Chinese herb substitution and using local species
I thank you all for your patience as I adjust to my workload. The reality of the situation is that I’m going to have to post what I can, when I can. But, with the onset of clinic I find myself coming up with many new thoughts to share - I’ll do my best to get them up in a timely fashion. Look also for the return of the podcast this week. I know you’ve missed me. :)
Anyway, in a fantastic lecture by Dr. Arnaud Versluys this weekend, I was reinspired to consider a very real problem in Chinese herbal medicine. We use herbs that travel long distances, are sometimes beset with chemical and heavy metal toxicity, are sometimes banned by ill-informed government agencies and some of which are becoming rare and, thus, expensive. Given that I am very serious about a rigorously authentic Shang Han Lun
The particular herb that came up in discussion about this issue was Xi Xin - Asarum - Wild Ginger. I love this herb. It’s used in a couple of indispensible formulas, perhaps most importantly in Dang Gui Si Ni Tang. Most herbalists agree that there’s simply no substitute for Xi Xin, but I’ve seen or heard of people try to replace it with Wu Tou, Yu Jin, Sheng Jiang + Mai Men Dong (?!) and other interesting combinations. Most of these same herbalists agree that it’s simply not the same without Xi Xin.
The ban on Xi Xin for practitioners is ridiculous to the extreme and I’m not going to discuss that here. What I would like to hear people discuss is how they make substitutions in these cases. When an herb you need isn’t around, what do you do? What herbs have you had to learn to live without? I understand that UK herbalists are quite restricted in what they can prescribe - how have my UK readers dealt with this problem? Even when a governmental agency isn’t busy interfering, we sometimes lose herbs. Consider Xi Jiao, rhino horn. Consider the precarious state of Ren Shen, ginseng.
There are a couple of associated questions that come up when one considers this issue. One is - should we simply learn to work with fewer, simpler herbs? Dr. Versluys is known to say that he thinks he could do a fair job of treating patients with only 10 herbs - a set of cooling herbs in each of five flavors and a corresponding set of warming herbs. If you know formula science and architecture, such artistry is certainly possible. Is this the standard towards which we should strive? It seems far superior to the never ending quest for the “perfect herb for cancer” or memorizing five hundred herbs, over half of which are specialized for particular symptoms.
Taking this a little bit farther, we should consider the wisdom of relying on herb sources that can only be accessed by air shipments from another continent. Given peak oil, given the unstable political nature of our planet, given the environmental crisis we find ourselves in… should we at least consider the possibility that we may need to rely on local sources for our herbs at some point in the future?
My friend said an interesting thing to me today. In the course of discussing this various issue he said, “To be true Classical Chinese herbalists, we should use the herbs we find around us.” I didn’t question him any farther on this issue, but I think he’s right from some perspectives. Learning the Chinese herbs and formula science so deeply that it is second nature allows us to look at all plants, animals and minerals with the eyes of a Classical Chinese herbalist. Then it seems at least possible that we could, if necessary, find other materials that meet the needs of our patients.
I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on this rambling post. Doubtless there are many opinions out there - share them here on Deepest Health by responding in the comments. No registration is necessary and you can even post anonymously if you are respectful.
Thanks for reading,
Eric
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Tags: chinese-herb, chinese-herbs, environment, flavors, formulas, herbs, nature, versluysRelated posts
Salt Sensitive Hypertension and Classical Chinese Medicine, Part 3
This is the final post in a three part series by Brandon Brown, blogger and student of Classical Chinese Medicine at NCNM. You can read the first two parts here and here, and can read references for the article by visiting Brandon’s site here.
Salt in the Classics
Salt is mentioned a number of times in the classics. In the Neijing Suwen, salt is considered the flavor of the Kidney. But what does this mean exactly? What follows are the most descriptive and instructive references from the Suwen followed by my translations.
