Skip to main content

Friday Formula: Holiday Food Edition (Bao He Wan)

Bao He Wan / Preserve Harmony Pill

  1. Crataegi Fructus / Shan Zha 180g
  2. Massa medieata fermentata / Shen Qu 60g
  3. Pinelliae Rhizoma (preparatum) / Zhi Ban Xia 90g
  4. Poria / Fu Ling 90g
  5. Citri reticulatae Pericarpium / Chen Pi 30g
  6. Forsynthiae Fructus / Lian Qiao 30g
  7. Raphani Semen / Lai Fu Zi 30g

Preparation Grind the herbs in to powder and then take with warm water, or can be decocted in hot water; if decocted use one tenth the amount each time.

Even though this formula comes towards the back of modern formula textbooks, it is often one of the first prescriptions an aspiring physician learns. The typical scenario is that a Chinese medicine student eats too much at a party or celebration the day/night before. In the morning, after complaining of a stomach ache, their teacher will give them this formula and then use the 'teachable moment' to discuss the herbs in the formula. The primary action of this formula is Promoting digestion and regulating the Stomach. The typical presentation of this syndrome would be focal distention and fullness in the chest and epigastrium, abdominal distention and possibly pain often described as 'a stomach ache.' Common accompanying symptoms include nausea, possible vomiting, belching, and diarrhea. The tongue will have a greasy yellow coating and the pulse will be slippery. The principal herb is Chinese hawthorn fruit, Crataegi Fructus or shan zha in Chinese. Hawthorn fruit removes food stagnation, especially that from greasy food like meat. It is also used to treat hypertension and angina due to its ability to increase circulation and move blood stasis.

Please see the disclaimer at the bottom of this post. However, the herbs in this formula are mild and it is generally appropriate for most people after over eating. It is available from most reputable herb suppliers, and acupuncturists will often administer it to patients to keep in their medicine cabinet in case they need it. Prepackaged pills should be taken at the dose listed on them or as directed by your physician or acupuncturist. A common does of commercially available versions of this formula would say

4 tabs/pills 3 times per day

In the common case of over eating a large meal, I would take the first dose as soon as symptoms appear. I would then administer the second dose 1-2 hours after the first if symptoms have not improved. Discontinue the formula as soon as symptoms fade. There are a great many caveats with taking any medications, and I consider herbal prescriptions to be medication, without the advice of a physician that can evaluate your symptoms and is familiar with the medication. Symptoms lasting more than 24h, any sign of a medical emergency including signs of internal digestive bleeding, or any other severe symptoms not consistent with simple over eating should be evaluated by a physician as soon as practical. With those disclaimers, Preserving Harmony Pill is a good addition to the home medicine cabinet and in the case of overindulgence at a large meal can be a replacement for OTC medications like tums or bismuth subsalicylate.

This blog is for information purposes only and is not medical advice. Never start, stop, or change the dose of any medication or supplements, including herbs, without talking to your doctor. Every effort has been made to present accurate information, but the accuracy of any information here is not guaranteed. These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA or any other regulatory agency.

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Acupuncture In Modern Healthcare

Several national acupuncture associations worked together this past year to publish a whitepaper on the role acupuncture has to play in opioid epidemic. You can read more about that here or download the full 21 page report here . The two main points are that acupuncture is safe and effective for pain as a first line treatment and that acupuncture is an effective adjunct therapy in treating opioid addiction. Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria And Acupuncture Also this week, wired published an article titled: The Post-Antibiotic Era Is Here. Now What? detailing the rise of antibiotic resistance bacteria declaring: Folks are dying simply because there is no antibiotic available to treat their infection, infections that not too long ago were easily treatable. As the article points out, millions of lives have been saved by the use of antibiotics and the development of new and different classes of antibiotics. Western medicine has made great advances since the development of penicilin....
1 comment
Read more

Catching Up on Sleep this Weekend

It's almost the weekend! How many of us are planning on "catching up" on sleep. That is sleeping in late, or going to bed early, because we missed some sleep during the week. If we compare sleep to money then it makes sense that we can catch up on sleep. Just like if you spend too much money one week, provided you don't bankrupt yourself, you can scrimp the next week and have the same amount of money in the bank at the end of the month. Like most things in the human body, our sleep schedules are not that simple. There is no clear answer to why humans need sleep; however, some of the consequences of sleep deprivation include lowered immune function and decreased muscle growth[1]. We often use or hear the phrase "sleep debt" to represent the cumulative negative effects of insufficient sleep over multiple nights. This term, used by researchers and health professionals, reinforces the analogy of sleep as money. As if there was a "sleep bank" t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Friday Formula: Six Ingredient Pill with Rehmannia

Liu Wei Di Huang Wan / Six Ingredient Pill with Rehmannia Rhizoma Rehmanniae / shu di huang 240g Fructus Corni / shan zhu yu 120g Rhizoma Dioscoreae / shan yao 120g Rhizoma Alismatis / ze xie 90g Poria / fu ling 90g Cortex Moutan Radix / mu dan pi 90g Preparation grind the herbs into powder and form 9g pills with honey to hold them together, take one pill three times per day. This formula is an elegant combination of herbs that demonstrates the art of combining herbs into formulas rather than prescribing single herbs. When I was in school, one of my teachers told us that six ingredient pill with rehmannia was the most commonly purchased/prescribed formula in Japan. The primary pattern that six ingredient pill with rehmannia treats is Kidney Yin Vacuity. TCM categorizes pathology into patterns which have a common root or treatment principle to resolve them. The names of the organ systems, ie Kidney , are the same as the physical organs in the body and include ...
1 comment
Read more