Understanding Flavor - Essential Knowledge for Herbalists

[00:00:03] Speaker A: Hi everyone, and welcome to the Nervous Herbalist, a podcast for Chinese medicine practitioners who like herbs and want to learn more about their function, their history and treatment strategies to use in the clinic. Let's get into it. Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Nervous Herbalist. My name is Travis Kern and I'm. [00:00:23] Speaker B: Here with Travis Cunningham. [00:00:25] Speaker A: And we are going to talk to you guys a little bit today about nature's and. And flavors, the cornerstone philosophy of herbal medicine that is, I think, easily confusing and certainly frustrating for Chinese medicine students and people trying to understand this stuff. And to be honest, I think it's something that a lot of new herbalists and maybe even experienced herbalists, but maybe who don't do it a whole lot. I don't know how much time, like explicit time people are giving it intellectually to think about. It's just sort of like, you know, Xiao Chaitan harmonizes and I need to harmonize so done. [00:01:10] Speaker B: Right, right. [00:01:11] Speaker A: There's just not a lot of thought given to, to the nature and flavors that make up Xiao Chaitan. Or, or if someone does mods, you know, like, I think especially more textual mods like open Beni and you like, look up a formula and you're like, oh, for persistent, you know, left sided pain, add chaiho. [00:01:33] Speaker B: Yeah, right, right. [00:01:34] Speaker A: And for sore throat, add mabo. [00:01:37] Speaker B: Right. [00:01:38] Speaker A: But there's no like, there's no like, it's symptom based modification. [00:01:41] Speaker B: Yeah. Action. It's action and indication based. Which is how we learn herbs too, right? Absolutely. In school, or at least how we did. [00:01:48] Speaker A: Yeah. And so what happens is you're constantly trying to remember the actions and indications of all of these individual herbs. And I think what's important to keep in mind is that as we're going to discuss today, we learned this stuff in a particular way in school and we'll talk about the sort of mechanics and reasons for why. But that also, that knowledge is distinctly modern. It comes at a time when you can even in the United States buy hundreds of different herb products. [00:02:21] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:02:21] Speaker A: Which for most of Chinese history, doctors did not have access to that. [00:02:25] Speaker B: Right, right. [00:02:25] Speaker A: I mean, you, you were not a country doctor in rural China with access to hundreds of individual herbs. [00:02:32] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:02:33] Speaker A: So that meant that you had to have a deeper understanding of the intrinsic quality of plants and minerals and animal sources in your area to be like, okay, how do these work? [00:02:42] Speaker B: Yes. [00:02:42] Speaker A: So that I can pick them and use them, et cetera. So maybe let's start with, I think, something for everyone to be able to hang their hat on, which is sort of what we learned in school. [00:02:54] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:02:55] Speaker A: Those charts, basically, like the five phase charts. Yeah. You learn. Okay, yellow is Earth, which is sweet. Which is the middle of the controlling cycle diagram. Or maybe it's in. If you're looking at the generating cycle diagram. Don't worry. There's the one where there are five points of a star, and there's one where it's like a cross with Earth in the middle. Like, it's basically the Machiocho version of these things, Right? [00:03:23] Speaker B: Yeah, sure. [00:03:25] Speaker A: So in that model, we learned, like, each season had an element and a flavor and, like, a general quality, a direction. Like all that's an organ. [00:03:38] Speaker B: There's all these sort of east first, spring and. [00:03:41] Speaker A: Exactly, exactly. And so the thing about that is, when you look at that layout, Right. You're going to find that the flavor of spring and wood is sour. Right. And the flavor of fall and metal is acrid. [00:03:56] Speaker B: Yep. [00:03:57] Speaker A: And the flavor of summer and fire is bitter. [00:04:01] Speaker B: Yes. [00:04:02] Speaker A: And the flavor of winter and water is salty. [00:04:05] Speaker B: Yep. [00:04:06] Speaker A: And then Earth, depending on how you look at it, either Earth season is late summer, or Earth appears at the transition between each season, or both, because, you know, Chinese medicine. But Earth has a season, one of those, and its flavor is sweet. But the thing is, is that it kind of stops there, Right. In the Machiocha discussion. [00:04:30] Speaker B: It does, yeah. [00:04:31] Speaker A: There's just not much more to it. But there is a lot. A whole lot more to that than that. When you get into the classics. [00:04:38] Speaker B: Absolutely. [00:04:39] Speaker A: Talk a little bit about that. [00:04:40] Speaker B: Yeah. The classical. I mean, the classics and the Nijing and the Nanjing, as well as commentators of those texts, which have helped to elucidate some of the qualities that are more pragmatic for clinical use. There's tons and tons of stuff on that. And if you read the Nijing especially, you may get confused by the total. Like, how do I use this? Because there's one description for flavors and then there's another one, and then it gives a bit of an esoteric description of how these things can be used, which may use kind of arcane language from a modern person's perspective. Or we have to go through translation if we're reading it in English. And the English translation can be kind of arcane. Right. So using these things practically requires a few different things, which I think we'll talk about in a little bit. Yeah, yeah. [00:05:44] Speaker A: I mean, if you just look at the. The words themselves, like, I think when. When you and I were preparing for this episode, one of the things that became apparent to me is that part of the reason that it's confusing is, of course, some of it is just like, seemingly contradictory. [00:06:00] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:06:01] Speaker A: But I actually think that the reason it's confusing is because we all got programmed with this initial model where each season had an element, had a flavor, had a direction. Like there's just sort of like one of everything. [00:06:12] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:06:13] Speaker A: And everything gets a neat and tidy category. [00:06:17] Speaker B: Right. [00:06:18] Speaker A: Which then means that when stuff doesn't fit in the category. [00:06:21] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:06:22] Speaker A: All of a sudden you're like, oh, snap. [00:06:24] Speaker B: Right. [00:06:25] Speaker A: Wait, I don't understand it. Or why doesn't it fit? [00:06:28] Speaker B: Yes. [00:06:28] Speaker A: You know, but of course, if you push into that just like a little bit, of course it doesn't exactly fit. [00:06:34] Speaker B: Right. [00:06:34] Speaker A: I mean, like, did you really imagine that the intense complexity of the cosmos was going to fit into five neat categories? [00:06:44] Speaker B: Right. [00:06:44] Speaker A: Like, of course not. Like, existence is just way too complicated for that. But I think one of the things we all love about Chinese medicine is its attempt to create relatively accessible and simple methods of understanding an incredibly complex whole. And I think that still remains. It's just not quite as symmetrical as the maciocha charts would suggest. And it's not a slam on machiocha. Right. I mean, his job was to take this large, very complicated Chinese medical material that had already been simplified by the Chinese Communist Party. Right. For export, and put it in such a way that English speaking American audiences, Western audiences could grasp. [00:07:28] Speaker B: Sure. [00:07:28] Speaker A: So props to him and I'm glad that we did that. But when you want to get past the one for one relationships and you start to look at these models, it's not so neat. [00:07:39] Speaker B: No, it's not. [00:07:41] Speaker A: So maybe let's kind of break down what we talk about. So let's pick some natures and flavors and seasons and elements and stuff that aren't so neat because we'll look at the neat ones later because that's easy for people to grasp, but some are not. So maybe let's talk about fire and water, sort of. What do we mean when we talk about those phases as concepts and then what kind of flavors act on them? [00:08:10] Speaker B: Right. Yeah. So I think it's tough actually to go back to the time when we didn't associate the five phases with organ function. Right. Because once you learn about the organs, you learn zangfu organ diagnosis. You learn what the neijing says about each organ and its authority or its function. It's hard to forget about that when you think of about the five phases. But if you just think about the five phases, when you compare the relationship to Fire and water. What you're really talking about is a few things. You're talking about consolidation and storage, which we would associate more with water and kind of an openness, an exuberance, a movement quality with fire. Right. And then you're also talking about the elements of hot and cold. Right. Fire likes to be warmer than water. [00:09:07] Speaker A: And all of that is why we end up with sort of polar dichotomies. Yes. Because what you just described are all just neat, convenient opposites. [00:09:17] Speaker B: Yes. [00:09:18] Speaker A: Right. Hot and cold, fire and water. [00:09:20] Speaker B: Yep. [00:09:21] Speaker A: Consolidation and expansion. [00:09:22] Speaker B: Yep. [00:09:23] Speaker A: Like, nice, simple. But of course, it doesn't stay that way when we get into nature and flavors. So what's going on there? [00:09:31] Speaker B: Well, I think. I think flavor in nature is complicated for a few reasons. I think it's also. We don't only have five flavors. Right, Right. We also have bland. And then we have different qualities that we talk about with herbs. Like what is aromatic. Right. You know. Cause we have pungent. Right. Which kind of is aromatic. But then we have herbs that are aromatic that are maybe other than pungent, or we think about them differently than pungent. So there are, you know, five is a convenient number that a lot of things get fit into. And then we also have different descriptions of the flavors that correspond to multiple phases. So it's not just one flavor per phase. It's actually like one flavor can influence three phases directly in some cases, which is talked about in different passages in the neijing and also the commentaries. [00:10:34] Speaker A: That is getting to really the crux of our discussion today. Right. Which is that I think what has to happen when it comes to nature and flavor is we have to dissociate the one flavor, one phase, one season mentality. [00:10:49] Speaker B: Yes. [00:10:50] Speaker A: And just sort of drop that concept. [00:10:53] Speaker B: Yeah. It'd be better if we didn't learn that at