hello friend and welcome to another herb review this time we're going over the category herbs that cool the blood herbs that cool the blood so make let me make sure my music is turned off i had problems with that last time so as always if you want to uh follow along with the slides those are available on the website at tcm study.net you can download some slides you can download some flash cards and follow along but here we are doing the category herbs that cool the blood and so like always we're going to go over what does it mean to cool the blood we're treating blood heat what does blood heat look like this is also going to include a brief review of wen bing theory because that's what we're using these herbs for and then we'll go over the individual herbs in this category and this is a fairly short category so hopefully it will go through pretty quick but here's what we're talking about herbs that cool the blood so if you remember we're kind of in a big category here called herbs that clear heap this is our second category in single herbs our second major category and we have all these subcategories herbs that drain fire cool the blood clear heat and dry dampness different types of heat in different parts of the body so what we're talking about today is herbs that cool the blood so kind of no surprise herbs that cool the blood we're treating heat in the blood or blood level heat so what does that mean heat in the blood or blood level heat or what does that look like well basically our main symptom we're treating here is bleeding that when we get heat in the blood it can cause bleeding and kind of our explanation for this is remember heat causes things to speed up so when heat gets into the blood it causes the blood to speed up it turns out when we have enough heat there the blood can speed up so much that it begins to move recklessly or frenetically or chaotically outside of the vessels the blood is moving so fast it can't be contained in the vessels it moves outside of the vessels and we call that bleeding and so that's one of our main symptoms of blood level heat is this bleeding due to the chaotic movement of blood and so just to be clear we should we should really explain that this type of bleeding is not the same as bleeding due to injury and trauma so if i fall on the pavement and scrape my knee and it starts bleeding that's not bleeding due to heat that's not blood level heat if somebody comes up behind me and stabs me in the shoulder and i start bleeding that's bleeding due to injury and trauma that is not bleeding due to heat and i kind of like to point this out because sometimes you see these acupuncturists that they'll needle an acupuncture point and then when they go to remove the needle some blood will come out and then the acupuncturist will say the patient oh that's a good thing that means we're releasing heat the fact that the point bled that means you have internal heat and we're releasing that heat and that's i don't think that's really the case i think really uh if you needle an acupuncture point and it starts bleeding that's not due to heat in the blood that's because you stab someone with a sharp metal object that a sharp metal object went into their blood vessel rupture the blood vessel and caused bleeding and that's not the same as bleeding due to heat so that's just a weird thing i like to mention so we're not talking about bleeding due to injury and trauma what type of bleeding are we talking about when here when we say blood level heat we're talking more about internal bleeding so think about things like nose bleed vomiting blood coughing up blood blood in the urine blood in the stool even bloodshot eyes um so not more about somebody stabbed you and i started bleeding this is more think about somebody has tuberculosis and they start coughing up blood that could be bleeding due to heat say somebody has a dysentery diarrhea dysentery and now they have blood in the stool that could be bleeding due to heat if somebody has a urinary tract infection and they have this frequent painful urgent urination but they have blood in the urine one possibility is bleeding due to heat that's what we mean by blood level heat probably the most common one that we'll see in clinic is this can also include issues with menstruation so women's health issues uh so bensky will often use the term uterine bleeding and people will be like what does that mean uterine bleeding well here we're just talking about abnormal bleeding during or around menses so if a patient has really heavy periods we could say oh that's bleeding due to heat don't quote me on this but i think the normal amount is um a woman on our period we expect to see like 30 to 100 milliliters per day i guess if you have a diva cup you can actually like measure how many milliliters but anyway if it's uh if a patient complains of very heavy periods they have to change their pads really often they have a lot of bleeding one possibility is this is bleeding due to heat if we have prolonged periods a normal period we say three to five days maybe up to seven days but say a patient comes in and says my period is lasting eight or nine days we could say that's a bleeding condition and it might be bleeding due to heat spotting between periods uh kind of like day 14 of the period i get some spotting that could be that's a bleeding condition and one possibility is bleeding due to heat so that's what we mean when we say bleeding we're not talking about bleeding due to injury and trauma we're not talking i fell and scraped my knee we're not talking somebody stabbed me and now there's blood coming out of this wound that's not what we mean we mean types of internal bleeding and if you remember your medical terminology remember that all these have fancy names we have things like epistaxis nosebleed hemoptysis coughing up blood hematomesis vomiting blood uh hematuria blood in the urine hematochesia blood in the stool profusemenses is menorazia spotting between periods is metro raja so we have all these fancy terms but those are the types of bleeding that we're talking about and when in this category because we're talking about uh clearing heat from the blood these herbs that cool the blood this is especially applicable when we talk about blood level heat in terms of wending theory so we talk about this category herbs that cool the blood we kind of have to talk about when bing theory and do a little bit of review of that so let's kind of re review wenbings so remember when we talked about one wenbing theory we said when it comes to febrile diseases there are two schools of thought there's the cold damage school and the warm disease school the cold damage school was shanghan loon written by zhong zhong ding where he said febrile diseases are caused by cold pathogens penetrating the body through the six levels taeyang yong ming chao yang tai and challenge kind of our competing theory was e.a.t ensure came along quite a bit later and said that no febrile diseases are caused by heat pathogens penetrating the body through the four levels or the four aspects whey level qi level yin level and shui level and so that's what we're talking about when we're in this category herbs that clear heat we're of course talking about the heat school of thought with these febrile diseases so remember we already talked about a way level heat way we can say way level or the defense aspect whey means defense and heat at the way level is basically an external attack of wind heat so if you remember we talked about that we had things like simultaneous fever and chills but because it's wind heat it's going to be more fever and less chills dry mouth cough sore throat was one of our key symptoms for an attack of wind heat how we differentiate wind heat from when cold we might see things like eye problems dry red itchy eyes we might see certain types of rashes we talked about like early stage measles the pulse is going to be floating because it's an external attack this is a very superficial level so we feel the pulse on the surface and the pulse is going to be rapid because we're dealing with heat so again way level heat is basically an external attack of wind heat and the and we use the category cool accurate herbs that release the exterior herbs like sange our if you're in formulas our formula there was song julian mulberry and chrysanthemum to collection so whey level heat pretty much the same is basically an external attack of wind heat if this heat attacks that superficial level the whey level or