Category: Chinese Medicine

Ancient Herbal Supplement Shows Promise Against Cancer

Berberine’s effect on lung cancer has just been published in the journal Pharmaceutics, showing potent anticancer activity in a study that crosses the divide between Eastern and Western medicine. While the natural compound found in plants such as turmeric and barberry has been used in traditional Chinese and Ayurvedic medicine for thousands of years, it has…


What Your Face Says About You

Mien shiang is an ancient Taoist art that literally means face (mien) reading (shiang) and has been practiced for more than 3,000 years. This ancient art aims to give us a wealth of information about a person–from personality traits to possible health problems—by simply looking at their face. Many ancient Taoists believed that the face…


Basic Skills for Being a Healthy Human

“Chinese medicine” is a bit of a misnomer. When I began my studies in acupuncture, I thought I was going to learn about medicine. Instead, we learned about health, at least as the foundation. Although Chinese medicine has a robust understanding of disease pathology and the many avenues to its treatment and cure, it more…


Why We Cry and How It Helps Us

For me, it’s SPCA commercials or any ad for the local animal shelter. Before I can reach the remote and change the channel, I’m choking back tears at the sight of some forlorn animal—and then the dam breaks, leaving me a sobbing mess. Crying is something few of us think about until we are in…


The Cycles of Aging

All of us move through life in a series of stages, each with its own unique characteristics. When we are young, we go through phases of intense growth and development until we reach maturity, and then there is a gradual state of decline as we get older. These stages were clearly defined thousands of years…


Why We Need Our Intuition

We’ve all had that feeling—an instant knowing that something isn’t right. Whether in a business deal or when a friend hasn’t called in a while, somewhere deep inside us we have a knowing, and we can’t explain why. That is intuition, and it has been with us, buried deep in the limbic system for a…


Chinese Medicine and The Causes of Disease

In the Eastern view, we’re healthy when our bodies are balanced and harmonious. This balance is between yin (cold/water energies) and yang (hot/fire energies), our internal organs, and our relationship with the external environment. This harmony is in a constant state of flux because of the activities of our daily lives, how we manage our…


Chinese Herbal Medicine for COVID-19 Highly Successful: A Systematic Review

Traditional Chinese Herbal Medicine (TCM) has made an important contribution to preventing and controlling Covid19 since the outbreaks began in 2020. The NIH published a new study in PubMed Feb 28, 2022.  The study explains how researchers systematically screened literature of various randomized controlled trials (RCT) of Traditionally Chinese herbs used for Covid and what…


Yin, Yang, and Food as Medicine

Food has always been powerful medicine. In a culture that often looks to big pharma to cure its ills, it can be a departure to think of what we eat every day as a resource to repair and restore health. But the truth is that using food as medicine is as old as time. Traditional…


Feeding Your Heart and Soul With Joy

Nobody is happy right now. And no wonder. The world has turned upside down, and we are all still reeling, trying to catch our collective breath. The past two years have been destabilizing: financially, physically, and emotionally. Constant anxiety, new variants, and endless restrictions have worn us down. And the things that previously brought relief…