all, actually. I think. [00:10:56] Speaker A: Yeah. Because otherwise it leaves. It leaves you hunting for the symmetry. [00:11:00] Speaker B: Yes. [00:11:00] Speaker A: Right. When you're like, oh, this affects that. Like this. Like, it leaves you hunting for the symmetry. And when the symmetry doesn't play out, you are frustrated. [00:11:08] Speaker B: Yes. [00:11:08] Speaker A: And. Or confused. Right. Okay. So let's. Let's put that into a box for a second that we're going to come back to, because I want to look at. Once we have more understanding of each of the flavors, I want to then come back to this question of how they associate with the various seasons and elements. Right. Seasons and phases. So let's pivot for a second to some classical description of what a flavor does, which is to say, like, when a Type of flavor goes into a human body, how it behaves in nature, which is largely part of where the idea comes from. But when it goes into a human body, what is the action? What happens when people consume that flavor? And this is, thankfully, I will definitely say thankfully, one of the parts in the classical text where we do not have strong contradictions. [00:12:01] Speaker B: It's very clear. It's one of the clearest sections in the neijing, I think. Yeah. [00:12:05] Speaker A: So walk us through the main five. Acrid, pungent, bittersweet, sour, salty, and give us the information from the classics. [00:12:14] Speaker B: Yeah. So it says acrid can move or disperse. Really simple. Bitter can drain, can dry or can make firm sweet, can build slow or harmonize. [00:12:29] Speaker A: Okay. [00:12:30] Speaker B: Sour can gather or astringe, salty can soften, hardness or descend. [00:12:37] Speaker A: And this information comes from where? [00:12:39] Speaker B: This comes from the neijing. [00:12:40] Speaker A: From the neijing. Right. So those phrases, which, of course, we always have to keep in mind that we're dealing with material in translation from classical Chinese to English. So there's some limitation there. And you'll find, for example, that because of that, like, because we just deal in the reality of language. And the dao that can be named is not the true dao. [00:13:01] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:13:02] Speaker A: You end up with some sticky bits, like, for example, bitter, drain dry or make firm, salty, soften, hardness or descend. And you're like, wait, how's descending different from draining? Draining goes down. Right. So these are the kinds of things that I think is interesting. And of course, you can spend a lot of time stuck on the semantics. [00:13:31] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:13:32] Speaker A: And if we were linguists and historians, that might be a really fun discussion, just from a, like, what did they really mean? Kind of Point of view. But we have evolved our understandings of these words in English by practitioners who practice, who think of their work in English. And so we don't necessarily have to, like, spend a whole lot of time parsing. [00:13:57] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:13:58] Speaker A: What? Like how bitter is different than salty. [00:14:00] Speaker B: Right. [00:14:01] Speaker A: Because, like, we can talk about that. We have an understanding of it. It's not because drain is so clearly distinct a word from descend. [00:14:10] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:14:10] Speaker A: It's obvious how different they are. It's like. No, no, no. Like, just get into the actions here. Right. So I think some of these are relatively accessible. [00:14:23] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:14:24] Speaker A: That is to say. And it always comes back to this, because acrid and source are flavors that are easily discernible in foods. [00:14:32] Speaker B: Yes. [00:14:32] Speaker A: Right. When they're strong. And people also tend to have a reaction to them that's very tangible, it's palpable, and therefore are Perhaps the easiest to understand. They are also the ones that create the dichotomy that everyone's always hunting for. They have the most sort of, like, oppositional, polar dynamic. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, if you eat something that's accurate, and by accurate here, we mean you also will see pungent. [00:14:58] Speaker B: Pungent, Accurate. They're equivalent. [00:15:01] Speaker A: Yeah. You know, and that is the idea of movement and dispersion. Right? [00:15:06] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:15:06] Speaker A: And so if you're eating, if you make. If you just take fresh ginger root and chew on a slice, Right. Or you have wasabi at the sushi restaurant, or you eat some chili pepper, right. All of these things are gonna have an acrid, slash pungent. [00:15:22] Speaker B: Absolutely. [00:15:22] Speaker A: Quality. Right. And you know it. Like, if you eat a big, like, knob of wasabi paste at the sushi restaurant, your face is going to be dispersed. [00:15:31] Speaker B: Yes. [00:15:31] Speaker A: Like, it's gonna open your sinuses. You're gonna be like, oh, my God, what's happening? Yeah, it's super strong. [00:15:36] Speaker B: Yep. [00:15:36] Speaker A: So that's easy for people to understand. Sour similarly, because there are a lot of sour things that we can eat, Right. Fruits and berries and citrus, of course. Like, just the easy access to lemons and limes by most people in the developed world means that you can just bite into something, go, oh, God. Sour. And you can feel that, like, that tightness in your jaw when you get something really souring. Yeah. Just like you literally pull in, like your tissues pull in, your face pulls in. And it's very experientially the opposite of the wasabi. [00:16:08] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:16:08] Speaker A: Right. So those guys are kind of easy because people experience them. But what about, like, bitter and salty here? Like, what are we. When we say that bitter drains, dries or makes firm, what are we talking about? [00:16:25] Speaker B: I think so. From my understanding, a bitter herb doesn't need to do all three of those things at the same time. [00:16:34] Speaker A: Right. [00:16:35] Speaker B: Some bitter herbs will do more of one thing than another. Right. Drain is fairly clear. Its effect is descending. When you eat something bitter, it's gonna descend or it's gonna go down. [00:16:48] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:16:48] Speaker B: If you're full, if your stomach is full and you eat something bitter, it's gonna help your stomach to become less full by helping the food to go down. [00:16:57] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:16:58] Speaker B: Right. And it's really orienting the function downward. Dry. We use bitter herbs all the time in Chinese medicine to dry dampness. So I think this is really easiest to understand if we think about it relative to the earth element here. I know we're trying to stay away from five phases for a second, but some of these are really specific and easier to understand if we think about them in the five phases, actually. And to make firm, I think, is also easiest to understand in the context of the five phases, where bitter helps to consolidate water so it makes firm the water. One other way to think would be to take it. Typically bitter things take heat out of fluids, right? Often. And so if fluid is too hot, it's not able to consolidate and freeze. Right. So bitter can help with that process as well. It can help to sort of consolidate the fluids so that they can become more firm. That's kind of how I think of that function. Yeah. [00:18:06] Speaker A: Well, and you know, it's interesting because experientially, from a like a food point of view, bitter is not a flavor that a lot of modern people have much relationship with. [00:18:14] Speaker B: Right. [00:18:14] Speaker A: In fact, primarily the place that people get bitter flavor is from coffee. [00:18:19] Speaker B: Yes. [00:18:20] Speaker A: Or maybe tea. But of course, the vast majority of people in the in the U.S. for example, drink their coffee with cream and sugar and other adjuvants. Right. To like, frankly soften the bitter undertone of. Of the coffee. Because the bitter part is the part that they're like. Yeah, I don't really know about that. And you know, there's a couple of other places like salad greens and stuff like, you know, arugula, radicchio that, that can be bitter. But in the west, we don't have a huge attachment to bitter flavor. We don't do bitter melon soups. We don't do, you know, bitter experiences. And so I think a lot of people may not have had the experience of eating something very bitter and feeling the kind of drying effect in your mouth that comes from bitter flavor. There's a kind of like, you know, if you think of the tannins that you'll find in tea or in wine or other places, if you drink something that's very tannin y, like if you take tea and you just steep it too long right. To where all of the nuance is gone and all that's left is the bitter quality of tea and you drink it. It. Your mouth feels kind of tacky. [00:19:26] Speaker B: Right. [00:19:26] Speaker A: Even though there's liquid in it. [00:19:27] Speaker B: Sure. [00:19:28] Speaker A: Right. There's like moisture in your mouth, but it feels tacky because the bitterness has this kind of drying effect. And also things that tend to be kind of bitter, liquid wise, tend to have a little bit more body to them, which is to say like the density of the liquid is a little bit more firmed, so to speak. Right. You sort of like consolidated it a little Bit in this quote unquote drying way. And so this is a strange experience because bitter is not something we have a lot of taste for. But I actually think that if you, if you engage with bitter flavor in your diet, even just from, like I said, bitter greens or. Or I wouldn't recommend necessarily over steeping your tea because it's not very pleasant. But you could, you could run an experiment on yourself there to find it where you might actually be able to feel in your body some of these words, particularly on the dry, make firm side. [00:20:20] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:20:21] Speaker A: Right. [00:20:21] Speaker B: And if you drink too much coffee, what happens? [00:20:24] Speaker A: Yeah, loose stool. [00:20:25] Speaker B: You have loose stool, you pee too much. And then you can even get a stomach ache. Right. Because the bitter is draining earth too much. Yeah, yeah. [00:20:36] Speaker A: In fact, there's a not insignificant number of people who have to have their coffee before their morning bowel movement. [00:20:41] Speaker B: Right? [00:20:41] Speaker A: Yeah. It's just like necessary to get things moving. [00:20:44] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:20:44] Speaker A: And then. [00:20:44] Speaker B: And then also wood can more easily overact on earth. So people can feel jittery, they can feel wind symptoms. Right. All of this because of the overly draining effect that bitter can have when it's in excess. [00:20:58] Speaker