About Chinese Herbs for Asthma Symptoms

Video Transcript

"Chinese herbs are very effective for treating asthma and have been for thousand of years. In Chinese medicine, we recognize about fifteen different patterns of asthma. But for today's purposes, I'm going to just divide it into a big category of either excess, too much energy or deficient, not enough energy. So I'm going to talk about one formula from each category. So in the excess category, we're going to talk about heat invading the lungs. So for heat invading the lungs, this would be; this is a formula called Bai Shing Shigon Tung and it's for fever, cough, hard to breathe and thick yellow mucus and a sore throat. So I currently have a, a patient that's suffering from this condition so I have ordered this formula for him. And the first herb in the formula is called Bai Chin. It's a sweet herb that goes to the lung and this stops, this stops coughing and wheezing and expels the phlegm. The second herb in the formula Shigao. This is gypsum. It's a kind of a white mineral. It's sweet; it's very cold; so it's good for lowering the fever and clearing the heat. The third herb in the formula is called Shingren; but this is actually an apricot seed. It's very bitter but it's good for stopping cough and wheezing. And the last and final herb in the formula is called Gan Cao. This is licorice. It has a sweet smell. This is what licorice is actually made of. This is what it looks like in the raw and it's very good for stopping cough and wheezing. So I'm going to package these formula up for him and see how it helps him and we'll change the formula as he gets better. For the second category is the deficient category; I'm going to talk about lung chi deficiency. So that means low energy, weak voice, weak cough, pale face and of course the typical asthma symptoms of difficulty breathing and wheezing. So for this particular formula, I have a patient that has this condition; so I have ordered a formula for her and the name of the formula is called Jade Windscreen. So the first herb in Jade Windscreen is called Huang Chi or Astragalus. This is a very sweet herb and it's very good for strengthening the energy and strengthening the lungs. The second herb in the formula is called Bai Zhu Atractylodis and this strengthens the spleen and the digestion and it also strengthens the lung and the breathing and it also dries the damp because sometimes in the lung chi deficiency there's spontaneous sweating; so it'll dry the dampness. And the third and the last herb in the formula is called Fang Feng and this expels wind. We call it wind and that's like headache, chills, body aches and dampness. So these would be a very good formula for my patient to strengthen her energy. As within all herbal formulas, it's important to consult with your Acupuncture Physician or Herbalist to get the proper diagnosis, treatment and prescription. However, in Chinese medicine, we consider food as medicine. So there's something very safe that you can do at home to help relieve your asthma symptoms and I have a home recipe. So this home recipe is good for strengthening the immune system and this will help you to prevent colds and flu. So it's good to start this one when you're feeling pretty well. This is a wild yam almond soup. So you take one cup of yam; sweet potato and you chop that all up; then one cup of millet as a very small grain. One cup of millet, you soak it overnight. One cup of ground almonds; you can chop them up as much as you want and then I like to add one tablespoon of Bragg's liquid amino acids for flavoring. It's a very, it's a nice salty flavor; but very low in sodium. You add all of these ingredients to six cups of water; bring it to a boil and then simmer on low heat for thirty minutes and this is a very good formula to strengthen your immune system. And this recipe comes from the ACNA System, Applied Chinese Nutritional Analysis by Maoshing Ni."