Enlivening Your Physiology With Chinese Herbs

When learning about traditional East Asian herbalism, it can be helpful to start at the simplest level: the herbalist is prescribing medicinal herbs to bring balance to a person’s inner ecosystem. If you’re too hot, for instance, you require cooling herbs. Too cold? You guessed it! You could use some herbs that provide warmth.

This same principle applies in cases of too much outwardness or inwardness; too much upwardness or downwardness; too much dampness or dryness; too much consolidation or movement.

The herbalist discerns the person’s imbalance and prescribes the appropriate herbs—drawing on the herbs’ flavors, their temperatures, their main abilities—in order to nudge that person toward harmony and health.

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But since the human being is complex, the practice of herbal prescription is more nuanced than simply giving moistening herbs to people experiencing dryness or stimulating herbs to those with stagnation. The herbalist must have a good understanding of physiology and pathology, and must be able to think flexibly.

Why, for instance, is there too much “upwardness” in a given person? Take the case of nausea, which is considered excessive upward movement (in health, the digestive system should be primarily moving downward). From the perspective of East Asian herbalism, there are many possible reasons for the upwardness of nausea—there could be Stomach pathology (Stomach Heat or Cold, Dryness or Dampness); Spleen Deficiency with Dampness or Dryness; Liver Qi Stagnation; or Intestinal issues (Dampness or Dryness, Heat or Cold of the Small or Large Intestine).

Nausea is a symptom reflecting a deeper disharmony in the organ networks that needs to be addressed. It would not be enough to merely tamp down the nausea with herbs that promote descent; while that might provide some relief, we also need to address the root of the problem.

In the case of nausea due to Liver Qi Stagnation, for instance, the nausea is secondary to the malfunctioning of the Liver system. If I were to prescribe an herbal formula for this case, I’d need to consider incorporating herbs that “spread Liver Qi” (like the herb bupleurum, which relieves tension) and herbs that “transform phlegm” (such as the herb pinellia, which resolves fluid coagulation, a trigger for nausea). And so, herbal formulas tend to be complex—they offer sets of functions that can target both the roots and the branches of disharmony. In our example case, the experience of nausea itself is the branch symptom, while the Liver Qi Stagnation is the root cause.

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My mentor, Dr. Joon Hee Lee, likes to say that herbs don’t treat disease; they treat the person who has the disease. Western biomedicine tends to get caught up in a “war zone” mentality, pitting patient versus pathogen. In Traditional East Asian Medicine, however, it’s about optimizing your ability to “meet” the world with resilience.

The herbalist must ask of their client: “What is this person’s constitution like? Do they possess all the resources needed to be able to navigate life’s ‘slings and arrows’? In what ways does the person need assistance? Where is healthy physiology hindered?” Once the person’s inner ecosystem is understood, the appropriate herbs can be prescribed. The herbalist chooses a combination of medicinals specifically targeted to the person’s constitution and their particular presentation of signs and symptoms.

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Herbs possess a sophistication that pharmaceutical drugs simply cannot offer. Over millennia, plants have evolved a complex arsenal of biochemical powers (called phytochemicals) to protect and nourish themselves. Early humans recognized that they could benefit from these herbal “super-powers” by consuming plants. When taking herbs, we are “borrowing” the intelligence and strength of plants to support our own health.

On the other hand, pharmaceuticals, though they are powerful, have significant limitations. One limitation is that they are constantly being outsmarted by ever-evolving pathogens; this is why our current crop of antibiotic drugs is quickly becoming obsolete.

Pharmaceuticals’ lack of sophistication is further reflected in their tendency to induce myriad side-effects. While pharma drugs might forcefully target a particular problem, they tend to leave a host of new problems in their wake. A person might be prescribed additional pharmaceuticals just to deal with the negative consequences of a primary drug. Herbs, on the other hand, are much safer, especially when they are prescribed in skillfully-designed formulas.

Furthermore, pharma drugs are frequently over-prescribed and mis-prescribed. A great example is the case of acid reflux:

There is a billion dollar industry built on the prescription of drugs to suppress stomach acid. Yet the problem at the root of most cases of acid reflux isn’t an over-abundance of stomach acid, but rather a lack of it. This lack of acid prevents food from being fully broken down and allows for the growth of bacteria, which leads to gas production. The pressure from the gas balloons the stomach. At the same time, the stomach is compensating for its weak acid by physically working harder to break down food. Between the pressure from the bacteria and the stomach’s excessive churning, acid is forced upward into the esophagus—thus the burning sensation.

The knee-jerk biomedical response to most problems is suppression, and the case of acid reflux is no different: the typical protocol is to douse the stomach with acid-reducing drugs like H2-blockers or proton pump inhibitors. Though it might quiet the reflux symptoms, this method neglects—and can even worsen—the root problem of underproduction of acid.

Herbs, on the other hand, can support a strengthening of your body’s function. In the case of reflux, they can bolster the stomach’s capacity to produce a healthily acidic environment that breaks down food and inhibits bacterial overgrowth. Herbs enliven human physiology rather than simply suppressing it. They work with the flow, not against it. They get to the root of disease and “remind” the body how to function optimally, so that it can return to health, so that it ultimately doesn’t need the herbs any longer.