Getting skincare inspiration from Chinese herbal medicine

There are two types of medical schools in China: medical schools that are completely westernized, these schools teach and study western medicine; and medical schools that teach and study Chinese herbal medicine.   I went to a westernized medical school. My cousin went to a Chinese medicine medical school.  We often debate about treatment difference under these two systems.  

Once, I was sick.  I told my cousin that my immune system was down, that why I was sick.  My cousin answer was that I had too much stress, my body was imbalanced; specifically, Ying was too strong in my case.  At the time, we were vacationing at countryside.  So, I had access to limited amount of medications.   We all know that—some diseases such as a bad episode of flu, you just have to suffer through it.  Medication may provide certain symptomatic relieve but they really do not help much for curing the disease.  Usually, it’s our immune system that will eventually catch up and rid of the disease for us.  In that case, I decided to wait for my immune system to do the trick.

However, my cousin finally had enough with me holed up all day in the cabin.  One day, he declared that I was ruining his vacation and he was going to take the matter into his own hand.  He went out into the woods.  A few hours late, he came back with a collection of various herbs that he found in the woods!  He stewed the herbs mixture, drained out the herbs, and made me drink the liquid.  I still remembered staring at that clear yellowish liquid suspiciously for full five minutes before I finally decided to drink it.  I figured that was probably a better choice than dealing with my cousin’s wrath.  Amazingly, my condition significantly improved only after a day or so of receiving my cousin’s herbal therapy.  I was hooked ever since.

Don’t get me wrong—I do go to regular doctors even though I am guilty of forgetting my annual physical checkup often.  However, I also believe that there are a lot of collective wisdoms and experiences in Chinese herbal medicine.  Chinese has survived and thrived for thousands of years studying and benefiting from various herbal concoctions.  I fully intend to tap into this wealth of knowledge for inspirations on taking care of my body and my skin.

In future posts, often, I will provide recipes and tips about skincare and general well care based on the Chinese medicine.  I developed some recipes on my own.  Other recipes may be directly from ancient Chinese herbal medicine books.  If that’s the case, I will provide citation to the book.  I will try to provide as much explanation on the herbal ingredients as possible.  I understand that you might not be able to find these ingredients in regular supermarket.  However, all these ingredients should be available in your local Chinese supermarkets.  Better yet, copy-paste an ingredient name to your search engine, you might be able to buy it online.

Thanks for reading!

Connie @ www.cherruby.com