the defense aspect and we're not able to get rid of it it can penetrate deeper when it gets deeper into the body its next step is the chi level and so remember when we said qi level qi level level in wenbing is the same as yangming channel heat in the shanghan loon and so here our symptoms were the four bigs big fever big sweat big thirst and vexation and a big pulse meaning a rapid surging pulse so for the for heat at the chi level we used herbs from the category herbs that drain fire specifically herbs like sure gal gypsum fibrosum and germu and a morenorizoma we tend to we tend to use these two herbs together and the formula here is by hutong white tiger decoction so remember we this had a very beautiful name that the white tiger is associated with the metal phase and the season of autumn and the direction of the west so it's like you have all this heat in the body and this cool autumn breeze is coming in to clear that heat away so that's by hutong white tiger decoction or our single herbs were sure gao and germu but let's say you have this heat in the qi level and it's i mean heat pathogens tend to go very rapidly they penetrate you know heat is very young it has a lot of energy it tends to penetrate very quickly so let's say it got through the whey level it got through the qi level and now it's going even deeper in the body its next stop is the yin level ying we can translate as the nutritive level i believe bensky says nutritive and nigel weisman says construction so either the nutritive level or the construction aspect is the yin level so if you remember when we talked in the very beginning when we talked about wager we talked about harmonizing the yin and the way harmonizing the nutritive and defense levels this is the same thing when you talk about ying chi the nutritive tea this is what we're talking about here so we're at the yin level or the nutritive level here now the heat is getting pretty deep indeed so what are we going to see when we get to the ying level well we're going to see high fever that worsens at night so of course we're going to have fever because this is a heat condition worse at night is a sign that the yin is being damaged and so this is something that we'll see a lot when we talk about uh either heat damaging the fluids or when you talk about yin deficiency sometimes you'll see the symptom fever that's worse at night and the idea here is night time is the yin time of day so if the yin is deficient or the yin has been damaged by heat the fever will be worse during that yin time of day so that's why we say high fever that's worse at night is a sign that this heat is starting to dry out the yin fluids we might see things like irritability restlessness and insomnia these are types of shen disturbance this is a sign that the heat is getting into the heart and disturbing the shen and then we might see possible faint rashes we'll say faint or indistinct rashes is that this heat is kind of coming up to the surface and then what's interesting here is we say a dry scarlet tongue dry again because the heat is burning up the fluids and damaging the yin fluids and then it's interesting that we say a scarlet is like a deep red tongue and this is interesting because we don't necessarily mention the tongue at the other two levels that if you have an external attack of wind heat you may or may not see changes in the tongue qi level heat you might have a red tongue but generally these lower levels are superficial enough that you might not see a change in the tongue but when you get to the yin level here the heat is deep enough that it definitely starts to affect the tongue and so that's why we say a scarlet tongue i feel like some people say scarlet and some people say crimson and i'm not good enough with colors to know the difference but i assume this is like a deep color red but let's say we get to the we're at the seeing level the heat is at the yin level the nutritive level or the construction aspect and again this heat moves very quickly let's say we didn't get to it in time or our treatment didn't work and the heat moves deeper into the level deeper into the body well our final level is the shui level here shui means blood so we're at the blood level or the blood aspect and now the heat is very deep indeed and so um really ying level heat and shui level heat are very similar but it's just a different level of intensity so we're going to see a lot of the similar things like fever and certain types of shen problems like irritability restlessness but now we're going to see instead of possible rashes or indistinct faint rashes we're going to see definite distinct rashes we're also going to see like we said our key symptom of heat of the blood level is bleeding so things like nose bleed vomiting blood blood in the urine blood in the stool and actually when we talk about these rashes sometimes we say maculopapular rashes or we say perpuric rashes perpuric i actually had to look this up let's see if we can uh figure out what perpuric means purpura also called blood spots or skin hemorrhage refers to a purple colored spots that are most recognizable on the skin i feel like i had a better definition before but we can also see these types of rashes called pure pura or pure purik rashes and basically this it looks like a rash it looks like a purple rash but it's basically bleeding under the skin again it's this type of bleeding that the blood is moving phonetically or chaotically outside of the vessels so we have this bleeding under the skin but it looks like a purple rash so that's another kind of symptom of bleeding where we might want to use herbs that cool the blood and then we see a scarlet tongue with prickles we can say prickles or thorns those are two different words that mean the same thing and basically it's kind of like the heat's so bad you have a rash on your tongue that you have prickles on your tongue and a thin rapid pulse again rapid because of the heat thin as a sign that the yin fluids are being damaged so these yin and shui levels are actually kind of similar they just vary in their intensity one major way we differentiate them is the schwa level is going to have outright bleeding but it turns out to treat these levels we use similar herbs where for both of these levels we use herbs that cool the blood and so when we look at this category herbs that cool the blood you know i guess obviously these treat blood level heat but they also treat yin level or yin level or nutritive level heat as well so these herbs are treating both of these levels it's just how we combine the herbs is going to be a little bit different and we'll talk about that more later so we look at herbs to cool the blood we can look at the basic properties here the taste is going to be bitter and sweet and possibly salty so bitter should make sense remember the beer flavor clears heat and drains fire so all of these clear heat herbs are going to be bitter in flavor and then sweet i think we mentioned this before that it's very common that we have heat starts to damage the fluids and cause dryness and thirst and so very conveniently a lot of these herbs are sweetened flavor because they moisten dryness or generate fluids and so that's going to be the case here that we're going to see a lot of these herbs in this category also have an action of tonifying in or generating fluids or moistening dryness and that's why they're sweet in flavor so bitter and sweet is very common for this category the salty flavor is interesting because there are a couple of ways we can explain this because if you remember when we talked about in the very beginning we said the salty flavor [Music] does a couple things one just by tradition anything that's an animal part we tend to mark salty in flavor and it turns out we do have a few herbs in this category that are animal parts they're animal horns and so because they're part of an animal they're salty in flavor i think we saw this in the latin two categories ago when we had chon tui cicada skin because it's an insect or animal part it's marked salty in flavor so that's one thing is just by tradition animal parts are salty and we have a few of those remember we also said that the salty flavor has an action of softening hardness so we're going to see one or two herbs with this action of softening hardness and that's why we call it salty in flavor but another one which is kind of weird is bensky tends to make these statements that the salty flavor goes to the blood level and i'll admit this was