A: Right, right. So let's go on the opposite side of bitter than to salty. So salty soften hardness or descend. [00:21:07] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:21:08] Speaker A: Now this is where we kind of opened with drain and descend. Like we have these two things. Like, what's different here with salty? [00:21:14] Speaker B: So salty is going to. So let's say you eat too much salty food. You know, lots. I think back when we were in China. Do you remember, like the first week we were in China? [00:21:26] Speaker A: Oh, my God. Everyone was like, all of our fingers and toes were like swollen because it's so salty. [00:21:32] Speaker B: The food was so salty. Salty. Yeah, yeah. So you get swollen. Why? Well, salty flavor to access is going to take the fluids and basically make them disperse. So they were all going to our extremities. Right. Or feeling like fluid bloated, if you will, rather than having those fluids consolidated in the places that they needed to be. [00:21:57] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:21:58] Speaker B: So then the other thing is salty flavor. A lot of the things that are salty by nature are going to have. Like when you, when you disperse fluids, where do they go? So if the fluid is consolidated in a place and then you open up, its free movement, water likes to descend. Right. So that's kind of how I understand that. That second part. [00:22:24] Speaker A: Right. [00:22:24] Speaker B: Softens hardness and descends. Right. So a lot of the time when fluids in the body are stuck either in some kind of growth process, let's say like a cyst or a tumor or something like that. Or they're stuck in the way of an inflamed lymph node. Right. You palpate the neck and the neck is. The lymph nodes are really solid. We usually use salty flavors to help move those fluids out of that kind of stuck and hardened position. Herbs like muli or in some extreme cases, the. The sea herbs. Right. Kelp and like these kinds of things that are. That are really helpful. So. And where did those fluids go? They tend to go down and come out that way. So that's kind of how I think about descend in that case. It's really acting on fluids. [00:23:21] Speaker A: And when the descent is intentional of a formula and working for the body's benefit, we usually see that pathway out through urination. [00:23:29] Speaker B: Correct. Yeah. [00:23:29] Speaker A: But if it's pathological, you know, the fluids are descending, but they're pooling now at feet and hands, particularly feet. Right. Like, I mean, this is the classic situation of, like, someone's on their feet all day. [00:23:41] Speaker B: Right. [00:23:41] Speaker A: And they end up in the end with a bunch of fluid accumulating at their feet. They go to sleep, they're, you know, horizontal. Gravity's not pulling, like water's not descending downward to their feet. And all of a sudden everything kind of levels out. [00:23:56] Speaker B: Yep. [00:23:57] Speaker A: And then we repeat, you know, it goes over and over again. And that's because, like, water doesn't have the ability to hold. [00:24:03] Speaker B: Right. [00:24:04] Speaker A: Exactly. Itself into position. So it descends down. [00:24:07] Speaker B: Yes. [00:24:08] Speaker A: Right. But not out through the urine. [00:24:10] Speaker B: Right. [00:24:10] Speaker A: Just into your feet. [00:24:11] Speaker B: Into your feet. [00:24:12] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not great. So let's add in sweet then. Sweet flavor. I just want to say, too, because we're going to hit on this a couple of times with sweet. You know, sweet. When you say the word sweet to modern people, most of them think like candy bars. [00:24:28] Speaker B: Yeah, Right. [00:24:29] Speaker A: You know, which of course is sweet. [00:24:30] Speaker B: Yes. [00:24:31] Speaker A: But incredibly, very hyperly densely sweet. Right. Very, very sweet in a way that is new, relatively speaking. I mean, it's 200 years old to have that amount of sweet and not even that old to have it so widely available. [00:24:47] Speaker B: Right. [00:24:47] Speaker A: I mean, it's probably 50, 50, 65 years of so widely available. Because, you know, the vast majority of the things that human beings eat are sweet. [00:24:59] Speaker B: Yeah, right. [00:25:00] Speaker A: I mean, even things that we say are like, you know, bitter or whatever, like salad greens, like there's some base note of that food that is sweet. Right. And that's just because, like, if you can eat it, it's yin. It comes from the earth, some aspect of that is sweet. [00:25:16] Speaker B: Right. [00:25:16] Speaker A: But there's a, you know, a huge range of it. And so the things that, when we think about classically understood sweet things, it's stuff that I think, biomechanically, we would now call carbs. [00:25:28] Speaker B: Yeah, sure. [00:25:29] Speaker A: You know, so, like, you know, you probably know what carbs are, but like, grains is the big place. Potatoes, root vegetables, tubers, stuff like that. It grows in the ground. It's probably sweet, you know, but again, the range on that is quite wide. It is, you know, the difference between, like, a potato and a candy bar in terms of, like, its sweet level is very, very different. [00:25:49] Speaker B: Yes. [00:25:50] Speaker A: So in the context of herbs, when we say that something's sweet, some things are obvious, like, you know, honey fried stuff gonna be sweet, and then some fruits, you know, dazao, obviously sweet. You just eat it, it's fine. Etong, obviously sweet. But other things are gonna be sort of plant sweet, if that makes sense. Right. Like roots, tubers, fleshy things, stuff that has, like, substance to it, body to it, those become the sweet flavor. In this Nijing understanding, we say that sweet builds, slows or harmonize. I think build is relatively easy for people to grasp. [00:26:30] Speaker B: Right. But that one's really important, the building. Because it's the only flavor that adds anything. [00:26:36] Speaker A: Right. [00:26:37] Speaker B: So sweet. [00:26:38] Speaker A: That's. [00:26:39] Speaker B: That's actually the thing that makes sweet unique. It's an end earth unique to some degree. Right. Because we kind of associate sweet with earth and to a certain degree. [00:26:48] Speaker A: Sure. [00:26:49] Speaker B: So the only way to build anything is with sweet. [00:26:53] Speaker A: Right. [00:26:53] Speaker B: You cannot build deficiency. Yeah. You cannot build a function or a substance in the body without sweet flavor. It's one of the reasons there's a. There's an argument in acupuncture style around tonification. What does tonification mean when we use acupuncture to tonify? Right. And. And one of the things that people have said in the past is that acupuncture needles have no sweet flavor. To illustrate this idea that there's no way to add a substance with acupuncture, like, that's not how tonification works. [00:27:28] Speaker A: Right. [00:27:29] Speaker B: So this is another discussion entirely that we don't need to get into. But that line comes from this idea that sweet builds. So. So if you want to build a substance, and even if it's a function in the body, like I say to the residents, if you eat too much food and you're really full, you can eat bitter and pungent things and get the fullness to move. But if you have a chronic fullness, you need sweet Flavor to save the function into the physiology. You can't just give bitter and pungent by itself. So the sweet flavor sort of saves the effect, or it builds the effect into the body. [00:28:11] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:28:12] Speaker B: Without that, it's just a temporary gesture of movement. Right. [00:28:17] Speaker A: I've actually heard you use this analogy before. I think listeners may be unfamiliar with it, though, because I have a suspicion it's because of our mutual love of games and technology, computer stuff, that you ended up with this analogy. But where the idea of saving we literally mean, like, the metaphor here is like clicking the save button on the computer. [00:28:40] Speaker B: Yeah. In a document or something. [00:28:41] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:28:42] Speaker B: Or a game. Yep. [00:28:43] Speaker A: And so sweet flavor. This is also, I think, a really good nod to why Chinese formula composition is so effective. [00:28:52] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:28:53] Speaker A: Compared to a lot of the more single varietal combinations that you'll see. [00:29:00] Speaker B: Right. [00:29:00] Speaker A: You know, just single herbs in Western herbalism. Right. Like just take saw palmetto, just take whatever. But even in the compositions that you'll see at your local health food store, they tend to just be all the things that we know are good for prostates. [00:29:14] Speaker B: Yes. Right. [00:29:15] Speaker A: So like, oh, get your men's blend. [00:29:17] Speaker B: Right. [00:29:17] Speaker A: It's going to be what we would call young tonics and fluid movers. Just as many of them as you can get. And put them into the formula. Mostly, I think to just save people from having to take seven different bottles of herbs, they're just going to put it in one and charge you a primary price. [00:29:32] Speaker B: Sure. [00:29:33] Speaker A: But that combination, I can't speak to every formula that exists in the health food store, but my experience with them so far is that they lack this kind of sophistication where we say, okay, we have a pattern that we're trying to assert on the body, and they almost always are going to lack the saving function of sweet. [00:29:55] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:29:56] Speaker A: Right. [00:29:56] Speaker B: Yeah. That's not understood. Yeah. [00:29:58] Speaker A: No, because, I mean, it's a. I mean, this is why our medicine has such power, is because it's sophisticated. Right. It's not just like, oh, I figured out these five plants will help boost your testosterone. Why don't you take all of them? [00:30:12] Speaker B: Right. [00:30:13] Speaker A: Like, it's not like that. In fact, if you did that to someone for too long, you cause problems. [00:30:18] Speaker B: Right. [00:30:18] Speaker A: You know, and we see that even in less dramatic ways. Like with senna tea. Right. Like, people will take senna on its own. It's just a singular action and direction, and it. It creates bowel dependency. Right. And that's because the action of senna is in no way moderated. [00:30:36] Speaker B: No. [00:30:36] Speaker A: By a composition of other things. And so the body, you know, is hyper efficient. If the senna is going to do the moving, it's not going to waste resources on that. [00:30:44] Speaker B: Right. [00:30:44] Speaker A: And now all of a sudden, you can't have a bowel movement without your vicinity, you know, so the build side of sweet, I also think it's accessible because, I mean, not to be flip about it, but the thing is that if you eat too much food, especially sweet food, you build flesh. Yeah, you build flesh. Like, you'll gain weight. [00:31:01] Speaker B: