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by Peter Gwin IN MY HAND I’m holding a warm, beating heart. About the size of a softball, it’s a luminous globe of scarlet, pink, and white tissue. I can feel its chambers contracting and hear the whoosh of the fluid it’s still pumping. It’s slimy and gives off a slightly pungent odor. The organ is alive almost eight hours after I watched Paul Iaizzo remove it from a sedated pig in a basement lab, connect it to tubes simulating arteries and veins, and spark it back into rhythm with an electric jolt, as a paramedic would shock a human heart back to life..

  by Peter Gwin STEP INTO A traditional apothecary in China today and you’ll encounter rows of jars and bins filled with a colorful and aromatic array of substances—from common roots, herbs, and flowers such as ginseng, mint, and jasmine to more exotic items, including wasp nests, abalone shells, earthworms, scales of endangered pangolins, and even human placentas. For more than two millennia, traditional Chinese healers have been culling these and thousands of other ingredients from the natural world for use in medicines. But focusing on the unusual forms they may com..

HERBS THAT CLEAR HEAT AND COOL BLOOD   Herbs that cool the blood are most commonly used for Hot Blood patterns as a result of febrile conditions entering the blood. Symptoms include rashes, nosebleed, vomiting or spitting up blood, cough up blood and blood presence in the stool or urine. This “reckless marauding of Hot Blood” is the result of congested, inflamed organs in febrile conditions with resultant increase in blood flow throughout the body and increased permeability of the capillaries. Nosebleed and spitting up blood are the most commonly occurring symptoms.  &n..

HERBS TO CLEAR HEAT AND QUELL FIRE   Heat, in TCM, refers not only to febrile conditions, but also to any condition that manifests with Heat symptoms that include dry throat, red face, red eyes, dry stool, dark and scanty urine, yellow fur on the tongue, rapid pulse and a sensation of warmth in the five centers (i.e. the soles of the feet, the palms of the hand and the sternum). Heat is also further divided into Exterior and Interior Heat. While Exterior Heat is symptomized by fevers, chills, headache, thirst, moderate sweating and a floating, rapid pulse; Interior Heat is sympathiz..

Herba Menthae or Bo He/Field Mint/Peppermint is used to disperse Wind Heat and is used for Wind Heat patterns with fever, headache and cough. It clears the head and eyes and benefits the throat: used for Wind Heat patterns with sore throat and headache. It encourages rashes to surface and is used in the early stages of measles to let the rash come to the surface and thereby speed up recovery. Peppermint allows constrained Liver Qi to flow freely and is used against symptoms such as pressure in the chest or flanks, emotional instability and gynecological problems. Antibiotical effects include i..

Certain herbs work to release conditions regarded as existing at the superficial levels of the body and caused by wind heat, wind cold, wind damp or summer heat. These can invade the body, lodging in superficial exterior aspects and creating symptoms such as chills, fever, headache, stiff neck, general muscle ache along with either sweating or the absence of sweating.  Herbs that work to release these exterior conditions are diaphoretics, releasing or expelling the external pathogenic influence through sweating. When more internalized and sweating has not brought consideral benefi..

  FENG: The Meaning of Wind in Chinese Medicine with special attention to acupoint fengchi (GB-20) by Subhuti Dharmananda, Ph.D., Director, Institute for Traditional Medicine, Portland, Oregon A term in the field of traditional Chinese medicine that causes considerable difficulty for modern practitioners is wind (feng).  It is known as: one of the six external causes of disease (six qi or six yin); one of the conditions associated with the five elements systematic correspondences (wind associated with the wood e..

Edema is a common symptom of diseases like congestive heart failure, nephritis, endocrine disease, ascites, trauma or bi syndrome (i.e. arthritis and rheumatism). Edema indicates accumulation of fluid in the body and manifests as swelling of the eyelids, face, limbs, trunk or the entire body. Edema can be caused by exogenous pathogenic attack. More often, edema signals internal stagnation disorders of the lung, spleen or kidneys or involves blood obstruction of the water passages of the sanjiao.  Gentle diurectics found in TCM benefit the movement of water to disperse sw..

Marshall, T. C., Lefringhausen, K., & Ferenczi, N. (2015). The Big Five, self-esteem, and narcissism as predictors of the topics people write about in Facebook status updates. Personality and Individual Differences, 85, 35-40. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2015.04.039. Retreived 6 March 2017 from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886915003025   Keywords Facebook - The most widely used social media website/application where people can share highlights of their lives or status updates for others’ viewing and reaction. Social Networking - The use of solely purposed w..

  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17569205 Aggarwal BB1, Sundaram C, Malani N, Ichikawa H. Author information 1Department of Experimental Therapeutics, The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX 77030, USA. aggarwal@mdanderson.org Curcumin: The Indian Solid Gold Abstract Turmeric, derived from the plant Curcuma longa, is a gold-colored spice commonly used in the Indian subcontinent, not only for health care but also for the preservation of food and as a yellow dye for textiles. Curcumin, which gives the yellow ..

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21248427 Biosci Trends. 2010 Dec;4(6):297-307. Chinese herbal medicines as adjuvant treatment during chemo- or radio-therapy for cancer. Qi F1, Li A, Inagaki Y, Gao J, Li J, Kokudo N, Li XK, Tang W. Author information   Abstract Numerous studies have indicated that in cancer treatment Chinese herbal medicines in combination with chemo- or radio-therapy can be used to enhance the efficacy of and diminish the side effects and complications caused by chemo- and radio-therapy. Therefore, a..

Medical Acupuncture Med Acupunct. 2013 Jun; 25(3): 232–237.  doi:  10.1089/acu.2012.0911 PMCID: PMC3689170 Recurrent Pregnancy Loss and Traditional Chinese Medicine Lee Hullender Rubin, DAOM, Dara Cantor, BS, and  Benjamin L. Marx, MAcOM Author information ► Copyright and License information ►   This article has been cited by other articles in PMC.   Go to: Abstract Background Recurrent pregnancy loss (RPL) can present with coe..