really confusing to me at first because when you look at the introduction of bensky and he goes through the the five flavors he doesn't mention this at all he just says salty flavor is softening hardness salty flavor goes to the kidney and he leaves it at that but when we start looking at the commentary of the individual herbs he'll often make this comment that this herb is salty and the salty flavor goes to the blood level so apparently this was another aspect of the salty flavor that i was not aware of until i started digging through that part of bensky so that's going to be another kind of attribute of these herbs and so maybe you can just think that blood is salty so salty herbs go to the blood level so that's going to be common taste of this category of course of course these herbs are going to be cold in temperature we're clearing heat we're clearing blood level heat so they're going to be cold in temperature entering channels are going to be common ones are going to be liver and heart and so basically anytime an herb has anything to do with the blood it tends to enter the liver channel because the liver stores blood so anything to do with blood enters liver channel so in this case clearing blood level heat a lot of these herbs have you know we're treating bleeding conditions so that's another blood thing but even beyond this category when you talk about stop bleeding invigorating blood tonifying blood anything to do with blood that herb enters the liver channel so here since we're cooling the blood these herbs into the liver channel also enter the heart channel you can think that you can think that the heart also has to do with blood that the heart organ governs the blood vessels the heart moves the blood but we can also think about when we talked about those symptoms of yin level heat and shui level heat one of our symptoms were shen disturbance things like irritability insomnia even delirious speech your fever is so bad you start speaking incoherently you're delirious and so these are signs that the heat is affecting the heart so it makes sense that these herbs enter the heart channel and clear out that heart heat as well so we're going to see a liver channel and heart channel cautions and contraindications of course we're in a clear heat category we're dealing with cold herbs cold herbs can damage the spleen so we have to be careful about the cold bitter nature of these herbs damaging the spleen so we want to make sure that we're using them appropriately i'm going to be careful about using them long term and again in terms of their main action these herbs clear heat from the yin and shui levels so again in terms of wen bing theory we have the four levels or the four aspect whey level qi level yin level shu shui level and so with these these herbs we're dealing with the last two levels the yin level and the shui level and then like we said that um when we get this heat at the blood level it's very easy for it to damage the yin and we even see this all that in the signs and symptoms we saw things like a thin pulse a dry tongue these are signs of fever that's worse at night these are signs that the heat is damaging the yin so very conveniently these herbs are often sweetened flavor meaning that they can tonify in or replenish those fluids that have been damaged by heat so that's something that we'll want to look for as well so again the actual herbs we again this is a very short category the first one actually doesn't count we don't use that one so there's only four or five herbs in this category very short category easy to get through let's start with the first one which is one we don't use is shi jiao rhinoceratus rhinoceros horn obviously we do not use rhinoceros horn anymore it's an endangered species so this this uh medicinal has been moved to the category obsolete substances that we don't use it anymore because it's an endangered animal however i still want to talk about it just because it's um kind of gives some historical context because when you talk about ying level heat and shui level heat traditionally this is what they used and when you get into our formula class we're going to see formulas that are named after this and we'll talk about that again at the end but xi jiao rhinoceros horn nowadays we substitute water buffalo horn which is our next one but they're similar enough so let's talk about it now we can say that xi jiao like everything in this category it clears heat and cools the blood specifically for yin level heat or shui level heat we could say nutritive aspect or blood aspect heat and again with all those signs and symptoms that we talked about fever that worsens at night possible shen problems irritability restlessness insomnia delirium and then either rashes either distinct or indistinct rashes and we get into the blood level actual bleeding scarlet tongue so all those signs of blood level heat xi jiao clears out that blood level heat but notice that xi jiao also enters the heart channel and it can clear heart heat as well for things like shen disturbance due to heat delirium mania loss of consciousness so again this is really convenient because when we have that blood level heat that heat goes into the heart and creates shen problems like irritability restlessness insomnia delirium delirious speech or in severe cases loss of consciousness so here we're not only clearing that blood level heat we're also clearing out that heat that gets into the heart as well so that's convenient and it's so good at stopping heat it can all uh clearing heat can and also clear heat and stop tremors so sometimes we talk about heat stirring up wind febrile convulsions and things like that so it can also stop those tremors so when we look at the properties of this xi jiao is of course cold in temperature because we're clearing heat and like we said it's bitter and salty bitter because it's clearing heat salty because it's an animal part and just all types of animal parts tend to be salty in flavor in chinese medicine enters the liver channel because it cools blood enters the heart channel because we're clearing out that heart heat stomach channel probably has to do with heat toxicity but don't worry about that too much the dosage is quite small this is a this would have been a very powerful herb so we only need to use a very small amount of it if we cooked it in decoction we would use one and a half to six grams or more likely we would grind it into a powder and swallow it as a powder and so you just need a very small amount and again this is common when we're dealing with horns in chinese medicine the name as for the name of this herb he just means rhinoceros and zhao means horn and it turns out we use a couple types of horns in chinese medicine so you'll see that jiao so xi jiao is rhinoceros horn schwein yo jiao is water buffalo horn um uh yujao is deer antler deer horn uh young ling is antelope horn so you'll see the sort of jiao or kornu come up a bit so xi jiao just means rhinoceros horn and again we don't use this anyone we don't use this one anymore also i just think it's kind of fun that we have a there's a rhinoceros emoji that i was able to use but rhinoceros horn we don't use this one anymore so if we needed to use this herb we would set instead substitute shuen yo jiao water buffalo horn shui nyo jiao water buffalo horn and as we can see all the actions are exactly the same it clears heat and cools the blood for yin or nutritive level heat it also enters the heart channel it clears heart heat for that delirium mania or things that come along with blood level heat and it can also uh treat those tremors i think here we just mean like febrile convulsions that your fever is so high that you develop shakiness tremors or convulsions but what we should note here is properties are the same it's cold bitter and salty because it's still an animal part but we can note here is the dosage is much larger so before with rhinoceros horn our dosage was one and a half to six grams here our dosage is 30 to 100 grams and so that's just because normally when we have like heavy things like this we use a smaller dosage but it turns out that shueno jiao just isn't very good at what it does and so in order to make it work we have to use a very large dosage in order for it to work so that's something you know about shuinyo jiao is it has a large dosage that doesn't have to do with the fact that it's heavy or light it just has to do with the fact that it doesn't work so well it's not very powerful rhinoceros horn super