Absolutely. [00:31:01] Speaker A: And so that's something that I think people have, like an immediate connection to. And in a different podcast, maybe in the future we talk more about nutrition. Specifically. I want to. We're going to come back to this because it's a really fascinating biomed research that's being done on sugar substitutes and the sensation of eating something sweet that has no actual sweet qi. Interesting idea. It's like the flavor, like the trigger for sweet. It's like the yang side of sweet with no yin bit. Interesting what happens to bodies when we consume this. And there's some really cool research that's been done looking at changes to metabolic function. [00:31:41] Speaker B: Wow. [00:31:41] Speaker A: Negative, by the way, changes to metabolic function from eating fake sweet. [00:31:45] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:31:45] Speaker A: Right. So the idea of build is pretty obvious, but what about slow and harmonized? Like, what's going on there? [00:31:52] Speaker B: So slow is easy. Right. What do we crave when we're stressed out? Most people crave sweet, you know, so if you're going real fast inside, the thing that our body orients, our appetite orients, is toward slowing down, which can be initiated by a sweet flavor. [00:32:11] Speaker A: Right. [00:32:12] Speaker B: You can also have people. This kind of goes too, to the building quality of Earth. Where you build Earth. What happens when you build Earth? It becomes dampness physiologic or an excess. Right. So what does dampness do? It slows things down. It makes things gooey and weighs it down sluggish. It's like trying to run in honey. Right, right, right. [00:32:36] Speaker A: And again, physiologically, it's fine. Everybody has to have dampness. [00:32:40] Speaker B: You need physiologic to produce ch. [00:32:43] Speaker A: Right? [00:32:43] Speaker B: You absolutely do. [00:32:44] Speaker A: But if it's too much, then of course, we get to the stuff we treat all the time. [00:32:48] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:32:48] Speaker A: Damp accumulation. [00:32:50] Speaker B: So could be used positively or negatively. Right. If you think about there's so many formulas that are based upon, like, full sweet flavor, and a lot of it is about slowing things down for people. Yeah. [00:33:07] Speaker A: And then the last one here, harmonize. You know, it's interesting because that word pops up all the time. In Chinese literature. [00:33:13] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. We should define that carefully here because it's like, oh, shouldn't everything be harmonized? So harmonize in this context, in my understanding means to control the strength of the effect of pungent and bitter. [00:33:30] Speaker A: It really would be better if we called it moderate. [00:33:32] Speaker B: Moderate. Well, moderate is another way. I can't remember whether it's slow or harmonized. But another way to translate them is to moderate. [00:33:41] Speaker A: To moderate. [00:33:41] Speaker B: To moderate. So yeah, you're. You're tempering the effect of the formula and it's. And it's usually around protecting earth to some degree. Right? [00:33:51] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:33:52] Speaker B: In a formula. [00:33:53] Speaker A: Let's make a linguistic leap here. And we're going to say that sweet builds or moderates. [00:33:57] Speaker B: Or moderates. Yeah. [00:33:59] Speaker A: Which is, which is captures both the idea of slow and harmonize here together. [00:34:03] Speaker B: Right. [00:34:03] Speaker A: And we don't mean harmonize like xiaoyang harmonized. That's not what we mean. [00:34:06] Speaker B: No, but and also there are times when you don't want to harmonize from that perspective. You don't want sweet flavor. And formulas. [00:34:14] Speaker A: We don't want to slow the action. [00:34:16] Speaker B: We don't want to slow the action. It's too slow, it's too dead. We want to invigorate it full force. Right. So we're going to use all acrid, all hot herbs. There are formulas like that, right? Right. [00:34:28] Speaker A: Yeah. And you can also, like this is why this is an important thing to understand. Right. Is that if you, let's say you used a formula that was like that. [00:34:35] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:34:36] Speaker A: Sort of full bore movement based formula. We just got to hit it hard. [00:34:40] Speaker B: Yes. [00:34:40] Speaker A: Getting a lot of good results. Push the ball really sort of far out in the field is great. But now maybe I'm starting to see some of the negative effects of like hardcore accurate results. Right. Or maybe there's an over drying effect or there's a kind of depleted effect. [00:34:56] Speaker B: Right. [00:34:56] Speaker A: But we still can see that the underlying thing we use this formula for is still there. How can we continue to use this formula but soften it a little bit? [00:35:05] Speaker B: Then we add a little sweet flavor. [00:35:06] Speaker A: We add a little sweet flavor. [00:35:07] Speaker B: Right, right, right. [00:35:08] Speaker A: And so like this is the, this is the conceptual reason that this is useful because like if I wrote that formula and we're just talking about a fictional formula here, but they exist. Right. So if this is a formula, we. [00:35:18] Speaker B: Could take Bai Tongtang. Right. You got Fuzi, Ganjiang and Songbait. [00:35:23] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:35:23] Speaker B: All acrid warm herbs. Two of them are acrid hot. [00:35:27] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:35:27] Speaker B: Right. [00:35:28] Speaker A: Super moving. [00:35:29] Speaker B: Yeah, super moving. And like there's Usually in these cases, there's diarrhea. There's a big shaoyun type diarrhea. But if you give a sweet flavor in that, like, let's say you give sin yitong, which is just that change. It's just song by out jurgons out in the person will have diarrhea again. They can't take the sweet flavor at all. But usually, as you treat with the baitong tong, eventually the diarrhea will get better and better and better. And then you're like, oh, I think they can handle a little sweet. So you throw. Then you chuck a little sweet in there, and boom, it's fine. And then they can build more fluids eventually. Right, because of the moderation and also. [00:36:10] Speaker A: The saving function you were talking about. [00:36:12] Speaker B: Yes. [00:36:12] Speaker A: Right. Because the thing is that if you just stopped with the. The sort of excess style approach in the formula. [00:36:19] Speaker B: Right. [00:36:19] Speaker A: Maybe it sticks, maybe it doesn't. [00:36:21] Speaker B: Right? Yeah. [00:36:21] Speaker A: But if you're like, if you're actually sort of working with the case and modifying the formula over time and modifying it with this level of intention, you can press the save button. Right. By including a little bit sweet. And we're not talking about taking that formula and filling it full of honey. [00:36:37] Speaker B: No, no, no. [00:36:39] Speaker A: I mean, it's not like a crazy thing. [00:36:41] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:36:43] Speaker A: Again, sweet here. We don't mean turning everything into a candy bar. Right. We're just adding a little bit of a particular flavor for this particular function. [00:36:51] Speaker B: Right? [00:36:51] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. So with these classic five. But of course, there are some other flavors that exist. Probably the one we should add into the mix here just so we can have it in our belt but not overwhelm everyone is with bland. [00:37:08] Speaker B: Yes. [00:37:09] Speaker A: So talk about bland. [00:37:10] Speaker B: Bland. I. I can't. Honestly, I can't remember the exact text of the Nejang, but it's to like, the way that I remember it is open and create flow. But that's really related to the fluids in my mind. Bland is like sweet flavor. That's a very, very moderate. So it's not like if it were to fit into the five, right there, there's some Chinese commentator that says if you eat too much sweets, everything tastes bland. If you eat too much bland, everything tastes sweet. Right? [00:37:46] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:37:47] Speaker B: Which is true. Right. If you just eat candy, everything starts to taste bland. But if you eat super sort of generic bland foods, then everything starts to taste sweet. Your taste buds adjust. So this is true. Right. So there's a connection between sweet and bland. Going to earth, working with earth, working with dampness, working with Fluids, that kind of thing. But bland is more about kind of opening up space for those fluids to move properly. [00:38:16] Speaker A: It's interesting that it sort of works in this. Again, kind of a dichotomy, kind of a polarized idea with sweet and bland. But they're not really polars. They're more like on a continuum where sweet has this strong building creation function and bland has a kind of permissive function. It sort of lets things move right away. So it's like contributing, it's building, but not nearly in the like intense way that sweet is. [00:38:46] Speaker B: And you see herbs that are close in between this with like food stagnation formulas. Right. Like, they're technically like Maya and Shenchu. Right. These are technically sweet herbs, but they're used when somebody has food stagnation. [00:39:02] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:39:03] Speaker B: So they're really closer to bland. They're creating like space. [00:39:06] Speaker A: Shania. [00:39:07] Speaker B: Yeah, Shania, exactly. Right. And they're not bitter herbs. They're technically sweet or bland herbs. [00:39:31] Speaker A: I want to go back to the phase structure, right. Because we were saying like, okay, I want to kick out this notion that sour belongs to wood or that acrid belongs to metal. [00:39:45] Speaker B: Right. [00:39:45] Speaker A: I want to kick that out and I want to replace it with instead how these flavors we've just discussed impact those phases. So when we break it down like that, maybe. Let's start with the obvious, the easy ones, the ones that have a kind of dichotomy, and that's going to be with wood and metal, sour and acrid. So walk us through that. [00:40:07] Speaker B: So if we just talk about tonification and reduction, we can just start there. [00:40:12] Speaker A: So that's to say that when we tonify a phase, we're augmenting its natural movement. [00:40:19] Speaker B: Correct. [00:40:19] Speaker A: And to reduce it is to constrain that movement. [00:40:22] Speaker B: Yes. [00:40:22] Speaker A: Okay, so in the case of wood, we're talking about outward expansion. [00:40:25] Speaker B: Yes. [00:40:26] Speaker A: And in the case of metal, we're talking about containment. [00:40:28] Speaker B: Yes. [00:40:29] Speaker A: Okay. [00:40:29] Speaker B: Yep. Yeah. So in the case of wood, acrid tonifies, sour reduces. [00:40:35] Speaker A: Right, Seems obvious. [00:40:36] Speaker B: Yeah. The constraining action of sour is going to directly