Chapter 67
北方生寒，寒生水，水生鹹，鹹生腎，腎生骨髓，髓生肝。其在天為寒，在地為水，在體為骨，在氣為堅，在藏為腎，其性為凜，其德為寒，其用為，其色為黑，其化為肅，其蟲鱗，其政為靜，其令，其變凝冽，其眚冰雹，其味為鹹，其志為恐。恐傷腎，思勝恐，寒傷血，燥勝寒，鹹傷血，甘勝鹹。
“The north generates cold, cold generates water, water generates salty, salty generates kidneys, kidney generates the marrow, marrow generates the liver. In heaven it is cold, on earth it is water, in the body it is bone, its qi is hard, in the Zang it is the Kidney, its nature is cold(shivering), its virtue is cold, it is “use”, its color is black, it changes into solemn-ness(seriousness), it is worms and fish-scales, its government is stillness(jing), it causes, its pathological change is congealing coldness, its natural disaster is ice hail, its flavor is salty, it is will by fear. Fear impairs the kidney, thought defeats fear, cold damages blood, dryness defeats cold, salty damages blood, sweet defeats salty.”
Chapter 3
味過於鹹，大骨氣勞，短肌，心氣抑。
Excess salty flavor, causes great hardening of bone Qi, shortens the muscles, and restrains heart Qi.
Chapter 5
鹹勝苦。
Salty defeats bitter.
Chapter 10
是故多食鹹則脈凝泣而變色 。
Therefore, much eating of salty makes the pulse concrete and the color changing.
Chapter 22
心欲耎，急食鹹以耎之，用鹹補之，甘寫之。
The Heart desires softness, anxious people eat salty that softens it, use salty to mend it, sweet drains it.
—-
These excerpts from the Suwen indicate the myriad functions of salt. In Chinese Medicine, the Salty flavor is typically used to soften nodules as mentioned in Chapter 22, but we also see in Chapter 3, 10, and 67 that salt can pathologically also create hardness of Bone Qi, restrain Heart Qi, damage blood, and cause the pulse to be very firm. We can read these lines in typical Chinese Medicine fashion: that as a remedy, the salty flavor has a purpose in softening nodules, in moderation salt perhaps allows the Kidney to perform its function of storing, but pathological excess consumption of salt can lead to sclerosis.
In Chinese Medicine, the 5 flavors that go with the 5 organs typically counteract the nature of the targeted organ. For example, the energetic nature of the Liver is up and out whereas the flavor Sour astringes and contracts. The Heart, the fire organ, is up and bitter is down. For the Lung, its nature is contracting down and in, whereas pungent is the opposite: up and out. For the Kidney, as we see in Chapter 67 above, the energetic nature is definitely to store by freezing. Salt, must counteract this freezing nature, as we know that it does from our experience: salt both reduces the freezing point of water and raises the boiling point. The presence of salt liquefies ice, and thus can soften hardness (tumors, goiter, etc.). But because salt has an affinity with the Kidney it counteracts the storing nature of the organ, liquefying the Kidney energy (perhaps Jing) to be used in the body as Qi. Therefore we see again that, salt pushes out from the inside.
In their paper on the Classical Energetics of the Five Flavors (find in references section), Arnaud Versluys and Jessica Atkins describe the therapeutic actions of the five flavors in terms of tonification and purgation. In cases of excess or deficiency, the organs can be respectively purged or tonified with the appropriate flavor as shown in the figure below.
Figure 2: The actions of the 5 flavors
Organ: Excess of, purge with : Deficiency of, tonify with
Fire : Sweet : Salty
Earth : Bitter : Sweet
Metal : Pungent : Sour
Water : Salty : Bitter
Wood : Sour : Pungent
According to their interpretation, the salty flavor purges excess in the Kidneys and tonifies the Heart. In the case of SSH, chronic overexposure to dietary salt may act medicinally and impair or purge the storing function of the Kidney and thus over-tonify the Heart. Because the Kidney is also said to store pre-natal essence if there is no pathological influence to expel in the Kidneys, it is possible that what is purged is actually pre-natal essence (Jing). This essence is circulated throughout the body, transformed to Qi by the Liver function, and transformed and stored as Shen by the Heart. Shen, and thus consciousness, have as a substrate the brain, but Shen is housed in the Heart.