powerful uh water buffalo not so powerful we got to use a larger dosage so that's a shueno jiao water buffalo horn as for the name shui just means water like when you talk about feng shui like you're arranging your furniture shui means water when you talk about the water element shui means water so you can see that character there it's the same as uh the water element in the five phases means uh ox or cow or in this case buffalo nyo means ox and so we saw that with um same character in neo-bangza arcti fructus and we'll see that in actually a couple of other herbs like nyoshi oxnames and so nyo means ox and again jiao means horn water cow horn and again i'm really impressed that uh they have an emoji for water buffaloes i guess water buffaloes are common enough in china that they made it into an emoji so that's that's uh these are kind of our major representative herbs for blood level heat in the wen bing originally it would have been xi jiao rhinoceros horn we don't use that anymore so instead we use the substitute shuenojo water buffalo horn for blood level heat in terms of the wen bing our next one is shangdi huang romania radix [Music] i want to say the english name is foxglove root i'm not sure about that i'm not familiar with this plant i just call it romania root so shanghuang two major functions that we can talk about first one common in this category is it clears heat and cools the blood we're in the category herbs that cool the blood this herb clears heat and cools the blood specifically for heat in the yin or shui levels so for all those signs we talked about high fever worse at night possible thirst scarlet tongue bleeding because the heat speeds up the blood and causes it to move chaotically outside of the vessels all those symptoms of blood level heat and it turns out in a lot of our formulas for this blood level heat we combine xi jiao plus shang di-huang they kind of mutually reinforce each other so it's very common to use these together either xi jiao and chengdi huang or shuinyo jiao and chengdi huang used as a pair to treat yin level heat or blood level heat so shanghuang obviously cools the blood because that's the category we're in but the second and maybe even might even say it's a more important function is that shundi huang nourishes yin and generates fluids and so it turns out in the modern clinic honestly you might not be treating a lot of blood level heat i mean if a person comes into your clinic and they're like coughing up blood or blood is like spilling out of various orifices of the body probably want to send them to the hospital don't think about like oh which which herb should i treat you probably want to send them to the hospital uh but what's really common is we do have a lot of formulas that are clearing heat tonifying in or generating fluids and it turns out we use shundi huang as a major ingredient in those formulas so when you start getting in the formulas it might be actually more common that you'll see shungi huang in this way to tonify yin nourishing nourished body fluids and so that's going to be a very important action of shang huang that we definitely want to remember so things are like thirst dry mouth constipation because of heat and dryness so those are the things that we will see with shangdi huang as for the properties uh is of course cold in temperature because we're clearing heat it's bitter in flavor because we're clearing heat it's also this is one that's sweet in flavor because again it's nourishing in and generating fluids and that's an action of the sweet flavor so that's what some of you want to remember about this one is strong huang is bitter because it because of its first action clear heat and cool the blood it's sweet because of its second action nourishing in generating fluids entering channels are kind of interesting we say liver channel because it has to do with the blood it's cooling the blood we can say kidney channel because it's nourishing yin and that belongs to the kidney so this yin and this body fluids is kind of a kidney thing the heart thing is interesting because we don't really mention it here but shanghuang does also kind of have an action of clearing heart heat and this is really annoying because when we look in our textbooks at least all the ones i've looked at in the single herb books it never mentions this function never says that chengdi huang as its standalone function clears heart heat however when we get into our formula classes we're going to see that there are a couple of formulas where shangdi huang is there because it clears heart heat and again this makes sense when we're when we're treating shui level heat we have those those heart signs irritability restlessness insomnia delirious speech loss of consciousness those are signs that heat is entering the heart so it makes sense that shang huang would clear that out as part of treating shui level heat but we also will use it in other formulas where we want to clear heart heat i don't know if you remember in the last category we talked about heart heat pouring into the small intestine causing urination problems and our formula our single herb we used there was don juliet bland bamboo leaf but that was a formula part of a formula called doucherson guide out the red powder and so it turns out the chief herb and doucherson got out the red powder is shanghuang i'm pointing to a slide that's not there it's shanghuang so we have shanghi huang clearing the heart heat and then we also have that don julie bland bamboo leaf also clearing heart heat for heart heat pouring into the small intestine so even though we don't mention it here as one of the functions i think it's kind of safe to say that shang huang also has this function of clearing heart heat take a look at the dosage the dosage is a little bit higher than average it is 9 to 15 grams and again this is because it's a thick dense root if you have your herb sample this is a root it's very thick it's very it's kind of sticky like it it used to be juicy and then they dried it out and now it's kind of sweet and sticky so it's kind of a heavier herb so it's not really like a mineral that's really heavy but it's a dense root so it's getting into that territory where we need a larger dosage just because it's a denser herb so shanghuang a little bit higher than average dosage and then something we want to pay attention to in terms of cautions and contraindications shangdi huang it's not only cold it's sweet and we say it's cloying it's almost sickly sweet it has a cloying nature that's very difficult to digest and this is kind of true of this is somewhat true of all tonics it's especially true of shangdi huang that it's this rich sweet sticky cloying nature that can give you problems in the middle jaw when you're trying to digest it and so that's something you have to watch out for that when you give this herb it might cause some upset stomach some nausea vomiting loose stool or just a upset stomach and so we have to be careful about that and one way we can moderate that is by adding in herbs that help move things through the middle gel so if you were an intro class i think we learned chen p tangerine peel regulates qi and helps move things through and so that can moderate some of this sticky cloin nature we can also use things like shonja shah ren in the aromatic transform dampness category also moves things through the middle jowl and so we basically we have to add in some herbs that help out the middle jowl so that this herb can be digested and so that's something to watch out for that especially if you're using this like in a yin tonic if somebody has yin deficiency and you end up giving them shrunk huang to tonify in it could be that they take it for a week and it works really well they're really happy they're getting good results but then as they continue to take it they start getting some tummy problems either some loose stool some diarrhea or just an upset stomach and they're like why why is this happening it's probably because of the shang di-huang they're having trouble digesting it so we either have to modify the dosage modify the formula or add in some herbs that help out with digesting it as for the name shangdi huang technically d means earth and huang means yellow so di huang means earth yellow but really that's just the name of the plant foxglove in chinese so di huang is just the name of the plant i'm not sure the meaning hasn't has much significance we should pay attention to the first character there is shang in