contradict or go against the outward movement of wood. [00:40:45] Speaker A: Right. [00:40:46] Speaker B: And acrid is going to mimic that movement. [00:40:48] Speaker A: Okay, Right. Easy enough. [00:40:50] Speaker B: Exactly the opposite with metal. So sour tonifies, acrid reduces. [00:40:55] Speaker A: Yeah, so that. See, that's the thing, right? You see, you hear that and you go, oh, yeah, that makes sense. That's what's going to happen with fire and water. Right. And you would be. [00:41:04] Speaker B: Little did you know. [00:41:06] Speaker A: But that's why I think this is important, because we're kicking out this notion that there's one flavor that's associated with a phase. In fact, what we're saying is, like, okay, the phase has a quality. Like, every phase has its own chi quality, its basic movement. How do the flavors, any of the five really, because we're talking about it here in sort of tonifying and reducing. But like, there are effects of these flavors. Like, it's not just two flavors that affect a fate. All of them. [00:41:34] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:41:34] Speaker A: So, like, they all have an effect. But what is that effect? That would be a long conversation for which we would need a lot of charts. [00:41:41] Speaker B: Right. [00:41:42] Speaker A: But in this case, we're looking at just the tonifying, reducing side. Okay. Wood, metal, sour, acrid. That stuff all makes sense. Let's go to the fire water, though, because this is where we no longer have the convenient sort of polar structure. [00:41:56] Speaker B: Right. So let's go to fire first. So fire is tonified by salty and reduced by sweet, actually. [00:42:09] Speaker A: Okay. [00:42:10] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:42:10] Speaker A: So fire's movement is upward. Salty is going to tonify its upward movement. Now, this is where it gets weird for people because we just said that salty softens hardness or descends. So how does that work? [00:42:27] Speaker B: What does it descend? [00:42:29] Speaker A: What does it descend? Indeed. So in this case, it descends the water. Water, exactly. [00:42:34] Speaker B: Right. Which is core to how it tonifies fire. [00:42:37] Speaker A: Right. So it actually sort of removes the. The polar opposite effect of water from fire by telling the water, hey, you got to get out of here. [00:42:48] Speaker B: Right? [00:42:48] Speaker A: Yeah. Get out of here with your water. [00:42:50] Speaker B: Yep. [00:42:50] Speaker A: And so now fire is stronger. [00:42:51] Speaker B: Yep. [00:42:52] Speaker A: Okay. Sweet, though, I'm assuming this is how it plays in with the moderating piece. [00:42:58] Speaker B: Correct? Yeah. [00:42:59] Speaker A: So the sweet comes in and says, hey, take it easy. Fire. [00:43:03] Speaker B: Yes, chill out. You're imagine a fire that's flaring like crazy. Right. Sweet goes in and it says, chill out, be soft, be gentle. [00:43:14] Speaker A: Right. [00:43:15] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:43:15] Speaker A: And sweet has a sort of intrinsic relationship to dampness. [00:43:19] Speaker B: Yes. [00:43:19] Speaker A: Which is also, I think, part of it. It's not that sweetness is dampness exactly, but sweetness engenders dampness. [00:43:25] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. [00:43:26] Speaker A: And a lot of the sweet. A lot of the sweet things are themselves kind of sticky and wet, you know, just like experientially. That's what they are. So there is a. It's interesting because, like, salty tells water to get out of here. [00:43:39] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:43:40] Speaker A: And sweetness says, like, ah, you can stay. [00:43:42] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, A little is okay. [00:43:44] Speaker A: Yeah, we'll bring some here. I think it's fine. [00:43:46] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:43:47] Speaker A: Okay. So if salty tonifies fire, sweet reduces it. [00:43:51] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:43:51] Speaker A: If we go to water, then. [00:43:53] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:43:54] Speaker A: And as I Said we do not have a polar thing here. You'd expect us to say something that we're not going to say. So what happens with water? What are our flavors here? [00:44:02] Speaker B: Okay, so salty, which we see, again, is going to reduce water. And we talked about that before, right? [00:44:08] Speaker A: Yeah, Same function, actually. It actually is the same effect as what's happening in fire. We're saying, like, hey, water, go down. [00:44:14] Speaker B: Get out, go down, get out. And specifically, we want to remember that when we're talking about water here, we're talking about consolidation and storage, that particular movement and function. We're not talking about the other parts of water as much that we might think of, like, oh, it's flowing and it's easy. Like, that's a subcategory of what we mean by water when we're talking about five phases. [00:44:37] Speaker A: Right. [00:44:38] Speaker B: Talking mostly about storage and consolidation. So salty directly reduces. That bitter tonifies. [00:44:45] Speaker A: Bitter tonifies. So our bitter drain dry, make firm. [00:44:52] Speaker B: Make firm. [00:44:52] Speaker A: There you go. That's the part. Right. Because the thing is that drain and dry sounds like those things should work against water. But only actually if you're thinking about the subcategory of water you just mentioned. [00:45:05] Speaker B: Yes. [00:45:05] Speaker A: If you keep thinking like water is a river and it flows, then draining and drying and descending would all seem of a kind. [00:45:13] Speaker B: Right, Right. [00:45:14] Speaker A: But if water is storage. [00:45:17] Speaker B: Yes. [00:45:18] Speaker A: Holding capacity, ice in its most intense yin form, then to help something become firm is to help water consolidate. [00:45:30] Speaker B: Yes. [00:45:30] Speaker A: Got it. And this is kind of strange. And again, language doesn't serve us here, but on some level, we're drying the water to make it firm, which actually makes it more dense, consolidated. [00:45:44] Speaker B: Right? [00:45:45] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:45:45] Speaker B: And if we think about herbs here, you can have that consolidation occur functionally with other, more bitter herbs that we would think about, the Huangs, for example. But we can also have it. You know, one of the big herbs that's used that we use to treat kidney stuff. Right. From a Zangfu organ perspective is Shang Di Huang. Right. And Shang di Huang, you look at the flavors on it, even in the Bensky, bitter is named among them. Right? [00:46:14] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:46:14] Speaker B: So we tend to think, oh, well, if it's. It could be a little sweet too, is another way to think about it. But it's. It is the. It's the consolidation factor of bitter that allows it to help with the kidney function. [00:46:33] Speaker A: You know, Shangdi is such a great example. And we'll just tack this in as a little aside, because, you know, when you buy Shangdi, it comes black. Yes, it's black. Kind of sticky. Roots. And then you get shooty and it's just black but more sticky. [00:46:50] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:46:51] Speaker A: And then you look at the words and you say Shung Di Huang. And Shu Di Huang. [00:46:57] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:46:58] Speaker A: So Di Huang is the herb, right? Romania. [00:47:00] Speaker B: Yep. [00:47:00] Speaker A: Shung fresh Shu processed. Except that Shang di Huang is also processed. [00:47:07] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:47:08] Speaker A: Like it's not, it's not actually black. [00:47:10] Speaker B: Right. [00:47:10] Speaker A: The root isn't black. [00:47:11] Speaker B: Right. [00:47:11] Speaker A: In fact, the root is a kind of like butter yellow. [00:47:15] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:47:15] Speaker A: Like it's kind of a creamy light yellow with like a dusty brown skin. [00:47:20] Speaker B: It's true. [00:47:21] Speaker A: And I think that Shangdi is like one of the most misunderstood herbs in this way, because the primary way that we get our hands on it is in this steam processed Shung, quote unquote, Shung Di Huang. But it's not actually. [00:47:34] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:47:34] Speaker A: And so if you had unprocessed, like truly Xiang di Huang, its function as a, as a drying bitter herb is much more obvious because it doesn't. Like when you, when you eat Shangdi, like the regular one that comes black, it's like, it tastes kind of sweet. There's like a bitter undertone. But it's definitely sweet because it's been cooked. [00:47:58] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:47:58] Speaker A: It's been concentrated. Like the sweet aspect's been been made more real compared to the immediately apparent bitter piece. And so it's one of those things where. And we're going to talk about this here in a little bit, but just what happens over time. This is our friend Eric Brand, who runs Legendary Herbs. This is his thesis work for his PhD was the historical change in herbs over time. And so he's reading classical texts, he's looking at collections of herbs from the 1700s and the 1800s that are in the British Museum and sort of like just, are the species the same? Are the parts the same? But the thing is, is that we don't have a 2000 year old collection of herbs. So like, when we're reading about what Zhang Zhongjing is talking about or whatever, we don't have them. They're not here. We can't really look at it. And so how long have we been. How long has Shang D been not really shung as the sort of like standard process. You know what I mean? So when you think about all of these things that Shangdi does, how many times when someone's talking about that, were they actually talking about the sticky black root? [00:49:12] Speaker B: Right. [00:49:12] Speaker A: Or were they talking about the just dry one? Yeah, that's so interesting to me. [00:49:16] Speaker B: Yep. [00:49:16] Speaker A: Yeah. Let's not forget the last flavor here though, which is Earth. [00:49:20] Speaker B: Yep. Or the. Yeah, the last phase. [00:49:22] Speaker A: I'm sorry, the last phase. Yeah. Which is Earth. So what? Which flavors tonify and reduce Earth. [00:49:30] Speaker B: So sweet tonifies. That tracks bitter, reduces. [00:49:33] Speaker A: Yeah. So here's an easy one again. [00:49:35] Speaker B: Yep. [00:49:35] Speaker A: Yeah. So if you were looking at the chart, if you went across the sort of horizontal axis, right, and you looked at wood, earth and metal. [00:49:41] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:49:42] Speaker A: You'd be like, oh, yeah, obviously, yeah, no problem. But then it's when you look at fire and water that you're like, wait a minute. [00:49:49] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:49:49] Speaker A: That the system's breaking down. No, the system's not breaking