You made a great point here! I always say to my patients and colleagues that studying herbs by isolating the effective extracts and therapeutic ingredients is not the correct approach. TCM originally uses four Qi, five Wei (flavours) and meridian attribution (Gui Jing) to describe herbs’ function but not the ingredients such as ephedra or ephedine. Moreover, there are interactions between herbs in a formula decotion or other forms, which is exceptionally complicated and researching this by modern scientific ways are impracticable. It is like there is no way to find out what exactly meridians (Jing Luo) are by just “guessing” that they might be the communicative part of nervous system, circulatory system and lymph system. Therefore, it is completely wrong to regulate herbs under modern scientific standard. We should regulate the qualifications of practitioners instead of herbs. There is a Chinese term saying that every herb is more or less toxic (是藥三分毒shi yao san fen du). It’s very important that we should grasp what “toxin” means. First of all, the toxic effect is actually the therapeutic effect! Simply speaking, every herb has its yin or yang deviation, in another word, warm or cold nature, in order to correct the imbalance of yin and yang of the body. Hotter or colder means it is more toxic. Secondly, toxic effect is relative. Different people of different constitutions and syndrome differentiations have different response to the same “toxin”. To a person with yin deficiency and internal heat constitution, a piece of ginger is toxic for him or her. While a person suffering Bi syndrome with cold dampness and qi and blood deficiency, large amount of dried ginger and Fu zi are pleased for him or her. I used 20 grams of Ma huang (I usually use 2 to 4 grams in wind cold external syndromes and asthma) in a formula for a female patient who suffers dermatosclerosis for one year and she felt generally warm and significant released of joint pain and neck stiffness after taking the tea. Lastly, comparing to Chinese herbs, western drugs are more toxic. Ridiculously, people are willing to take them everyday! Nowadays, people don’t know yin and yang, don’t know balance, don’t know the rule of nature, don’t sleep until midnight, drink cold drinks and eat cold fruits everyday, they don’t know how to prevent hypertension, diabetes, high cholesteral and cancer, they are told and actually misled to take miscellaneous drugs AFTER they get those health problems. Aspirin is a drug and toxic. It causes uncontrollable bleeding and actually damages the function of Pi (spleen). Unfortunately, people nowadays are misled to take this “toxin” the rest of their lives because they are convinced that they won’t get cardiovascular diseases. And this is supposed to be legal! More and more cancer patients die of over-treating by chemo drugs. Unfortunately, they are threatened to die in a certain length of time without taking chemotherapy. And this is supposed to be legal! This is completely ridiculous!
Hope to listen to every Si Fu master’s point of view in here! And may all wish everybody have a successful, healthy and prosperous year of Dragon!

Kevin

For Portlanders, I believe you can obtain Mahuang from the Asian market on 65th and Powell.

As for substitutes, Dr. Jun Zhang says that Qianghuo can be susbstituted for Mahuang in some instances, but he hasn’t really made clear to me under what circumstances, or in which formulas this is acceptable.

I hope the future holds the expansion of the use of these Chinese herbs, rather than more and more limitations on what we can use and how we can use it. It is mostly up to practitioners and consumers to use these herbs appropriately to make sure that the FDA doesn’t have any further reason to ban herbs for safety reasons.