Therefore, the use of salt habitually may increase the Jing-Qi-Shen generation cycle, which makes us sharp and awake, but has the detrimental effect of possibly depleting pre-natal essence if the Kidneys are not constantly tonified. In the Suwen it mentions that at 8 times 7 years (56 years old), the hair (ruled by the Kidney) turns gray and the signs of aging begin to become visible. “The kidneys’ ability to excrete sodium declines gradually with age. If, with age, salt consumption is not reduced, sodium balance is maintained by raising fractional sodium excretion, which requires elevation of BP” (Khalil 2005). The 
accumulation of salt in the ocean over the years has begun to take its toll.
Because purgation of the Kidney in a non-pathological condition also tonifies the Heart, an interesting consequence of excess in the Fire element is that it easily overflows onto its child organ, the Earth. This would lead the Earth to become overwhelmed and thereby inhibiting it to control the Water element, whose function is diminishing due to the natural processes of aging. In CM, we say that the “Earth rules the muscles” and in the SSH case this clearly relates to the smooth muscle of the vasculature losing its ability to contract. Due to an excess in the Heart domain, the smooth muscle becomes dry, stiff, and brittle. The patho-mechanism of this is illustrated below.
The standard American diet is predominantly made of the flavors salty and sweet. The overwhelming absence of bitter (with the exception of Shen disturbing coffee and beer) and the overwhelming abundance of salt and sugar in the standard American diet may explain the danger of increased exposure to dietary salt.
Conclusion
It is not surprising that decreasing daily dietary salt intake will help in treatment SSH. However, what we learn from the classics and the physiology of salt in the body is that Kidney tonification is essential for SSH.
Because the Earth element has become so affected by this chronic exposure to salt, purging the Earth of excess with the bitter flavor will be important. Like a lone neuron in the brain, salt consumption is entangled in the higher social structures that predominate our times: working long hours, using the mind instead of physical labor for generating a living, exposure to a barrage of psycho-sensory information in terms of television, music, and people, along with increasing anxieties about all of it. Seen in this context it really is no wonder why SSH is a modern disease of the “developed” world.
Brandon Brown
Tags: five phases, heart, human physiology, kidney, liver, lung, metal, nature, neijing, salt, student, translationsRelated posts
Salt-sensitive hypertension and Classical Chinese Medicine, Part 2
This is the second part in a three part guest article series by Brandon Brown, student at National College of Natural Medicine and Chinese medicine blogger. You can access the first part of the article which covers salt in the macrocosm - nature. I should note that he has posted references for the entire series on his blog, you can access those references by clicking on this link. -Eric
Salt in the Microcosm
By preserving meat with salt, mankind was unknowingly creating a vicious cycle that would change the health of all people up to the present day. It is estimated that before the advent of this preservation technique people consumed no more than 0.5 grams of naturally occurring salt per day (g/d). After brining was put to use, daily consumption jumped to an estimated 10 g/d (because even though the meat is soaked in water to reconstitute it, no amount of soaking can remove a large amount of salt). This continued to climb throughout the centuries, upwards to nearly 18g/d (some estimates in Scandinavia indicate consumption near 100g/d) until the advent of refrigeration techniques which brought estimated consumption back down to its present day levels of 10 g/d. It is hypothesized that one reason for the stabilization at 10g/d instead of 0.5g/d is the addictive nature of salt: in the presence of continued salt loads the taste receptors on the tongue down-regulate their sensitivity to the salty flavor. However, as we will see, salt plays a crucial role in the nervous system, and it could be this current cultural bias for all things cerebral that creates our hunger for the briny crystal.