this context shang means raw so this is raw romania root and we need to point that out because later we'll learn cooked ramana root or prepared romania root called shudi huang if you go back to our video on pau ger the methods of preparation we said that shang means raw shu means cooked or prepared so later in the tonify blood category we're going to learn shudi huang prepared romania root and that one is steamed in wine and then dried and that gives it an action of tonifying blood it makes it a little bit warmer in temperature because you're cooking it but it also gives it this action of instead of cooling the blood it tonifies blood so we need to be able to differentiate between shangdi huang raw romania and shudi huang prepared romania but that's something we'll get into later so for now we can just say shangdi huang raw romania it's in the cool the blood category also tonifies yin and a lot of times when people refer to this herb they'll just drop off the last character character and they drop off the wong and they just call it shangdi so if somebody says shangdi or shudi just know that they mean shangdi huang or shudi huang it's very common that we just drop off characters when we talk about herbs so that is shanghi huang ramani radix two major functions it cools the blood for blood level heat we often combine it with those rhinoceros horn or water buffalo horn to treat yin or shui level heat and also a very important function is it nourishes yin and generates fluids so that is huang [Music] next is actually a very similar herb schwann schwann shen scrawfularia radix pay attention to the latin name here scrofularia radix schwann shen schweinschen scrofulari erratics so again when you look at at least the first two functions looks very similar to shanghuang this clears heat and cools the blood to treat blood level heat like every herb in this category so we didn't mention it but we mean those same symptoms of yin level heat or shui level heat high fever worse at night your ability resonances insomnia delirium possible faint rashes or definite distinct rashes and bleeding so very similar to shang tihong in that regard it also nourishes yin and generates fluids same as shanghuang here we might say if it has a specialty we would say it's for the aftermath of a warm disease where we have dryness again this heat is coming in and damaging the yin damaging the fluids so we can have things like dry cough constipation or irritability and so it's kind of like we had one of these febrile diseases we had heat came in and attacked us at the weigh level or the qi level or the yin level and had all this heat and this heat was damaging the yin we uh used our herbs and we got rid of the heat so the heat is gone but we still have this damaged fluid that we have to deal with so we have these lingering symptoms of dryness like dry cough thirst and constipation so that's what we mean here when we say nourishes yin and generate fluid for the aftermath of warm disease we're talking about we got rid of the heat but we still have this uh dryness lingering around so that's when we use schwann shen scrofularia what's also interesting about this one is it can soften hardness and dissipate nodules especially for nodules in the throat for things like swelling of the throat [Music] something that happens with tuberculosis when you get tuberculosis you get this bacterial infection goes into the lung and then it causes swelling of the lymph nodes in the neck so i think the scrofula is very specific but we really just mean any kind of lumps or swellings in the neck like goiter or uh throat pain and swelling in the throat so you can say scrofulariorats scrofularia street scrofula but just think neck symptoms including painful throat and swelling of the throat and so what's interesting here is a taste and temperature similar to shanghuang it's cool in temperature it's both sweet and bitter bitter flavor clears heat sweet because it nourishes yin and generates body fluids well we also say it's salty in flavor it's saltine flavor because it has this action of softening hardness so at least for me that's a question i like to ask a lot is what is the taste and temperature of schronchen because when i ask you what's the taste and temperature of shawn chen what i'm really asking you is do you know the functions of this herb that if you know it clears heat and cools the blood you should be able to know that it's bitter in flavor if you know that it nourishes yin and generates fluids you should know that it's sweet in flavor and if you can remember that it softens hardness then you know that it's salty in flavor so when i ask you what's the taste and temperature of schwann shen i'm really asking do you remember the functions of this herb so that's schronchen scrofulario radix the name of this herb schwann i believe in this context means dark i think it also mean like hidden or something like that but here it just means dark referring to the color and shen means root like ginseng is renshen man root so here schwann means dark shen means root this is dark root so maybe you can remember that uh schwann shen and shangdi huang look very similar they're both roots that are black in color and so they have very similar functions the one we want to know is um schwann chen is also salty in flavor for treating scrofula so that's schwann shen scrofularioratix next is mudon p mutant cortex this is peony root bark so i guess peony is a tree and there are roots to that tree and the roots have bark so this is the bark of a peony root tree p means bark or peel so we'll go through this but basically what we want to know about mood on p what makes this herb special what makes it stand out is it not only cools the blood it also invigorates blood as well so we're getting kind of a two in one so this is really good because a lot of times we'll have these two things go together that blood heat and stagnation that when there's heat in the blood that can dry out the blood and cause it to stagnate so we have a combination of heat and stagnation or sometimes when blood stagnates it creates heat that stagnation kind of festers there and it creates heat so we have stagnation and heat well regardless of the situation here we have an herb that treats both things at once so if we see this condition of a combined heat and stagnation instead of having to use one herb that clears the heat and one herb that moves the stagnation here we can use one herb that does both so mudon p definitely remember that it both cools the blood and invigorates blood that's very important to know so we say that mood on p like every herb in this category it clears heat and cools the blood so we use it for heat and the yin or shui levels but it's also very common to use it in women's health issues remember when we talk about all those types of bleeding that include included uterine bleeding or bleeding that comes with abnormal menses either profuse bleeding like really heavy periods where you have to change your pad every half an hour it could be prolonged bleeding or it's like oh my period is lasting like eight or nine days that's not normal or it could be um spotting between periods that my period ended and then a week later i get the spotting around day 14. sometimes you um there's this term in chinese that i i believe they translate as flooding and spotting or flooding and trickling and the idea here is you have an uh the normal length period but it's flooding that's really heavy flow it's like a flood gushing out and then they say flooding and spotting that after the period's over the flooding stops so you're still like spotting for days or weeks afterwards i should like not gesture downward when i talk about periods it's just a habit sorry about that but anyway mood on p is very useful specifically for this uh uterine bleeding or we could say ob gyn issues due to blood heat and like we said the second important thing is it not only cools blood it also invigorates blood to treat blood stagnation and again this is really useful when we're talking about women's health issues that these ob gyn conditions that when we have these problems with menstruation it's also it's very common that blood stagnation is a culprit so it's very so you'll see this come herb come up a lot when you start talking about formulas for women's health or formulas for ob gyn conditions uh amenorrhea means the period is not coming so if a person so basically if a patient comes in and says i haven't had my period like i'm supposed to have