玉女煎

At home now and as always Alltel's taking forever to load simple pages.

Got acupuncture today. Needed it! I was a wreck after a month without it.

Different points used from before. Draining Heat and treating Stomach Yin Deficiency. Heat's a characteristic problem for me, but today was hardcore. I could feel it leaving me from that point in the palm of my hand at the root of the middle finger that I haven't looked up yet. I've got seeds in my left ear and magnets on each of my wrists (at Lung 7) and I'm feeling better than I have in a very long time.

I am now preparing a modified version of Jade Woman Decoction on my stove, the unmodified version of which acupuncture.com says

1. Yu Nu Jian (Jade Woman Decoction): Shi Gao (Gypsum), Shu Di Huang (Radix Rehmanniae Glutinosae Conquitae), Zhi Mu (Radix Anemarrhenae Asphodeloidis), Mai Men Dong (Tuber Ophiopogonis Japonici), Niu Xi (Radix Achyranthis Bidentatae).

Actions: Eliminates intense heat or fire from the Stomach; to replenish the yin.

So now I'm simmering gypsum and abalone shell before adding water, heating that for two minutes, turning it off, soaking the herbs in the warm water, then simmering them all together and finally drinking about a cupful twice a day. I've got enough for four batches. Each batch lasts two days. Loose herbs are the most potent way of getting Chinese medicine, *and* the cheapest, usually -- but hardly anyone does it because it's a pain in the ass for everyone concerned.

Poor guys at the clinic today -- it took four of 'em working all at once to get it put together, weighing out the herbs and tying them in bags inside of bags, and it took almost fifteen minutes at the same time they had other patients waiting. Show me *any* Western pharmacy where they'd do that for a prescription costing the patient precisely $13.80, when he could eliminate much if not all of the problem just by stopping smoking cigarettes.

What a wonderful thing to obsess over. But I realise the effort that went into putting it together now and will absolutely take it without fail as prescribed each day with no mistakes.

The people who write out the accompanying directions for preparing these on my end would be well served by reading cookbooks, though -- the way it's written out makes it sound way harder than it really has to be. Basically simmer this that long, add that, boil, lower heat, then simmer and drink warm.

It's done now, and it's black as night. I'm surprised I was able to find the ideographs for Yu Nu Jian in less time than it took to prepare the stuff itself. If your browser doesn't support Unicode, there's no telling what's up there in the post title, but oh well. Apologies to Chinese speakers if I've foolishly used the wrong ideographs, but I don't think I did -- I looked up each word in the GCMT and then found them in the CJK Unified Ideographs Unicode Map. What's scary is that when I stare for long enough I start to understand how radicals work and how lists of Chinese words are organized and can find exactly what I'm looking for. I think.

I'm literally boiling rocks and seashells on my stove. When the rocks and seashells are done, I'm going to add some black fruit type thing, some tree bark, some wood, and what I take to be some sort of roots and drink it. Yum. A person might be forgiven for thinking me a little mad right now. The gypsum, in the little plastic baggies that they give it to you in, look so much like crack cocaine I'm glad on getting home and looking at it that I wasn't stopped by any cops for any reason or I know I'd be in jail while the crime lab took its time determining that no, the person they picked up was carrying around little baggies of crystalline rocks from which the sands at White Sands derive.

From what I'm reading, 玉女煎 has applications, in terms of Western medicine, for conditions as diverse as Gingivitis and Diabetes Mellitus.

A Blue Poppy Press article about Gingivitis says it much more beautifully:

Within Yu Nu Jian, Gypsum [Shi Gao], which is acrid, sweet, and greatly cold, clears Yang Ming surplus heat. Prepared Rehmannia [Shu Di Huang], sweet and slightly warm, supplements Shao Yin insufficiency. These are this formula's two ministerial medicinals. When these two ingredients are combined, they clear fire and enrich water. Anemarrhena [Zhi Mu] is bitter, cold, and moist. It assists Gypsum [to] clear stomach heat. Achyranthes [Niu Xi] leads heat to move downwards. And if there is constipation, Rhubarb [Mai Men Dong, I assume] strengthens this protocol's the draining of heat.

I'm going to try it now.