Though it has received much less attention in the popular media, the use of Chinese herbs goes hand in hand with acupuncture and is an essential part of Oriental Medicine. Chinese herbal formulas treat a wide variety of conditions by stimulating the body's natural healing process and have shown excellent results in Chinese hospital studies with patients who failed to respond to conventional pharmaceuticals. Unlike most single-ingredient herbal supplements administered by Naturopathic Doctors or those sold in health-food stores, Chinese herbs are taken in formulas which combine two to eighteen different herbs. Most herbal formulas used by Oriental Medicine practitioners have been in use for over 2,000 years, and the herbs in these formulas have been found to work synergistically together to increase their healing power while simultaneously reducing the potential side effects of the various herbs involved.
In Oriental Medicine, all phenomena (including all aspects of the body and health) can be described as either yin or yang. Yin describes that which is cool or cold, more interior, calm, slow, and chronic. Yang describes that which is warm or hot, more superficial, active, fast, and acute. Health, in Oriental Medicine, is a result of balancing the ),in and the yang. In using Chinese herbs, therefore, an Oriental Medicine practitioner will use yin herbs to "cool" conditions which show an excess of yang, and so forth. Moreover, any medicine which is too yin or yang will be unbalanced, and therefore cause side-effects. Chinese formulas, therefore, have been perfected over thousands of years so that those herbs in the formula which are too yang are "cooled" by other herbs in the formula, and vice-versa, reducing side-effects and maximizing effectiveness. Traditionally, Chinese herbal formulas were taken by boiling dry herbs and drinking the "tea" that resulted. These days, however, most patients in the United States lead busy lives and may not have the time to boil herbs for hours each day. Therefore, our herbal formulas are concentrated whole-herb extracts in convenient pill or powder form. Our herbs are FDA-approved, Good Manufacturing Process certified, of high potency, and sold exclusively through the offices of Oriental Medical practitioners.