my period but it hasn't come yet we could call that um amenorrhea the period stopped and basically here there are two there are usually two possibilities either there's blood deficiency there's not enough blood to produce a period or there's blood stagnation meaning the blood is there but it's stuck and it's not coming out so the patient comes in and says i haven't had my period um kind of a weird side note uh this is like a this is like a just a thing that i do so be very skeptical of this but basically uh when i'm dealing with a patient that hasn't had their period of course the first question you ask is is there any possibility you could be pregnant but then what i usually ask is how do you know that your period is late like when you when you say you haven't had your period yet how did you know is it that uh you wrote you have a calendar or you you have your uh you have the the the right number of pills and according to the calendar you should have your period and it hasn't come yet or is it that you have symptoms like pms type symptoms that have been going on for a long time and you know that you should have your period because your body is telling you there's this period in here and needs to come out and so sometimes you get people that like oh if i didn't look in the calendar i wouldn't have known probably more like blood deficiency there's not enough blood to produce a period but sometimes you have people coming in being like i've been a raging for the last two weeks i have all this crap it feels like there's a demon stabbing my uterus and i have all these pms symptoms and like my period is there it just won't come out it's like the the period version of constipation and that i would say is more like blood stagnation and you just have to figure out what's causing the stagnation is it just blood stagnation is a cold stagnation anyway kind of a weird tangent but what we want to know is mudonp is going to be very useful for treating ob gyn conditions because it does two things for the blood it cools the blood and it also invigorates blood and then after that mood on p is a cold bitter herb so it just clears various types of heat in the body so we can say it clears liver heat especially liver heat that's flaring upward so we say ascendant liver heat or liver young rising headache eye pain dysmenorrhea painful menses because of heat so this can clear out that liver heat one example of this would be we have our our most famous formula for liver cheese stagnation is called xiao yasan free and easy wander cocktail or rambling powder so xiao yasan is very good for liberty stagnation well it turns out if your patient has liver chi stagnation and that's causing heat that qi is stagnant and cause heat and cause the heat to flare upward we can modify shalya's on and it's called yahweh xiaoyasan or more descriptively don jur xiao yasan so here we have the xiaoyou-san treating liver tea stagnation jutsu clears heat and mood on p clears heat as well so i say don jur don means mudan p jur means jerza and xiaoyasan so that's a we'll use this herb in conjunction with herbs that move liver qi to take care of that heat so that would be one example of using mood on pea to clear liver heat clears deficiency heat again we're um we're going to see this come up in a lot of our yin tonifying formulas like leo d hong hon sixth ingredient with romania pill that it's going to be there because it clears some some heat some deficiency heat so we'll combine this with yin tonifying herbs also drains pus and reducing swelling you can use it topically you can use it for a large antenna yeah that's that's technically true um we do have we do have a couple formulas when we start talking about large intestine abscess or appendicitis the mood on p does come up in there so that's that's true but it's i'd say this is a more special case so if you remember anything about mood on p i would know two things know that it cools the blood and invigorates blood this stuff is kind of extra but the two main things are it cools blood and invigorates blood and so we see that in the taste and temperature of course it's slightly cold because because it's clearing heat but it's bitter because of bitter flavor clears heat and drains fire it's acrid because the acrid flavor moves and disperses so if i were to ask you what's the taste and temperature of mood on p what i'm really asking you is do you remember the functions of mood on p if you remember that mudon p clears heat and cools the blood you should know that's bitter in flavor if you remember that mudon p also invigorates blood that should tell you that it's also acrid in flavor because the acrid flavor moves and disperses it moves the blood and disperses stagnation so that's why we have uh those those tastes associated with mood on p uh the other thing we can point out here um oh no that's not important mudan p it's we we're just saying it's special because it does those two things it cools blood and invigorates blood so it's very common to use in ob gyn conditions so this is all we're saying in that note down there as for the name mudon is just referring to the plant the piani tree um dan means this character means like cinnabar mu i don't remember what it means but p means peel so this is a bark or a peel or a cortex so this is the peel of the peony tree root so that's mood on p remember those two things mood on p mutant cortex and lastly we have zuz or nebia or a lithospermoradix when we have two uh third tones in the row the first one converts to a second tone so and also apologies to chinese speakers my my c's are very bad a lot of times i've been around chinese people and i try to say with a c and it sounds like i'm saying zao like that's all so sorry i just have very bad pronunciation really when you make the c sound in chinese it sounds like a ts and you should feel um when you say it you should feel air hitting your hands you should feel this air hitting your palm and so like a pizza pizza anyway uh [Music] means purple sal means herb this is a purple herb and really uh the thing i would remember about zutzao is it's good for rashes so if you see zitzel think skin conditions itchiness and rashes you can even remember that means purple herbs means purple so it's especially good for purple rashes or like we talked about those purpura or perpuric rashes which are bleeding under the skin but so does it sound good for purple rashes or really any type of rash so zuzal like everything here it cools the blood this one we actually say it cools blood and invigorates blood um yeah it does this is this is kind of like an annoying thing that people argue with me about it turns out in bensky like at the be at the beginning he has this key characteristics and in his key characteristics he said it cools and invigorates blood but then when he starts elaborating on the functions he never mentions invigorating blood again so it's it's like it's technically there but i'm not really sure you'd use the cell as a major blood and vibration certainly not the way you would use mood on p so we can say it cools blood and invigorates blood but it's not as strong as mood on p but its specialty in cooling blood is treating rashes remember we talked about [Music] these dark purple rashes that's like bleeding under the skin so we can say skin eruptions and rashes due to heat in the blood or fire toxin so yeah specialty is rashes we can also say it moistens the large intestine and promotes urination yeah it does that i'm not sure we would use it for that specifically i think this is more like if you have a rash due to heat it's very likely that you have constipation at the same time so the cell is going to be taking care of both and then we can also say it treats damp heat skin problems for itchiness and rashes so kind of the overlying theme here with zitsau is it's good for skin problems and rashes whether we're talking about blood level heat whether we're talking about fire toxicity or whether we're talking about damp heat whatever the type of heat that's out is good for rashes so here we can say um vaginal itching we can even say burns that's how is good for burns sores or diaper rash and so here we have this note here um a couple things about zuzao and rashes and maybe this can help you remember that zitsau is good for skin problems number one uh sao is good for um it's kind of used as like a home remedy for diaper rash and so what you do is you take some zutz out and you would just soak it in oil sesame oil for a couple weeks