One of the most prolific cellular mechanisms in the body is the sodium-potassium pump. These pumps are found in a number of cells throughout the body, but most importantly in the nerve cells of the Central Nervous System. This mechanism, called Na+/K+-ATPase, regulates cellular chemistry and polarity by using ATP to remove 3 Na+ intracellular ions and replace them with 2 K+ ions. Na+/K+-ATPase is the mechanism that is responsible for the nerve’s ability to achieve the resting potential of approximately -70 mV by removing a net positive charge from the intracellular fluid with each pumping action. The creation of this potential primes the neuron to do work, in this case to release its charge as a rush of electrochemical ions, creating a signal that releases neurotransmitters at the terminal end of the neuron. The charging of this battery comes at a cost of a single phosphate group from ATP (converted to ADP). Because the pump is operating against the normal flow of the concentration gradient, energy is required to create this potential difference. This process is such that a large differential between sodium and potassium is created:
Table 1: Concentration of fluids by ion type (mmol/L)
| Ion | Extracellular | Intracellular |
| Na+ | 150 | 15 |
| Cl- | 110 | 7 |
| K+ | 5 | 150 |
Therefore the exterior of the cell is essentially salt water (NaCl), and the interior of the cell is largely dissolved potassium ions.
This is striking for a couple of reasons. First, in the resting state we see that salt water is kept on the outside of the membrane and only when an action or graded potential occurs is it allowed to rush into the cell. To reach the resting potential the cell must actively store potassium, and excrete sodium. In other words, the movement of salt (in this case sodium) into the cell causes the transmission of an electrochemical action potential. It is this action potential that is thought to give rise to all cognition and movement in the body. The axon, the long transmitting portion of the neuron, propagates the signal through voltage controlled sodium channels. The inward movement of salt is giving birth to movement and thought, whereas the expulsion of salt promotes stillness and thusly, stores great potential.
Secondly, the regular and crystalline lattice structure is perhaps more than metaphorical. In cognitive neuroscience, most theories of the mind involve describing the geometrical structure of the neural lattice as an explanation of functional capabilities. For example, the visual cortex is organized in columnar functional groups that serve to detect edges in the visual field. The creation of memory involves creating a new pathway on an already established lattice. Therefore, as sodium enters the cell it gives its organizational properties over to the cell to provide for the creation of new synaptic connections and lattice-like structures. The lattice-like structure of the salt is reflected in the lattice-like structure of the brain.
Figure 2: Columnar structure of neurons in the visual cortex and the octahedral geometry of sodium chloride
In terms of SSH research, it seems that excess dietary salt may not only change the sodium levels in the plasma but also in the cerebrospinal fluid, inhibiting Na+-K+-ATPase in both locations, perhaps giving rise to cognitive changes (Khalil 2005).
—
In the next and last installment of this series, Brandon discusses salt from the perspective of Classical Chinese texts and brings the various ideas together. Please look forward to it tomorrow. -Eric
Tags: crystal, human physiology, microcosm, nature, organization, salt, Science, waterRelated posts
Salt-sensitive hypertension and Classical Chinese Medicine, Part 1
Editor intro
This is a Guest Post by 3rd year Classical Chinese Medicine student (and Chinese medicine blogger) Brandon Brown. Brandon is a friend of mine and an excellent student. He approached me with this paper and I immediately knew it would be a fantastic contribution to the site as many folks have asked me for rigorous examinations of the cross-pollination between Western and Chinese science as expressed in medicine. This will be a 3 part series released over the next 3 days, please feel free to leave comments - Brandon is a regular reader of the site. I should note that he has posted references for the entire series on his blog, you can access those references by clicking on this link. -Eric
—
Author intro
The following three posts are from a paper I wrote in the Winter of 2008 for Dr. Edward Neal’s Clinical Physical Diagnosis course at NCNM. It is my attempt to apply classical Chinese medical knowledge to a modern disease processes that is pervasive, salt-sensitive hypertension. In looking at all modern diseases, I believe it is extremely beneficial as CCM practitioners to understand the patho-mechanism as presented to us by current research in Western materialism. Because yang (energy) leads and yin (substance) follows, by knowing the yin we can garner important clues that can allow our yang treatments to strike with more clarity, force, and efficacy. I welcome your thoughts and comments. - Brandon
—
Salt-sensitive hypertension : Western science and the macrocosmic view
“The highest good is like water, it settles in the lowest place where people do not like to be.”
