Herbal Medicine and medical cuisine

Many foreigners visiting China never try Chinese herbal medicine (zhongyao) because they either know nothing about it or simply don't believe in it. But zhongyao is very popular in Chinese families, especially among old people.

Prominent medical authorities in the west often dismiss herbalists as no better than witch doctors. The ingredients, which may include such marvelous things as snake gall bladder or powdered deer antlers, will further discourage potential non-Chinese customers. Many of the herbs are bitter powders (you may want to load these into empty gelatin capsules if you can't stand the taste). And finally, even true believers are baffled by the wide assortment of herbs available on the shelves of any Chinese pharmacy - it's hard to know where to begin.

Having experimented with Chinese herbs ourselves, we've found several of them to be remarkably effective. Chinese herbalists have all sorts of treatments for stomach-aches,headaches, colds, flu and sore throats. They also have herbs to treat long-term problems like asthma. Many of these herbs do work well for the patients.

Chinese medicine seems to work best for the relief of unpleasant symptoms (pain, sore throat, etc. ) and for some long-term conditions which resist western medicines, such as migraine headaches, asthma and chronic backache.

When reading about the theory behind Chinese medicine, the word 'holistic' appears often. Basically, this means that Chinese medicine seeks to treat the whole body rather than focusing on a particular organ or disease.

Using appendicitis as an example, a Chinese doctor may try to fight the infection using all the body's defenses, whereas a western doctor would simply cut out the appendix. In this instance the western technique works better, since removing the appendix surgically is 100% effective, though there is always some risk from the surgical procedure itself. In the case of migraine headaches, on the other hand, Chinese herbs may actually prove more effective than western medical treatments.