and then you can just take the oil and apply it on with a cotton ball and that's that's kind of a common kind of like folk remedy for diaper rash so this one you don't you don't have to cook it or you don't have to do anything fancy with it you can just take the zits out and soak it in oil and after a couple weeks the oil will kind of turn purplish and then you can apply that externally as a treatment for diaper rash because in uh diaper rash it's like that skin problem that itchiness but i think it's also uh there's some dampness involved here just because you have a diaper next to the skin and it's trapping in all the moisture so that kind of rashes we're kind of implying that it's damp heat so zits always good for damp heat skin conditions like diaper rash we can also say that zutzao is an ingredient in a type of burn cream in chinese this is an external cream called zu yun gao purple cloud ointment in japanese it's called shunko and so if you're with a japanese practitioner it's very common that they'll use this ointment called shunko and that's what they use as a base when they do rice grain moxa that japanese style practitioners especially like to do a lot of rice grain matzah in order to get the mox of the stick they'll put down some burn cream first and at least the practitioners i've seen do that they use shunko and shunko is just a preparation of this herb sal plus dongue dongway also tonifies blood invigorates blood and regenerates flesh and you cook them in oil and then you add beeswax to kind of make it a little bit more solid and that makes an ointment that you can spread on the skin and so that can be used as a burn cream that can be used for other types of skin problems because it's clearing heat cooling the blood invigorating blood and regenerating flesh so we can use that topically as like a burn cream i would say like if you're actually treating burns it's it's okay it works but if you can get the ching hong wan that stuff works better the the stuff in the little red can i for burns i actually like that better but some people a lot of people do use yoon gao purple cloud ointment or shinko uh as a burn cream so as for the name like we said means purple sao means grass or herb so is purple herb i think we're going to see the the colors come up a lot i think so far we we've seen a purple reviving leaf so z means purple here we have another purple z sound later we'll learn purple flower zhua di ding so z means purple zuzal means purple herb and that's kind of weird because when you look at this herb sample in this picture it doesn't look very purple so it turns out the the reason i use this picture is because this is the herb sample i had when i was in school and so if you're doing herb id from your school it's possible that this is what your sample looks like it turns out that this is not true and so if you go into bensky he actually has a section where he has some pictures of herbs and he talks about common uh counterfeits or we call them adulterated herbs where it's like people got the wrong herb and this is something if you uh if you know eric brand this is something that he knows a lot about is like how do we know that we're getting the true authentic version of the herb but anyway this is a very common counterfeit or common adulterant of this herb that is actually a slightly different herb so if your herb looks like this it's not true zatzal real zitsal actually does look purple so this is the real cell so this is one when i was in school we had a sample our sample wasn't the correct one but when we went into the herb room we did have the real zitzaw and you can tell it looks very different it definitely looks um first of all this one it's a lithospermy radix it's a root this looks like a fuzzy thing this doesn't look like a root this one looks more like a root and it looks a little bit more purple in color i'm kind of colorblind but i'm pretty sure that this is a little bit more purple than the other one the other thing is if you have a bag of it or a jar if you open the jar and smell it this does not smell very nice it has a very it has kind of a foul putrid smell so that's the way you know if you have real zits out it should have a strong smell that's not necessarily pleasant so that's uh that's how this is what the real style looks like but if you have um if you have an herb sample if you like we would always just get like a box of herbs that had like 100 herb samples in it that we had to be able to identify that's what our herb sample looked like if you go to an herb shop and your herb looks like that that's not real that's how that's counterfeits itself so after that um we can maybe talk about some formula applications of these herbs because like we said this herb this category uh herbs that cool the blood the most famous application of these herbs is in our wen bing theory when we're talking about heat going through the four levels or the four aspects whey level chi level yin level shui level we use these herbs for both the yin level and the shui level so even though we call the category herbs that cool the blood yes of course we use it for blood level heat but we actually use it for nutritive level heat as well it's just the difference between yin level and shui level is just going to be what other herbs we combine it with our treatment principle is a little bit different and so this is a little bit extra but just maybe to give you some additional understanding we can talk about some of the formulas that that we use for wending conditions so when it comes to nutritive level heat our main formula is ching yingtong clear the yin level decoction or clear the nutritive level decoction so uh hopefully this is one of the easier ones where when you get to formula class if you have a test and they're like what formula do you use to clear heat from the yin level should be really easy pick the one that says clear the yin level decoction so qingtang is clear the ying level or clear the nutritive level decoction and you can see our familiar herbs here we have hijao was traditionally used that was rhinoceros horn so xiao we would use shuei nyo jiao water buffalo horn and we're using this pair uh shreno jiao plush shandi huang to clear that to clear the heat from the neutral or blood level schwann shen was our one that's very similar to shangdi and so basically um we see our symptoms of yin level heat high fever that worsens at night severe irritability and restlessness possible thirst the reason we say possible thirst this is kind of interesting the possible thirst it depends on is the heat completely at the yin level or is there still some lingering at the chi level because again it's like traversing downward deeper into the body so if we have some heat that's still lingering at the qi level the patient will feel thirsty because we're in our big thirst was one of our symptoms for qi level heat however once the heat completely leaves the qi level and is only in the yin level then the thirst will disappear it's like that heat is deep enough it starts to steam the fluids up the patient doesn't feel thirsty anymore it's kind of weird but that's one of our symptoms is possible thirst delirium and then we say faint or indistinct rashes and again we have a scarlet dry tongue and a thin rapid pulse for yin level heat and again we're using these herbs from the category herbs that cool the blood to treat this yin level heat it just turns out that we're combining it with some other herbs that kind of vent things outward so i don't think we've learned very many of these so far uh we did learn don juliet from the drain fire category but jin yin hua lian chao or kind of like release the exterior herbs and so what we're trying to do is we're clearing that heat of the yin level but we're also trying to vent it upwards back into the qi level so that's we're using these herbs we're also trying to use or herbs that push it up a level whereas when you get the blood level heat our formula is xi jiao di huang tang rhinoceros horn and romania decoction so again hopefully this is pretty simple if anybody asks you what are the chief ingredients in rhinoceros horn and romania decoction should be able to answer rhinoceros horn and romania so again we have this uh these familiar herbs we're again using uh this pair of xi jiao and shangdi huang so our inos resort in romania to clear blood level heat and here we're also using our herb mudan p another herb from this category so we look at our symptoms these are symptoms of