down. You're just assuming that the system was symmetrical and polar to start. And it's not. [00:49:59] Speaker B: Right? [00:49:59] Speaker A: It's not. This is really important to remember, right. Like, most of the Chinese calculations are based on planetary returns, right? I think it's Jupiter. I think that comes back regularly. Don't quote me on this, I'm not an astronomy expert. But what I can say is that the math that's done to create the celestial calendar, right, so we've got 12 zodiac animals, we have the sexagenary cycle, 60 year cycle cycle, et cetera, that is fundamentally calculated on a planetary return, which I'm going to say for this podcast is Jupiter. And that that planet comes back into the same spot in the sky about every 12 years. Important word. Doing a lot of heavy lifting here though, is about. About. [00:50:37] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:50:37] Speaker A: Right. [00:50:38] Speaker B: Not exactly. [00:50:38] Speaker A: Not exactly. In fact, it comes back every like 11.87 years or something. [00:50:43] Speaker B: Sure. [00:50:43] Speaker A: Right. Which is why every calendar in the world as a leap year, right? Because we base the calendars based on the movement of the stars, but the stars don't fit conveniently into multiples of 12. Imagine that the universe was like, yeah, sorry, it's not going to be a clean system. And that also it changes over time. Stuff moves apart, comes together, stuff changes. Right. So my point in saying that is just that, like, we have systems, even like really important systems, that are very close to being mathematically tight but are not always. They're not exactly that way. [00:51:21] Speaker B: Right. [00:51:22] Speaker A: And that's absolutely apparent here. Like, a lot of what we're talking about is, I'm going to use this word again, mathematically tight, which is to say, like, it has symmetry and dichotomy and polar structures and you could easily divide it by two or four or five, but like, not always. [00:51:37] Speaker B: Right. [00:51:37] Speaker A: Because the thing is that you shouldn't. I don't think a person should waste too much time hunting for the structures so much as looking for the more Macro guiding principles, which is sort of like what acrid does, what sweet does, what sour does, et cetera. And then just seeing, like, okay, when you apply it to this phase, what happens? Sometimes it's neat and tidy from phase to phase, and sometimes it's not. [00:52:00] Speaker B: Yep. [00:52:01] Speaker A: And that's okay. [00:52:01] Speaker B: Yep. [00:52:02] Speaker A: Right. You can still use it. That's the whole point, really, in the end. So let's. Let's take a jaunt over because. Okay, so we've got these fundamental actions of the flavors. We have these. The ways in which they tonify and reduce the phases. But there's other things that each of these flavors will do on the phases. Right. Again, lots of charts that are outside. [00:52:42] Speaker B: Of tonification and dispersion. [00:52:44] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. There's other things that happen. Right. When people, you know, engage with these flavors. I think, though, from a practical point of view, the question then immediately arises like, okay, well, the herbs, each herb has a nature and flavor. [00:52:57] Speaker B: Yep. [00:52:58] Speaker A: Because anything that grows exists really something you can consume as a nature and a flavor. The thing is, though, I think anybody who's paying close attention will know that not everyone agrees on what the nature and a flavor of a thing is. And that then I think, causes some headache for people because they'll read in the Bensky that Shihu is acrid and cool. [00:53:25] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:53:26] Speaker A: But then other folks will be like. [00:53:27] Speaker B: Well, I think it's bitter and neutral. [00:53:30] Speaker A: Bitter and neutral. [00:53:31] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:53:32] Speaker A: Whoopsie. [00:53:32] Speaker B: Yeah. Right. [00:53:33] Speaker A: That seems a bit different. [00:53:35] Speaker B: Yep. Yep. [00:53:36] Speaker A: So how do we square that circle? [00:53:39] Speaker B: Well, I think in most of the cases where herbs are classified with different flavors and natures by different physicians, there's a few things that are happening. First, the formula structure and the type of diagnostic strategy that they're using is a little different. And if you take something like Chihu and you consider it acrid, cool, release the exterior, or you consider it bitter and neutral, you can justify the function of chihu in either direction with either structure. But it's going to make more sense for somebody to look at it one way than another, depending on your orientation of formula strategy and treatment strategy. So, like if you're Li Dongyuan, for example, it's going to make more sense to look at it as cool and pungent. Right. Because he's thinking of it as a lifting agent with a light qi or with a robust Qi. Excuse me, with a very mild flavor. Right. [00:54:40] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:54:42] Speaker B: So he's looking at it as like a something that's. I almost think of it like carbonization in a drink that's going to float the effect of the formula to the top. [00:54:52] Speaker A: Gotcha. [00:54:52] Speaker B: Yeah. And like, kind of pop the top a little bit. Exactly. That's kind of how he's thinking of Chaihu Xiang ma Chai who Qianghu. These. These herbs like this. You think, oh, they're pungent. Small doses. [00:55:04] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:55:05] Speaker B: Pop the top a little bit. Whereas Zhang Zhongjing probably is more likely thinking of it as bitter and neutral, because the text that was around that at that time was the Shenang Ban Sao Jing. [00:55:16] Speaker A: I mean, that's also a historical function, too. Right. Like, the Shanghan is much closer to the Shenang Ben Sao Jing than Li Dongyuan is. [00:55:22] Speaker B: Absolutely. [00:55:23] Speaker A: Yeah. So, like, how much evolution and thinking happens between Zhang Zhongjing and Li Dongyuan. [00:55:29] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:55:29] Speaker A: Where there's a kind of drift. [00:55:32] Speaker B: Right, right. [00:55:33] Speaker A: In terms of, like, the thinking on an herb and the function of an herb. And I mean, this is one of the gems of Chinese medicine, is that we have, like, you know, hundreds of commentaries where people are like, nah, I don't think so. [00:55:43] Speaker B: Right. [00:55:43] Speaker A: Like, doctor says this, but he's full of shit. Let me. Let me tell you what the real deal is. You know, like. [00:55:51] Speaker B: And so there's hashtag Leisure Jen. Right. [00:55:53] Speaker A: Oh, God, Leisure Jen is the best. So much side eye, so much shade. Right. But I mean, that's the reality, right? Is that stuff does change. [00:56:01] Speaker B: It does, yeah. [00:56:02] Speaker A: And I think it's also important to note that that change is not just intellectual. [00:56:08] Speaker B: Right. [00:56:09] Speaker A: But it's historical and in some ways, probably environmental. [00:56:13] Speaker B: Yes. [00:56:13] Speaker A: I mean, the world of, like, central and southern China, where most of these herbs are being grown from 2000 years ago compared to 500 years ago compared to now, is super different. [00:56:27] Speaker B: It is. [00:56:28] Speaker A: And so, like, the way questionably, like, just, you know, bodies of water literally have moved, you know, like plains and fields and rivers and animal patterns and deserts. Literal. Yeah, Deserts where there didn't used to be deserts, you know, and so those realities affect the dao de, like, the terroir of the growing space. And so to. Like, it is possible that a plant becomes something different over time. [00:56:56] Speaker B: Yes. [00:56:57] Speaker A: Right. That was. We have a hard time guessing at. And that in sections of history, a plant could have been a thing, became another thing, and then went back to being that other thing again. Right, right. Which so cycles, too, which we know. [00:57:09] Speaker B: Is an issue because of sunset Meow, how he starts his te off, which is like, all right, we need to standardize when we're picking these herbs and the circumstances that we're picking them. So if you look at His. I can't remember if it's a Chen Jinyi Fang or Chenjin Yaofeng, but one of the books he has, he starts it off by saying, this is when this is the name of the herb. This is the moon that they har. That they're harvested in, right. And the part of the plant that needs to be harvest. So leaf at this time, that's any. There's just lists of herbs. Because part of his observation or whoever Sunsi Miao ends up being in reality, maybe it's a conglomeration of people, who knows? But whoever Sunset Miao is, there was a problem at that time where they were looking at why are formulas not effective, Right. Why are these. Why are herbalists not having good results in the clinic? And one of the things that they found is that there's inconsistency with the Qi and the way that we're being produced inside of the name of an herb. So you would get Chai, who may be harvested in three different seasons, right. Which has a slightly different effect from each other or whatever, you know. And so he was like, in order to uplift the medicine, we need to standardize these things. And he saw that as a problem. Right. [00:58:32] Speaker A: This. This idea too gets to a heart. A core question about what our medicine is, right? Which is like people have a. People have a tendency, I think, to think that like shy who has an intrinsic quality to it. Like you take the roots and you eat them and like they are either bitter, neutral or acrid cool or whatever, right. And that's actually missing the more macro function, which is like this plant is interacting with cosmic forces of sun, moon, rain, stars, seasons, and transforming those cosmic qi into a specific Qi pattern that we then have access to. Because it'd be cool if you could just stick patients out in the sun and be like, all right, man, get that Yang tonifying happening. Right? But that's. I mean, people need the sun, don't get me wrong. You can't deny them the sun. But it's usually insufficient because it's not. It's not refined. [00:59:27] Speaker B: Right. [00:59:28] Speaker A: The plants and animals on this planet and maybe other planets, I don't know, are able to take these dao level Qi functions and reorganize them into a way that we can then take advantage of. [00:59:42] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:59:43] Speaker A: So then if you pick the Chihu at the wrong time of the year, and by wrong, we just mean wrong relative to making Chihu that has this function. You want Shaihu to do X, right? Right. [00:59:54] Speaker B: Yeah. Then what flavor and nature are we Using the herb for. [00:59:58] Speaker A: Yeah, that's. [00:59:59] Speaker B: That's a better question. Like, do you want to. And there's even in. Some of my teachers would