Why Chinese herbs are so effective

There is a trend in America towards the use of herbal medicine, and this should be applauded. People take echinacea for sore throats, milk thistle for the liver, horsetail for eye ailments.  The list goes on.
However, in China, where herbs have been a mainstay of treatment for thousands of years, single herbs are very rarely prescribed.  Herbal medicine is most effective when herbs are used in combination with other herbs.  The herbs are  then are able to work synergistically with others to increase their effectiveness.   Not only can they be used to increase their effectiveness, but this can decrease the side effects of a single herb.  No football team could win a game with just a quarterback.

One thing that is so great about  Chinese formulas is that they were developed by the brightest minds in Chinese medicine - those minds that had studied herbal therapy for decades.... and most formulas are hundreds or  even thousands of years old - so they have stood the test of time and been found to be highly effective, yet when prescribed correctly, quite safe.  Those formulas that caused problems were discarded and did not make it into the chinese medicine formulary.  Those that were ineffective didn't make the cut, either.

This is so different from western medicine, where prescription drugs may have only been in existence for at most, fifty or so years, and are constantly being pulled from the market because of side effects, some of which are deadly.  Most western drugs are based on the principle that if the quarterback is the best player on the team, then cloning him and making a whole team of just that quarterback should be more effective.  Crazy analogy, I know - but its the best way to describe it.

Let's take for example Ba Zheng San, which is an herbal formula for a urinary tract infection.  There are nine herbs in Ba Zheng San.  A lot of the functions of these herbs overlaps, so if it appears that I am talking about way more than 9 herbs, its because of their overlapping functions.  Six of them clear heat (which means they are anti-inflammatory, antibacterial and/or antiviral) and purge fire (even more strongly anti-inflammatory, antibacterial and antiviral).  Six of them also promote urination, so that when you do urinate, you get rid of the pathogen causing your symptoms.   (If you have a robber in your house, you don't want to shoot the robber and leave his dead body lying around in the kitchen to rot - for this same reason, pathogens that are destroyed need to be escorted out of the body - which is something Antibiotics Do Not Do).  One of the herbs not only clears heat but also guides the rest of the herbs to the bladder.    And yet another herb harmonizes the effects of the other herbs, which means two things: it helps them to work well together, and it protects the digestive tract from being harmed by the formula.

It is recommended that you take two days of probiotic therapy for every one day you are on an antibiotic.  Since Ba Zheng San is a harmonized formula, your intestinal flora should not be affected and the probiotic regimen is not necessarily indicated.

This is just one example.... there are literally hundreds of herbal formulas.   You should never try to self-treat, but rather see a qualified Chinese herbalist for advice.