blood level heat we have fever and our key symptom for blood level heat is bleeding vomiting blood nosebleed blood in the stool blood in the urine rashes and we're talking about either maculopapular rashes or perpuric rashes which is basically bleeding under the skin black tarry stool means there's blood in the stool um possible delirium because the heat is affecting the heart scarlet tongue with prickles the heat is so bad you got like a rash on your tongue even so anyway here we're we're using those very similar herbs xi jian shanghuang but we're not combining it with those venting herbs when it gets to the blood level there's really no possibility to vent it back upwards we have to treat it at the blood level and it's actually really important that we're using mudon p because remember we said that mood on p not only cools the blood it also invigorates blood and so what's happening here is we have this heat at the blood level damaging the fluids damaging the yin so this heat is actually drying out the blood and so we not only have blood level heat we have this kind of dead dried out blood so it's not enough to just clear the heat we also have to invigorate the blood we have to get it moving it's it's kind of sluggish um so that's why we use mudon p to invigorate blood sure shall is another one that has similar properties that it cools blood and invigorates blood so here with this one we get the blood level heat our treatment strategy kind of changes a bit when it was at the yin level we tried to vent the heat upward when we're at the blood level we have to clear the heat from the blood level but also invigorate the blood and so that's why mood on pee is important that it both cools the blood and invigorates blood so if we do a summary do you don't know if you can read that but let's do a summary uh we leave out xi jiao rhinoceros horn because technically we don't use that herb according to bensky it's not in this category it's moved to the category obsolete substances which is an appendix at the end but we do use a shueno jio water buffalo horn has all the same properties of xi jiao he said water buffalo horn clear heat and cools the blood for blood level heat like we saw in those two other formulas it clears heart heat because that heat gets into the heart and causes shen problems like irritability insomnia delirium um it can also treat tremors but i remember shrinking representative herb for blood level heat shundi huang is raw romania root often combined with shranyo jiao to treat blood level heat so it clears heat and cools the blood the other thing that we need to know about it is that it nourishes yin and generates body fluids so shanghuang is bitter because it clears heat cools the blood it's sweet because it generates body fluids schwann chen scrofulario radix same thing as sheng di huang clears heat cools the blood uh we saw it in our yin level heat formula and it also uh tonify's yin generates body fluids what we need to know about additionally is it softens hardness for things like swelling of the throat throat pain goiter and scrofula so that's why schwann jen is salty in flavor because it treats those throat nodules mudon p mutant cortex what we need to know about this one is it cools the blood and invigorates blood the fact that it does both makes it very special the fact that it does both makes it very useful for ob gyn conditions or women's health issues like prolonged menses painful menses amenorrhea things like that sao is purple herb think skin problems so rashes itchiness it can even be burns and sores but that's how it cools the blood but its specialty is treating skin problems and rashes so that is the category herbs that cool the blood so again we're in this category uh herbs that clear heat we had last time we did herbs that drained fire this time we did herbs that cool the blood our next one i think is going to be herbs that clear heat and dry dampness but this was our our review of the category herbs that cool the blood thank you for being here again videos like this are brought to you by viewers like you thank you so these videos are made possible thanks to the support of people like our patreon members uh patreon members are people who pledge like a monthly donation you're like five dollars a month and that really helps me out and keeps the keeps this channel going so uh if you want to join them in supporting the channel if you get value out of these videos and you want to show your support there are a couple ways you can do it there are some links in the description below one ways to join the patreon that's like a monthly subscription there's also a link to buy me a coffee if you want to do a one-time donation that's just a one-time thing instead of a monthly thing there's also merchandise on the website if you want some of those t-shirts that i had if we uh if you go to tcmstudy.net under resources there's some merchandise if you want one of these shirts that says this is the way uh which i think i wore in a different one that's like an easy way to do it another way you can do it is uh if you buy your textbooks through here these are links to amazon these are affiliate links so if you go here and click on one of those links anything you buy on amazon within the next 24 hours it will give me a very small discount or a very small commission like four and a half five percent so i know people are i know a lot of people are like anti-amazon but if you're into buying things on amazon this is a something you can do that will also help support the site there also we should mention that all we did here was a more thorough review of this category so this would be like if you were in class if you were taking an herbology one class and you had a quiz on this one category this is a very thorough review of this category if you're studying for year ends if you're studying for your clinic entrance exams or if you're studying for your boards this is probably a little bit too in-depth that if you want something that's a little bit quicker just a quick review of all the herbs there are also review courses on the website so if you go here go to review courses there is one review course for single herbs that goes through all the single herbs i think 283 single herbs and there's a formula review course that goes over all the formulas on the nccum list so if you want more of an overview of all the herbs this is a much more this is a quicker overview where we'll go through entire sections of bensky in uh in less than an hour so this has uh handouts that summarize all of the herbs it has a video lectures for each category that kind of goes through quick and it has some practice tests for each of the categories so we have like a 56 questions so that's another way you can support the website is by looking at those review courses that's also keeps the channel going like i said if you want to download the slides that go along with this those are on the website we also have flash cards that go along with this category and if you want you can take a practice test so i think if you go down here to herbs that cool the blood uh there are the slides here there are flash cards there are three versions of the of the flash cards some of them have pictures and little emojis on them if you want to use up all your color ink you can print those or they're just black and white ones but we can also go down here herbs are cool of blood there's a practice test and so if you want to practice you can take a test what's the taste and temperature of mood on p well remember mudon p it's probably going to be cool in temperature because we're in the clear heat and cool the blood category so it's probably going to be cool in temperature so cross out the warm cross out the neutral and if we remember the functions of mudon p we said that mudon p cools the blood so it's going to be bitter in flavor and mudon peat invigorates blood so it's going to be acrid in flavor so we can kind of just knowing the temperature we can cross out some of these but we want the uh acrid and bitter from udon p besides clearing heat what's another important function of shang huang sheng di huang remember it um it uh clear scene cools the blood but it's also very useful in our yin tonifying formula so shu di huang enriches yin and moistens dryness so if you want to take a short test that's available on the website as well if there are any questions let me know in the comments or in the chat and we'll get to those other than that we'll see you next time [Music]