Today we talk about Shiitake mushrooms. That does not mean it is the least important. It just presented them as I ran into them. Shiitake, maitake, and reishi mushrooms (see previous blogs) are widely referred to as “medicinal mushrooms” due to their long history of medical use, particularly in oriental medicine traditions. The earliest written
Grifola frondosa. Isn’t she lovely. The beautiful dancing mushroom. Classified as an adaptogen helping the body recover from stress and resist infection. Maitake is another mushroom that has been used for hundreds of years. It was historically used more in Japan but is easily grown anywhere. The name “dancing mushroom” is not from it’s beautiful
Coriolus contains polysaccharide peptide (PSP) and polysaccharide-K (PSK, krestin), which may be able to fight tumor growth as well as boost the immune system. It is widely used in China and Japan in treating chronic and serious immune challenges. It provides a chemo protective defense to healthy cells while sensitizing cancerous cells. In Japan Krestin
Reference to this herb goes back thousands of years in Tibet, China and Japan. Because of its rarity it was reserved for use by the emperor and royalty. The literal translation of Dong chong xia cao is “winter bug summer herb” or “summer grass winter worm”. It was described as transforming from animal to plant and back
I will be offering a short series on 5 magic mushrooms. Some are considered adaptogens. Many have been used for thousands of years and are rare in the wild. It has taken centuries to discover how to grow them ‘in captivity’ and still obtain a product that provides the same healing properties. This is true
A few weeks ago my office partner said he was going to make elecampagne honey. I said let’s do it together. I’ll take pictures as you show me how to do it. Really it was “something to put in my blog”. Elecampane is great to nourish the Spleen to resolve dampness so it makes it
I ran across this in my documents and thought it would be a good link to share. I goes into a fair amount of detail about the intricacies of using Chinese herbal medicine and why I make comments like “See a licensed acupuncturist” for a prescription. We want to keep you safe and get you
Perhaps you started seeing this squash in the last year of two. It was new to me but a friend told me how easy it is to use and I have made it a number of times. What I like about this squash – Kabocha – is that you don’t have to peel the skin even
Yin qiao san is a bigger formula than Yu ping feng san. I will discuss a bit about all of the herbs and explain a little about how an herbal formula is created in Chinese medicine. This formula is used to treat Wind/Heat as most of the herbs are cooling. But any formula will have a
Fall and Winter are the seasons in which people think about getting the cold or flu. In Chinese medicine we call it a Wind/Cold or Wind/Heat invasion or EPI – external pathogen invasion. This formula is one that we start a lot of our patients on as kids go back to school. This formula is for