Dao De Jing
It is estimated that salt-sensitive hypertension (SSH) accounts for over two-thirds of people over 60 who have primary hypertension . Though there are genetic variants to the tolerance of the amount of salt that effects hypertension, dietary sodium is considered the most important environmental influence. This begs the question: why are some people who are hypertensive experience a salt sensitivity and others do not? The answer to this question may lie in the theories of Chinese Medicine and in the fundamental nature of salt, and its relationship to water and the Kidney. I will first give a summary of hypertension in western terms and discuss current research theories. Following this, I will discuss salt: cultural symbology, the natural formation, and specific references in the medical classics. By so doing, I hope to show how an ancient medicine sheds important light on this modern disease, through the connection of the Kidney and the Heart.
Hypertension - a more Western perspective
Primary hypertension is defined as chronically elevated blood pressure where systolic arterial blood pressure consistently exceeds 140 mmHg or greater. To be considered primary, the hypertension must be idiopathic, and not due to secondary factors such as kidney disease or adrenal tumors, for example. Primary hypertension is considered to be a major risk factor for strokes and cardiovascular disease, and is a leading cause of chronic renal failure . Heart disease is the number one killer in the United States, leading to well over half a million deaths per year.
It was observed in a strict rice and low-sodium diet study performed in 1944 that patients with kidney disease and hypertension were able to lower their blood pressure by as many as 100 mmHg in some cases . Current theories of the pathological mechanism of SSH posit abnormalities in renal sodium transport in the nephron structure of the kidneys . The cause for these kidney abnormalities are thought to be caused by both genetic and environmental factors. Because salt generally attracts water through osmosis, increased blood sodium not excreted by the filtering mechanisms in the kidney causes an increase in the water content of the blood, thereby causing the vessels to swell. This increased swelling, is an increase of “total peripheral resistance of the vasculature”, and is thought to create a long-term load on cardiac output ultimately leading to heart failure. Therefore, we can say that the presence of salt in the blood pushes out from the inside. This is contrary to the renin-angiotensin mechanism of the Kidney, which vasoconstrics and thus pushes in from the outside.
Salt in the Macrocosm
“Ye are the salt of the earth; the best of the human race.”
Jesus Christ in Matthew 5:13
The creation story of salt begins with fresh water falling from the sky as rain, and landing on the elevated earth. The nature of water is to always seek the lowest point of any terrain. The rain water falls on the hills at first as drops, which coalesce to form a trickle, which then join to form streams and these eventually join to form massive rivers, which empty into the sea. On this journey, constant erosion takes place as minerals are stripped from the earth and mountains and carried to the ocean. Because of its polar nature, water acts as a solvent to all matter. Place any material in water, and given enough time, transformation will occur. Metal will rust, vegetation will decay, and other liquids will eventually diffuse and become one with the water. The mineral rich streams, which still taste like fresh water to us, empty into the vast oceans that today are heavily salted and totally unpalatable, even though they are only 3.5% salt . The oceans continue to accumulate more and more salts because over millions of years evaporation extracts the water from the ocean, but not the minerals. The minerals are too heavy and earthbound to be steamed up to the heavens. This process is depicted in Figure 1.
Figure 1: The generation of saltwater
Of special interest in Figure 1 is how it reflects the generating cycle of the 5 Phases (五行). That is, Water falls from Heaven onto Earth and Metal, flowing down to Water, where through the energy of Fire, the fresh water is evaporated upwards toward heaven by the process of Wood. What is left behind is a storehouse of salt. Because of this, we would expect to find that places of warmer climate would have oceans with higher salt content. This is in fact the case, as places such as the Mediterranean Sea have a much higher salinity than that of cold water oceans (the Arctic and Northern Pacific, for example).
Salt is very much a dissolved solid from the Metal sphere. It is highly organized and crystalline, and looks almost identical to ice (Figure 2). Salt was the first currency of the civilized world, due to its value as a preserver of meat. As Richard Manning writes in Against the Grain, it was the ability to preserve and store meat which essentially lead to the creation of wealth and signaled the shift from nomadic hunter-gatherer societies to those of sedentary agrarian caste systems. Earlier than 800 A.D., the Yellow Emperor himself is said to have fought the very first war over the precious commodity . In 450 B.C., iron was put to use to boil sea water in huge pots to extract salt, a method that was used for the next 2000 years. By expediting the evaporative process, larger amounts of salt could be garnered more quickly and thus a greater amount of wealth could be amassed. Even in these ancient times salt stored, or preserved, wealth. To this day, the word “salary” comes from the Latin “salarium”, or “to be payed with salt.”
