Issue 14 - October 2004

Chinese herbal tonics put yin and yang in balance
By Albert Y. Leung, PhD

Chiropractic and Chinese herbal tonics have much in common. Conventional medicine and drug therapy are disease-oriented, with most treatments focusing on ameliorating symptoms. These treatments are often harsh and cause an imbalance to one’s health, leading to further health problems.

In contrast, chiropractic treatment is a mild technique that corrects an off-balanced nerve system just as Chinese tonic herbs (or acupuncture) offer mild help to balance one’s general body system.

Although chiropractic and the field of Chinese herbal tonics may have different terminologies, the objectives and end results are the same — to restore and maintain a patient’s balance and optimal health.

According to the principles of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), a person is healthy when his (or her) yin and yang are in balance.

If for whatever reason the yin/yang is out of balance, health problems arise. Many factors can cause this imbalance — such as physical and mental stress, toxins in the food we eat, the water we drink and the air we breathe, the harsh toxic effects of drugs (herbal drugs included), smoking, excessive alcohol drinking and indulgence in bad foods.

Many of these health problems can be resolved by gently restoring balance with various traditional means, including exercises (taiqichuan or tai chi, qigong, etc.), tuina massage and appropriate foods and tonics.

Tonics (for example, American ginseng for deficient yin and Asian ginseng for deficient yang) have been used to restore balance for thousands of years.

RICH IN NUTRIENTS
Many foods, such as fresh fruits and vegetables, are rich in phytonutrients (nutrients from plants) that are strong antioxidants, including vitamins A, C, E and beta-carotene. While the benefits of known vitamins have been proven for decades, those of phytonutrients and many newly discovered phytochemicals (chemicals from plants) are just beginning to be recognized by the scientific community.

Phytonutrients possess one or more of numerous beneficial pharmacological effects, such as antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, detoxicant, immunomodulating, hypolipemic, hypotensive, anti-arthritic, anti-allergic, antihistaminic, anti-mutagenic, anti-tumor, antiviral, liver protectant, anti-atherosclerotic, hypoglycemic, healing, anti-fatigue, etc.

Phytonutrients include such phytochemicals as flavonoids, lignans, terpenoids, polysaccharides, glycosides and catechin tannins (procyanidins), which recent and ongoing studies indicate are poised to be as important to human health as vitamins are.

Traditional Chinese tonic herbs, which are especially rich in phytonutrients, have been in use for more than 3,000 years. However, because of a lack of good and accurate English writing (not translations from Chinese) on Chinese tonic herbs, American consumers have not had access to them as a source of beneficial nutrients and dietary supplements.

A current trend in dietary supplements is to take high doses of purified phytochemicals such as catechin tannins or synephrine in capsule or pill form, rather than ingesting them as traditional green tea or bitter orange. This trend runs counter to holistic-minded healthcare because high doses of phytochemicals can throw the body off balance as much as not having enough of them.

Another alternative is to use Chinese tonic herbs. Tonic formulas (true herbal supplements), if produced with the right herbs extracted in the right way, can help chiropractic patients maintain a healthy balance after their chiropractic treatments.

USE WITH CARE

However, before incorporating Chinese herbal tonics in your practice, you need to be aware of two things:

• History of safe use. The herbs you recommend must have a long history of safe use, either as foods or tonics — not specifically as medicines only.

A few examples of the more common tonic herbs include: astragalus root (huangqi), Cherokee rose hip (jinyingzi), chrysanthemum flower (juhua), codonopsis root (dangshen), Chinese angelica root or dong quai (danggui), eleuthero (ciwujia), cured fo-ti (zhiheshouwu), reishi mushroom (lingzhi), American & Asian ginseng, lycium fruit (gouqizi), Job’s tears (yimi), Chinese hawthorn (shanzha), jujube fruit (dazao), jujube seed (suanzaoren), licorice root, black sesame seed, schisandra berry (wuweizi), turmeric rhizome (jianghuang), ginger root and rehmannia root (dihuang, raw/cured).

• Select manufacturers with a strong scientific reputation. The National Center for Comple-mentary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) recently stopped all botanical research funded by the National Institutes of Health because it realized that much of the studies on herbs were based on ill-defined or even wrongly-identified herbal materials.

Although the NCCAM decision points out the lack of herbal knowledge on the part of many scientists investigating herbal medicines, experienced herbalists and a small number of scientific specialists (pharmacognosists, ethnobotanists, etc.) do know their herbs.

The lesson for chiropractors is this: When you select Chinese herbal tonics, it is important to know their manufacturer and whether it has the necessary scientific and TCM expertise. What you need to look for is the expertise behind the herbs.

It is relatively easy nowadays to check out companies and their key technical experts on the Internet. If they have credentials in this field at all, this information should surface
outside of its own Web site.

Incorporating good-quality traditional Chinese herbal tonics to supplement one’s chiropractic practice not only will improve the patients’ health and general well-being but will financially benefit the doctor as well.

Dr. Albert Y. Leung, a graduate of the University of Michigan, is an internationally renowned pharmacognosist (a scientist who specializes in botanical medicine) and author. He is co-editor of American Herbal Products Association (AHPA), Herbs of Commerce, 2nd Edition, a publication recognized by the FDA for the labeling of herbal supplements. Dr. Leung is the founder and president of Phyto-Technologies and Earth Power, Inc. He can be reached through his Web site, www.earthpower.com or by phone at 877-809-3404.