say, like, you take an herb like Baishao, for example. [01:00:08] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:00:08] Speaker B: And in some formulas, Baisha is definitely used for its sour flavor. That's how it's viewed. But for others, it's used for its bitter flavor. Right. [01:00:16] Speaker A: So if you. [01:00:16] Speaker B: At the higher doses, like. Right. It's more used for its bitter flavor. This is how it was explained to me. Or in Xiaoyao, Gansao Tong, if you're using it at really high doses, it can be used more for its bitter flavor. [01:00:31] Speaker A: Right. [01:00:31] Speaker B: So sometimes the same herb that's categorized as having multiple flavors will be used for a different flavor. And this can be really confusing when we're starting herbal medicine. [01:00:43] Speaker A: But you're like, wait, was it bitter or was sour? [01:00:45] Speaker B: Wait, was it bitter or was it sour? [01:00:46] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:00:47] Speaker B: And it's like, well, it could be. It could be both. But what are you using it for in this context? What effect are you trying to create in this context? And that's what we need to understand when we study formulas. Because what's the intention of that formula, given the pathology, what is it trying to address? [01:01:03] Speaker A: So, I mean, this idea is even apparent in my mind in mundane ways. Right. Like, you start with a question of, like, what are you actually trying to achieve with the activity that you're doing? So if you want ripe apples. [01:01:18] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:01:18] Speaker A: You pick them when they're ripe. [01:01:20] Speaker B: Yes. [01:01:20] Speaker A: Which is a certain time of the year, because what do I want? Not just that they're right, but that they taste a certain way, that they have a certain flavor. [01:01:26] Speaker B: Yep. [01:01:27] Speaker A: For example, my grandfather, he used to grow oranges in Louisiana. Lots of oranges. Mandarin, satsumas, navel oranges, all kinds. [01:01:34] Speaker B: Right. [01:01:35] Speaker A: And the trees would get flush with oranges from all the amazing warmth and sun, and they'd even turn orange on the trees by, you know, like, the end of summer. But my grandfather would always say, look, you gotta, you know, depends on how the year goes. We might have to pick them early if they start to turn. But we want to wait for the first frost of the fall. And if we're able to wait for the first frost, the oranges will be much sweeter. But if we have to pick them early because it just was really warm in Louisiana this year, and there just wasn't a frost and the birds are starting to pick them or whatever, we got to take them. [01:02:11] Speaker B: Right. [01:02:11] Speaker A: And the oranges are just going to be More sour. [01:02:13] Speaker B: Yes. [01:02:13] Speaker A: But if you want sweet oranges, you got to wait till the fall, right. And you get that frost. Right. And you know, he didn't have any like, complicated understanding of like, why sure, cold would make the oranges more sweet. And like, that's a fun thing to discuss from a Chinese medicine point of view. But it was understood that there was a mechanism that existed that changed the fundamental outcome of the, the flavor of the food. [01:02:34] Speaker B: Right. [01:02:35] Speaker A: And we have that when it comes to like basic food, you know, if you want, if you pick stuff early, it's going to have a different flavor. But I make a lot of jams and jellies, for example, and some fruits have very low pectin content, which means they don't gel very well. [01:02:47] Speaker B: Right. [01:02:48] Speaker A: So if you make like raspberry strawberry jam and you include some less ripe raspberries and strawberries, the less ripe ones have more pectin than them, but they're also way more sour, sometimes like a little bitter. And so you have to modulate. Like if I want to make a jam that'll gel really well by using unripe fruit, I can't use too much of it because then the flavor will get weird. Yeah, right. But again, like choosing when, like if I need fruit for pectin, right. I have to pick it at a certain time. [01:03:15] Speaker B: Yes. [01:03:16] Speaker A: If I need fruit for eating at the table, I got to pick it at a certain time. [01:03:19] Speaker B: Right. And there are specific herbs we, we think of that are absolutely connected to that, that functionality. Like I think of xia ku sau. Right. Which is used in western herbalisms. It's the self healing flower or plant or whatever. And the western herbalists use it when it's in flower. Right. But we don't, we use it after. [01:03:42] Speaker A: It decays or the little like seed pods, basically. [01:03:47] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it's like kind of like burnt. It looks kind of burnt or not burnt, but like dry. Dry. [01:03:54] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Like you lift it out in the. [01:03:56] Speaker B: Field, like you left it out of the field. And. And it has this core function of going past the solstice, right. Past the changing of yang, where yang goes to the apex and then goes the other way. And that's the function that it has as an herb. Right. So super important to remember these things. [01:04:13] Speaker A: I want to emphasize not intrinsically esoteric. [01:04:16] Speaker B: No, it's not. [01:04:17] Speaker A: People have this idea that's like, oh, you've got to wait for the third moon when the yang has moved into the. Like it's not a magic spell. I mean I guess it is. But, like, not in a dismissive way. [01:04:28] Speaker B: Right. [01:04:29] Speaker A: Like, certainly there's magic to it, but not in a way that suggests it's like, not real or something. [01:04:33] Speaker B: Right. [01:04:33] Speaker A: It's like we have a way of understanding the way that the environment and these macro pieces influence life on this planet, and we can leverage it to our advantage. So all of that to say that it can be frustrating to come across herbs that maybe aren't quote, unquote, consistent in their nature and flavor from source to source or time to time. [01:04:54] Speaker B: Right. [01:04:55] Speaker A: But I think from our point of view, the thing that matters is not so much whether we have a really intense academic discussion about whether or not Shihoo is bitter or acrid. [01:05:05] Speaker B: Sure. [01:05:05] Speaker A: I mean, that's interesting, I guess. But the thing that matters is that when you do your thinking about a formula so that you can apply it in the clinic, essentially you pick a lane. [01:05:16] Speaker B: Yes. You pick a lane, Pick an approach, pick a method of seeing it and just work. Work with it from that point of view. [01:05:24] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, Richard Tan even talked about this with acupuncture. [01:05:27] Speaker B: Right. [01:05:28] Speaker A: It's sort of like, you know, there was this joke that. That Richard Tan was always just making up new systems. Right. Like, oh, this could be connected to that, and that could be connected to it. And there's like a quote in a YouTube interview where he's like, yeah, you know, I was actually thinking about a new system today while I was on the toilet. [01:05:41] Speaker B: Yep. [01:05:42] Speaker A: And I think it might work. He said, well, you know, what matters is don't confuse yourself. [01:05:47] Speaker B: Yes. [01:05:48] Speaker A: And the interviewer is like, what do you mean? He's like, well, I mean, you can make anything work. You just have to be consistent, though. Like, if you go back and forth between different things, you'll get confused and you won't get any results. [01:05:57] Speaker B: Right. [01:05:58] Speaker A: And, you know, that's in the context of Richard Tan and acupuncture and balance method. But sure, it's. The advice is relevant here, too, because you could end up with like, well, I'm using it in this capacity for. It's bitter in this one for its acrid. And it's like, you can do that. Herbs have multiple functions, but there needs to be a system. [01:06:16] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:06:17] Speaker A: Right. Like when I doubled the dose. [01:06:19] Speaker B: Right. [01:06:19] Speaker A: I'm now, you know, leveraging its acrid quality or whatever. [01:06:23] Speaker B: Right. [01:06:23] Speaker A: Probably bitter, actually, in that case. [01:06:24] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:06:25] Speaker A: But the consistency is what matters. [01:06:28] Speaker B: Yeah. And I also want to say, I think this is where the western herbal classification is the weakest for Western herbalists. [01:06:36] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:06:36] Speaker B: For sure is they'll classify an herb and they'll be like, oh, it's bitter, acrid, and a little sweet, and it's cool. Neutral or warm, depending on thing. And it's just like, dude, then you can't use it. [01:06:48] Speaker A: Yeah, well, yeah, that won't be useful. [01:06:51] Speaker B: That will not be useful. So then what's apparent about that, though, is that they're really using the herb based upon its actions and indications. Right. Which is a mistake that we can make as well. Not tracing the action and indication back to its alchemical structure, its root, which in our medicine is expressed by flavor, nature and signatures. Right. [01:07:14] Speaker A: Well. And the better we understand the natures of these herbs, the better the modifications make sense. [01:07:19] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:07:20] Speaker A: Like even the ones from the Bensky, that are symptom based. [01:07:22] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:07:22] Speaker A: Like action indication based. Like, if you peel those back and you look at like, oh, well, why are we sticking Mabo right here for? So, like, what is it about Mabo that makes it do this? [01:07:32] Speaker B: Yep. [01:07:32] Speaker A: You know, that's where it becomes more apparent. And nature and flavor is. Is the. It's the introductory piece. I mean, it's. It's foundational to every herb, but also, like, shy. Who is bitter and neutral. [01:07:45] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:07:45] Speaker A: There are a lot of herbs that are bitter and neutral. [01:07:48] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:07:48] Speaker A: Although not so many that are neutral, but anyway that are bitter nonetheless, that are not Chihu. [01:07:53] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:07:53] Speaker A: So, like, not everything that is bitter and neutral or warm and acrid is warm and accurate in the same way. No, but they. That. That difference is the part that. That, I mean, that's the art of what we do. If it was just as easy as, like, flavor plugs, I mean, we would just replace us all with computers right now. [01:08:11] Speaker B: Sure. [01:08:11] Speaker A: You know, but it's much more nuanced than that about how these things work inside of bodies. Which I guess for, you know, new listeners is maybe still frustrating. Right. Because