Not surprisingly, then, salt as a symbol of wealth came to symbolize all that is good. It is common practice to throw salt over the shoulder to ward off the devil, sumo wrestlers throw salt in the wrestling ring to purify it before a match, and placing piles of salt in tombs purifies the soul’s journey from earth to heaven, for example. Throughout history and across the world, in almost every culture, salt has been used in religious, medical, and cultural contexts to purify and clean the soul and the body from evil and disease . Ultimately, however, it is argued that salt is a often a cultural metaphor for semen, and the essence of man.
—
In the next article in this three part series, Brandon will dive into the microcosm - discussing the mechanisms above as they reflect into the human body. Look for it coming soon.
Tags: disease, environment, heart, kidney, macrocosm, metal, nature, salt, Science, water, western research, western-scienceRelated posts
Chinese medicine and the senses : Part I : Scent
As I have been contemplating this new project that Abdallah and I have begun, I’ve found myself stymied at times. The aim of the project is clear, but the methodology is less so. Simply, everything that we’ve said in our introductory posts makes a ton of sense on a variety of levels, but when it gets down to “doing,” things become a little unclear. I know what I want to put out (multi-media posts that draw all of us deeper into our relationship with the world and its interpenetration with Chinese medical concepts) but how do I get the inputs to create the outputs?
Why is this harder than it sounds?
In the United States, and I suppose in most Western countries, our sensory experiences are more or less controlled. For the most part they are stifled, except for sight and hearing which are simply overwhelmed. Actually, thinking about it, we overwhelm all of our senses - limiting what they experience to a set number of approved, mostly synthetic items and then amping those up to the nth degree. I’ve grown up in the States my entire life, thus I’m subject to this dismal state of affairs. Fortunately, through Qigong and other experiences, I’ve gradually learned to lighten up, literally and figuratively.
Regardless, I find that fully utilizing my sensory capabilities requires effort - most of all it requires intention. The sense of smell is particularly interesting. So, to start a short series on the senses and how to return them to their natural state and attune them to a higher degree than ever - I’ll offer my thoughts on the sense of smell.
Chinese medicine and the sense of smell
In Chapter 11 of the Neijing Suwen, it says:
“故五氣入鼻藏於心肺．心肺有病．而鼻為之不利也”
This has been translated in a couple of different ways. The basic translation says:
“When the five Qi/odors enter the nose, they are stored in the Heart and Lung. Heart and Lung disease is detrimental for the nose.”
Maoshing Ni goes on to posit that the five scents are really “the five qi of environmental energy that we breathe in.” Regardless of the fact that I don’t see this particular statement in the text (thus underscoring my basic problem with Ni’s translation) it is interesting to contemplate. What is odor? Certainly it is Qi - but beyond that? In thinking about this, consider the Neijing’s statement that the odors are 藏/cang/stored by the Heart and Lung. The Lung makes a lot of sense given that the nose is the orifice of the Lung in both a Western and Chinese context. But what does it mean to say that the Lung receives and stores these odors? One could posit that they become part of the Qi that then rains down on the body as heavenly restorative water/Qi. I’m not sure if that position could be supported by the texts.
More interesting to me is the relation of odors and the Heart. What can it mean that the Heart stores odors? You’ll excuse me if I offer my own simple theories. As famously studied by Gilles Laurent at Cal Tech, there is a powerful association between scent and human memory. Nothing brings back a scene or person to the mind like a scent last experienced in that scene or with that person. When considering this idea, I most naturally think about the smell of my clothing when I come back from my mother’s house on a visit. I smell her for weeks afterward - and though the smell is created in part from her detergent, there is more to it than that. The scent is wrapped up in emotion, the scent contains not just detergent fragrances, but her spaghetti sauce aroma, her hair, the smell of Idaho, cold winters, the essence of what comes from her pores as a product of all she eats, drinks… well, you get the idea. The memories triggered are as complex.
