Tong is specifically for pain in the calves due to blood deficiency so for spasm of the muscles cramping in the hands or cramping in the abdomen or a cramping pain in the abdomen and so we use by shout and then remember we said that gonzal licorice root also has this function that it relaxes the sinews relaxes the muscles to treat spasm and cramping but it's pretty much only comes up in this Con in this context of combining with by shell so here's an example of using bash out to relax the tendons or soften and emollient the liver another uh duayao pair that you'll see come up is juhua plus gochita juhua is Chrysanthemum flower gochita is goji berries these both have an action of brightening the eyes but they do it in slightly different ways so remember juhua is from the cool I could release the exterior category so it's very good for eye problems due to wind heat whereas gochita is from the tonify blood category uh tonifayin category so it's very good for eye problems due to Yin and blood deficiency so we put them together and it's very good for uh treating eye problems so you can say now this is good for all types of eye problems whether it's due to deficiency or due to heat or we could say that juhua because it's a flower it's very light and aromatic and ascends upward so we could even say that gochita is tonifying the blood but juhua is lifting it up into the face and lifting it up into the eyes and directing that to the upper body so this is a very uh very common way out pair sometimes you can even use this by itself as a tea because both of these are very common you can get them in supermarkets and you can just prepare them as a tea you don't have to boil them into caution you can just steep them in water and this is especially useful like if it's the springtime and you're starting to have allergies and getting some dry itchy eyes remember spring the up for the six evils uh wind is associated with the spring so spring is very windy time spring is associated with the wood phase and the liver the liver governs the eyes so it's very common when the spring season comes around it gets very windy people will have eye problems and so you can make a tea out of juhua and gochita to deal with these eye problems because on the one hand it's releasing that wind heat from the spring season but it's also tonifying in tonifying blood to provide some moisture to the eyes as well so it can be very good just as it on its own as a teeth or eye problems during the spring or we see it come up in certain formulas for specifically for treating eye problems and one is we start with leeway D Hong long which is our basic formula for tonifying in it's actually based on titanify in but then we add to brighten the eyes Street eye problems due to Yin deficiency so that's just an example of using gochita to brighten eyes and just to remind you that juhua also has a very famous action of brightening the eyes um I think this is the last one gwapitong restore the spleen decoction this is just a very famous formula that is often prescribed often uh students really like this formula it's for spleen Qi deficiency plus heart blood deficiency with symptoms like forgetfulness palpitations with or without anxiety insomnia dream disturb sleep anxiety and phobias withdrawal with reduced appetite and a pallid wand complexion the tongue is pale with a thin white coat the pulse is thin and frail and kind of the idea here is this is spleen Qi deficiency plus heart blood deficiency so one way you think about this is when spleen Chi is deficient your digestion isn't working so you're not getting the nutrients to create the blood and since you can't create blood you end up with heart blood deficiency and you end up with these Shin problems like palpitations forgetfulness anxiety so that's one way you can think about it is that the spleen is like the a source of blood because of digestion and if the spleen isn't working you don't get enough heart blood another way we can think about it is like we said that we can think about it from an emotional aspect where if you have a lot of pensiveness worry overthinking those thoughts can damage the spleen and eventually that will lead to Shen problems in the heart as well so sometimes people call this a student formula because it's like students are studying all the time sitting constantly damages the swing but the thinking the studying the pensiveness the worrying about your tests those are all emotions that students have it damages the spleen and then you eventually end up with anxiety and palpitations like test anxiety and nervousness and palpitation it can even affect your memory get forgetfulness and you can't remember the things you're actually studying because you're worrying too much so sometimes people call this the student formula because it's dealing with both the spleen and the heart and those are things that students deal with if we look at the ingredients here we've learned actually most of these ingredients so far so remember when the in the chitonifying category we talked about sejunsatong for gentleman decoction so here we see wrenchen baiju ushen instead of fooling and durgansa we add in some Wong Chi so remember normally here we use foolingporia but remember fushen is the part of fooling that contains the root so it's better for calming the Shen so you could use fooling or if you wanted an additional action of calming this gen you could use Fu Shen to calm Shen and we have some herbs that um nourish the heart so long john row is the one that we learned in this category tonifies blood to calm Shen here's where it's being used if you took intro to herbs you might remember we also learned swansauren from the category herbs that nourish the heart and calm the spirit so if you don't remember that one we'll learn that in a couple categories after that after this one but here's an example of long Yan row ton ofon blood to calm the spirit this is one of the major applications it's in the formulaipitong which is a very commonly prescribed formula especially for people with um anxiety and insomnia so that's it for formulas here we can do a quick review of our herbs we started off with shooty Huang where Amani erratic's preparator remember shooting Huang tonifies blood but it also tonifies Yin and tonifies Essence as well this is a black root so it goes to the kidney tonifies kidney in kidney Essence so this is our main herb for tonifying all types of blood it's also one of our most commonly used herbs for tonifying in as well both tonifies blood and invigorates blood so it's good for both blood deficiency and blood stagnation just remember in terms of tonifying blood it also has an action of moistening the large intestine as well is white peony root this one tonifies blood but specialty is that it softens relaxes and emolliates the liver especially for spasm and cramping remember bi-show is also sour in flavor so it has this action of preserving Yin especially in the case of sweating means Mr huz black hair so this tonifies Blood especially to darken the hair but remember remember the story about Mr hook he also had this constitutional kidney deficiency weak low back weak low knees impotence spermataria nocturnal emissions so he had blood deficiency but also had deficiency of Yin and Essence and that Essence was leaking out so tonifies blood tonifies Essence um and preserves or hold things in with its astringent property is donkey gelatin tonifies blood and stops bleeding so he can think uh donkey gelatin is like donkey glue you use glue to seal your cut to stop bleeding ujjao also has an action of moistening the lung to stop cough you can think that donkeys are loud they like that Hee-Haw and make a lot of noise so that eventually dries out their lungs so ujjao also moistens the lung gochita tonifies blood to brighten the eyes song Shen tonifies blood tonifies Yen not a very commonly used one and then long Yan row tonifies blood to calm Shen so that is our category herbs that tonify blood here we this is a very long lecture we went in very great detail about the category tonifying blood if you want to review if you're taking a big test like finals year-ends or boards and you want to review all of the herbs but you want to do it a little bit more quickly you just want something that you can go through each herb and just point out the key key functions of each herb like we just did be sure to check out the form the TCM study single herb review course that's on teachable it's 49 it goes over all of the herbs and again just hits on those key points for each herb so there's a lot of handouts a lot of practice tests a lot of practice questions and so if you're studying for finals urines or boards and you want to review all the herbs that's the way to do it but that was our category herbs at tonify blood thanks for being here we'll be back with the next one which is herbs that tonify the yang