Are Chinese Herbs Safe in Liver Disease?

by Doc Misha on September 5, 2011

Welcome Back to Doc Misha’s Blog!
Lots of clients and practitioners are worried that Chinese medicinal herbs should not be taken in liver disease, especially if one is taking the new protease inhibitors as well as interferon and ribavirin.
Well, it is am important question to ask and I am glad you are asking it.
So, what is the answer?
Well, the simple answer is:
This depends on the circumstances!
Today, I am going to focus on prepared formulas, ones that are made into pills and/or powders as these are the most often used and most difficult to identify and test accurately.
  • First, you should get your Chinese medicinal herbs from your licensed practitioner or from a reputable source your practitioner recommends. Don’t get your herbs off the Internet or in a health food store where the herbal recommendations are made by an unlicensed person (some stores do have licensed qualified practitioners so ask!).

    Misha with Tian Hua Fen in Anguo, China

  • Second, it is great if you do your own homework and understand the source of the herbs yourself that your practitioner recommends. It is excellent if you can learn more about the herb companies from where your practitioner obtains his or her prepared formulas. The herb company should be able to supply a paper trail and documentation of all the steps in the herb supply chain. The company should be able to provide bonafide certificates of analysis (COA) for all products that they carry and sell.
  • Third, the herbs should be fresh and/or processed in the traditional manner that is called for in the Chinese herbal materia medica, the official body of remedial substances used in the practice of Chinese medicine. All the individual herbs should be correctly identified by species, tested for heavy metals, pesticides and bacteria by an independent laboratory before being made into prepared formulas.
Elisa Angelone, L.Ac. at Chicken Soup Chinese Medicine
  • Fourth, the prepared formulas should bottled, stamped with a batch number and a manufactured date. A sample of the prepared formulas from each batch should also be tested for accuracy, purity and potency by an independent laboratory. Again, the herb company should be able to provide a certificate of analysis (COA) for each formula in their catalog.
I do hope this is helpful as you journey along your healing path!
I will cover more about this topic in future blogs. Watch for the series.
Yours in health,
Doc Misha
aka Misha Ruth Cohen, Doctor of Oriental Medicine, Licensed Acupuncturist

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Doc Misha Reports Back From China (One Year Ago)

by Doc Misha on April 1, 2012

Dear Blog Followers:

I have been super busy over the last couple of months. This is the first time I have had to begin to report to you at  where I have been and what I have been doing for the last while.

In April, I went on a whirlwind herb tour to Beijing and Anguo, China. Mayway – a premier herb company that has supplied us with herbs since the early 1980′s – invited a select group of customers, herbalists, and botanists to visit the Mayway Hebei factory in Anguo, about 2 1/2 hours from Beijing. I could not miss this opportunity as this was the first time that any tour like this has been organized.

Misha Holding Tian Hua Fen

The Mayway Hebei factory and Anguo herb fields were marvelous. It was amazing to see the ancient science
of Chinese herbal medicine preserved and being carried out in a modern factory setting. Also, it was magnificent to stand within Chinese herb fields that stretched for as far as one could see.

While in Beijing, I also had a chance to have a short but great visit through the gardens of the The Institute of Medicinal Plant Development (IMPLAD).

affiliated with the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College. IMPLAD is dedicated to protecting, developing and utilizing medicinal plant resources by means of modern scientific technology.

Thomas Avery Garran and Michael Fitzgerald kindly guided me through the gardens at IMPLAD. I was also honored to meet Professor Yulin Lin, Pharmacognosist and Botanical Resource, one of the top Medicinal plant resource specialists in China who is working with Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in London at the Chinese Medicine Authentication Center with Christine Leon (also on the Mayway Tour) the project manager at Kew. All of us had the opportunity to have a wonderful lunch in the medicinal herb restaurant associated with the garden.

While in Beijing, I also had the fortune to study with Dr. Wang Ju-Yi, the author of “Applied Channel Theory in Chinese Medicine: Wang Ju-Yi’s Lectures on Channel Therapeutics.”

Dr. Wang Writing Patient Notes

It was a great opportunity to see him in action at both his private practice and in a hospital.

setting. I loved being able to go back to my roots of using channel theory in the practice of acupuncture (ask me more when you see me in clinic!)

And, a big surprise, while visiting friends in Beijing at the People’s Medical Publishing House, the leading medical book publisher in China, I was honored to be offered the authorship of a practitioner guide to hepatitis C. I guess I better get busy :-)

On the last day in Beijing, I made a visit to the Beijing Tong Ren Tang herb store, founded in 1669, the most famous of herb stores in China.

Yours in Health,

Misha Ruth Cohen

AKA Doc Misha

P.S. Be on the lookout for the slideshow from China we will be presenting at the clinic this summer…watch your e-mail for more information.

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30 Day Blog Challenge at WEGO Health

by Doc Misha on April 1, 2012

Hey everyone:

I just wanted to tell you about a new activity I’ll be doing this April.

The Health Activist Writer’s Month Challenge hosted by WEGO Health. I will be writing a post a day for all 30 days. I hope you’ll join me in writing every day about health. It’s going to be a lot of fun and I’d love to see what you have to say about each of the topics, too.

All you have to do to join is sign up here: http://info.wegohealth.com/HAWMC2012 and you’ll be able to start posting once April rolls around.

Looking forward to writing with you!

Yours in health,

Doc Misha

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Still The Silent Epidemic: Baby Boomers Get Tested!

March 12, 2012 HepatitisC

Dear Friends: Hepatitis C virus, not HIV infection, is now the leading chronic viral infection leading to death in the United States. The majority of those infected with hepatitis C are baby boomers. And, the scary fact is that up to 2/3 of those infected do not know it. There is still a silent epidemic [...]

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30th Anniversary of AIDS Today – Support Quan Yin

June 5, 2011 HepatitisC

Dear Friends: This blog is a little different today. Today is the 30th anniversary of the day that the disease eventually known as AIDS was reported to the Centers for Disease Control. Thirty years ago today, June 6, 1981, the Centers for Disease Control published a paper identifying a new disease they called Gay Related [...]

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