Consider also the devotional aspects of scent - incense of various kinds have been used in religious ceremony and other spiritual activity since time immemorial. The Catholics still use incense as part of Mass, as do some Episcopalian congregations. Buddhist and Hindu shrines are nearly always adorned with incense censers. We can also think about the effects of Moxibustion using artemesia. While some people hate moxa for its thick smoke and messy nature, I find it to bring an essential element to treatments where it is indicated. While not explicitly of a spiritual nature, I do believe that there is something of an offering that occurs when using moxa in treatment.
This relationship of memory and spirituality to the sense of smell helps me to link it to the Heart. While we often talk about the Kidney as being the storehouse of memory in Chinese Medicine, from what I’ve read and learned, the type of memory held by the Kidney is more primal, older and is less easily accessed by consciousness. The Heart seems a likely place (especially in its relationship to the Western concept of mind) to store the memories of this life. The Heart’s relationship to Shen makes its connection to human spirituality quite clear.
In classical five element acupuncture, the art of smelling is still employed. The five odors, discussed first in the Neijing, are assessed by the practitioner to help understand the primary pathology of the patient, as well as used as a key in discovering the patient’s landscape tendency (constitutional factor). This is one of the most difficult diagnostic techniques for Westerners, as I’ve already hinted at. I find it to be incredibly difficult, personally, particularly given how so many patients cover up their natural odor as a matter of course. For the sake of completeness, I should list the five odors!
- Fire : scorched - one of my professors says that this is the smell of recently dried clothes
- Earth : fragrant - like rotten vegetables or new compost
- Metal : rotten - like a garbage bin or feces
- Water : putrid - like urine or stale wine
- Wood : rancid - like rancid oil, mcdonalds
Scent and herbal medicine
Briefly, what is the role of scent in Chinese herbal medicine? Most would say, “There is no role!” I disagree. One of the reasons I am a huge proponent of patients taking home and cooking their own bulk herbs is because of the experience they gain by doing so. Looking at the herbs, smelling them in their dried state, allowing the smell to permeate their living space, smelling their powerful odors when drinking - all of this, in my opinion, is part of the therapy. While many patients are unwilling to have this experience, it is one I encourage and have benefited from personally. The worst case scenario with regards to this would be taking pills of granuled Chinese herbs. I believe the move in this direction is detrimental, but understand when some patients choose this path.
Scent and the natural world
The sense of smell is much more emphasized in certain animals, including dogs. The sense of smell is a fantastic way to seek out prey that is not yet within range of the vision. While animals that live their lives in the air can afford to skimp on smell and focus on vision, animals that do most of their hunting in forests and tall grass fields need an alternative way to seek out their prey.
The natural world is full of odor. The sweet decay of Pacific Northwestern forest floors. The acrid, putrid, complicated smells of downtown sidewalks. The unbearable sweetness of babies nursing for the first time. Blood, urine, feces, animals marking their territory with complicated brews of hormones and urine - these less pleasant smells are just as much a part as any of the others. The human world is no different in this respect, though we would like it to be so.
Fearless smelling
Being able to integrate myself fully into the world using all of my senses is the primary methodology of this Chinese Medicine awareness project. So, how to proceed with the sense of smell? My first trick will be simply to allow myself to smell everything, without reservation. This means making a conscious effort to breathe deeply through my nose at all times. I will also be going out of my way to smell things that are likely to be interesting or complex. I will also be practicing this during tea drinking. The difference in smell between two otherwise similar puerh teas, for example, can be remarkable and really impacts the experience of the tea. This, of course, brings me around to the importance of smell for TASTE - but perhaps that’s for another article.
Do you have any ideas of how one can integrate the exercise of the sense of smell into daily living? Share your thoughts in the comments!
Tags: heart, herbs, lung, nature, neijing, scent, senses, spirituality, The Project
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