CHINESE HERBAL MEDICINE

Humans have been using plants as medicine for thousands of years. Without modern scientific knowledge, doctors in ancient China used herbs to prevent and heal diseases successfully. Their knowledge came from trial and error, repeatedly tasting and testing herbs as medicine. Through this process, Chinese doctors came to understand medicinal plants by their ‘directionality’. When ingested, herbs (and foods) have a specific direction or vector in the body, such as up, down, in, or out. For example, when we eat hot/spicy foods, the acrid flavor and warm temperature push our qi up and out, causing a mild sweat and flushing on the face.

The directionality of an herb is determined by its flavor and temperature. Each herb’s flavor (sweet, bitter, sour, acrid, salty, bland) and temperature (cold, cool, neutral, warm, hot) determine its therapeutic effect on the body. For instance, Cinnamon Twig (Gui Zhi, 桂枝) is acrid, sweet, and warm. Gui Zhi’s acrid and warm qualities create movement and focus the body’s attention up and out to the surface. Thus, Gui Zhi is an excellent herb for treating specific cold and flu presentations and certain types of joint pain and arthritis. In Chinese medicine, illness is also recognized as having directionality and more often than not, illnesses present with more than one vector. In order to address this, Chinese herbal formulas are often multi-layered in their approach to treatment.