Different Categories of Chinese Herbs

Video Transcript

"SARAH HAUER: Hi. I'm Sarah Hauer. SIG HAUER: And I'm Sig Hauer and we're professional practitioners of traditional Chinese medicines. SARAH HAUER: We're here on behalf of Expert Village. SIG HAUER: And welcome to our video. SARAH HAUER: So, when we study Chinese herbs, we put--the herbs are organized into different categories. And there's 12--there's over 12 categories for our Chinese herbs. And just to give you an example, one of the first categories is to clear--release the exterior, cool acrid herbs to release the exterior. In our herbal pharmacy, we have all our herbs organized according to category. So, what does it mean by category? What does that mean when you--we say "release the exterior?" And those herbs are used mostly to treat what we call a "wind invasion," and wind invasions in Chinese medicine are things like the common cold or a flu. So, herbs that we use to release the exterior would be treating the common cold or flu or pathogens that enter the body from the outside. What's interesting in Chinese medicine, and particularly with Chinese herbs, is that when we diagnose the common cold, we may have several different diagnoses depending on each case. And everybody out there knows what it's like to have a horrible cold with a really stuffy nose and watery eyes and aches and pains. That's very different from a cold where you've got a very sharp sore throat and maybe not a lot of phlegm in the nasal passages but more in the throat or in the chest and earaches. So, there are different diagnoses for different types of colds, different types of symptoms and that has to do with how much cold or how much heat is in the body. And that is the immune response. When we fight a pathogen, we do create a lot of heat and so, it depends on how big the fight is that's going on as to what type of herbs we use to prescribe. And that's our next category which is to release the exterior, warm acrid herbs."