you're like, telling me, oh, learn this basic thing, but also there's more to know. And I would say, well, yeah, obviously. Yeah, right. I mean, like, of course there's more to know. Like, we're always learning more. Everyone's learning more. Like, there's no end. Like, you never get it right. Right. Where you're like, all right, I'm done. Yeah, I don't need to learn anymore. [01:08:36] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:08:37] Speaker A: It's like, no, because there's. It's just too complex for that. But if you're the new herbalist, if you want to get back into herbalism, if you are trying to have a better understanding of the herbalism you're already doing because you feel a little bit, you know, like, we call it like the vending machine herbalism. Right. Where you're like, press F2 if you need. Open the sinuses. Press F3 if you need to empty the bowels, and it's just gonna spit out like a herb for you. [01:09:01] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:09:02] Speaker A: A lot of herbal prescription can feel that way because you don't really know what's happening. [01:09:06] Speaker B: Right. [01:09:06] Speaker A: I know if I give them this herb, it has that effect, you know, sometimes, but I don't always get it. Right. So if you're in that position, this is actually a way to start getting it. [01:09:16] Speaker B: Yes. [01:09:16] Speaker A: Because we're saying, like, okay, learn these Nijing principles on the five majors plus bland. [01:09:22] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:09:23] Speaker A: Think about. Just start with the tonifying, reducing functions on the phases, the elements. Right. And then start to look at your formulas. [01:09:32] Speaker B: Right. [01:09:33] Speaker A: And be like, what's happening in here? How sweet is this formula? [01:09:35] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:09:36] Speaker A: How bitter is this formula? [01:09:37] Speaker B: Yep. [01:09:37] Speaker A: You know, and we've been playing for years on, like, tools that help calculate that for people just to get a sense of it. Because, like, you know, it can be a little bit. You can be as sort of granular about it or as macro about it as you want. Right. You can just say, like, okay, there's 15 herbs in this formula. More of them are sweet than not. It's probably a sweet formula. [01:09:55] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:09:56] Speaker A: Or you could say, like, well, there's actually only two sweet herbs in this formula, but one of them is daza, which happens to be very sweet as a percentage of its weight. And it happens to have, like, it's going to be 20% of the formula. [01:10:08] Speaker B: Right. [01:10:09] Speaker A: So it turns out that actually the formula is incredibly sweet. [01:10:11] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:10:12] Speaker A: Even though it only has one sweet ingredient. [01:10:13] Speaker B: Right. [01:10:14] Speaker A: Because there's so much of it in the formula. [01:10:15] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:10:16] Speaker A: And so there's ways that you can play around with that, too. But I would say internalize this, the. The Najing stuff here on those flavors. Think about the phases, and then go to your formulas and break them down. [01:10:26] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:10:26] Speaker A: Write it down. I mean, like, literally write out your formula and be like, Chai, who is. Right. Huang Shen is like, just put it there and look at it. Put it in an Excel sheet if you're a nerd like me, and see, like, what that can do, because it'll give you an idea of what's happening. [01:10:38] Speaker B: Yes. And keep in mind, too, that for any diagnostic strategy to be valid in Chinese medicine, any that I've heard of, it needs not only the five phases, but it needs yin and yang and it needs the six qi. You have to have all three to have a cogent, coherent diagnostic system. Whether you're talking about acupuncture, you're talking about herbal medicine. So if you just try to treat through the five phases, it gets a little confusing. So it's just a little bit of a warning because you can get deep into the neijing and be like, the naging has suggestions for the, this version of evil that it's assaulting this element and then you use these flavors, it can get really confusing. But just know that you need the other pieces for it to have a full diagnostic system. So if you look at zongfu organ diagnosis, it has that. If you look at zhan Zhongjing systems, it has that. It has all of those components to it and acupuncture systems have that too. So just keep that in mind when you're studying. Don't get too hung up on trying to access basic theory to, to understand the full fullness of diagnostics. [01:11:51] Speaker A: It's the, it's the classic three legged stool metaphor. [01:11:54] Speaker B: Yeah, right. [01:11:54] Speaker A: I mean, if you try to build a stool with just one leg, yes, you can, but it's wobbly. [01:11:58] Speaker B: Yeah, it's wobbly. [01:11:59] Speaker A: You know, two is better, but still wobbly. Right. You put, you put three on there and now you're like, oh, that's great. I can stand on it, you know, without falling over. So there's a reason that we have that classic image of sort of building out something that has that kind of structure to it, which makes a lot of sense. All right, anything else we want to throw on to the discussion here? [01:12:19] Speaker B: Yeah, I would just reemphasize that it's better to pick. It's good to look at these things, to look at the formulas you use in this lens to inform you of how things are working. But it's probably better to do that as a secondary process rather than a primary one. So if you're, if you're like using the Shanghan Lun to treat patients, it's good to look at what you've done and then look at the formulas and deconstruct them with flavors and natures, that's useful. If you're using Li Dongyan's formulas, same thing, you can do that there. But it's probably better to do that at first than to try to go the other way and say, oh, the neijing says I'm going to use acrid and sweet to tonify yang. So this person seems a little Cold. I'm going to use Shengjung and you. [01:13:11] Speaker A: Know, like, build one. [01:13:12] Speaker B: To build one from, like, that's a little bit too much of a leap in the beginning. You want to use. [01:13:17] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, that's hyper advanced. [01:13:18] Speaker B: You want to use a system that's, that's well, a path that's well trodden first. And then once you spend a while in that system, you can use other systems, but you want to understand how that one system works. [01:13:31] Speaker A: Pick a lane. [01:13:32] Speaker B: Pick a lane. [01:13:33] Speaker A: Yeah, pick a lane. Work with that lane. Get some depth of understanding in it. Because you actually don't need to reinvent the wheel. No, I mean, the thing is though, like, you probably don't need to make a new formula. It already exists. [01:13:44] Speaker B: You don't need to. [01:13:45] Speaker A: But it would be good to understand how the formula works. [01:13:49] Speaker B: Yes. [01:13:50] Speaker A: Beyond just actions and indications. And I would say that this is also a little bit of a. Of a future strategy. You know, I don't want to be like tinfoil hat wearing, but like, the world is complicated and there's a lot of issues that face us in terms of like herbal supply, environmental degradation, contamination, and the ability to rapidly and with relative inexpense access hundreds of herbs in granule form, in bulk form, and tinctures all across the United States that is imperiled. I don't know exactly to what degree or how fast or whatever, but I feel as a person who buys a lot of herbs and talks to a lot of vendors, that in many cases the abundance of that is kind of in the rear view. And so when we look out into the future and we think like, okay, well, how will we be herbalists if you don't have any jia gung anymore? [01:14:54] Speaker B: Right. [01:14:55] Speaker A: You don't have any bancha anymore. What do we do? Well, it's not like there aren't plants. Right. But if you don't understand how that thing you don't have worked and what function it served in a formula, you're not going to be able to find a substitute. You're not going to be able to figure out how to powder what you do have to make it work. [01:15:16] Speaker B: Yep. [01:15:17] Speaker A: Because you just have a name, like you just have some words on a page that says bad shot 12. [01:15:23] Speaker B: Yep. [01:15:24] Speaker A: And it doesn't mean anything. [01:15:25] Speaker B: Right. [01:15:25] Speaker A: And so this is really, in my mind, a little bit of future proofing for yourself. Like if you really take the time now, while you do have access to all the herbs to understand what they are, because you don't want to be trying to Solve this in crisis. Right. Once they're gone, you're like, oh, shit, what do I do? Like, it's. I mean, it's not too late. Someone else will know and they can help you. But for yourself, it's good to do the practice now while you have the protections of all of these herbs being available, so that if in the future, over the course of your lifetime as a practitioner of should things change, you are better prepared for that change. So I, you know, again, I don't want to be a Chicken little sky's falling situation, but my. My disposition is to. To be prepared. And not only from a business and treatment protection point of view, but this is also just good intellectual work to really understand what it is you're doing. So it wins, really, on all sides. [01:16:20] Speaker B: And helps clinical results. If something isn't working, you can think about why. And like the example we gave before about the Baitong Tong versus Sunitang, right? [01:16:31] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. It works on literally every level. It's clinically relevant, it's intellectually stimulating. It's a cool thing to talk about with other herb nerds, and it helps future proof you against herb availability problems. [01:16:43] Speaker B: Yep. [01:16:44] Speaker A: So why not get on it now? [01:16:46] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:16:47] Speaker A: All right, guys, well, thanks so much for listening to us again. You can always, of course, send us an email if you have topics or questions or things you want to know about. You can reach us at thenervousherbalistmail.com thenervousherbalistmail dot com and send us your ideas. We'd love to hear from you. As always, please like and subscribe wherever you hear this podcast. It helps other people find us, and I think we'll sign off. I'm Travis Kern. [01:17:12] Speaker B: I'm Travis Cunningham. [01:17:14] Speaker A: We'll talk to you next time. [01:17:15] Speaker B: See you next time.

Understanding Flavor - Essential Knowledge for Herbalists

Show Notes

Episode Transcript

Other Episodes

So You're a New Herbalist

Building Your Treatment Strategy - Pt 2, Composition

Covid and Long Covid (Case Studies)