Inside the Hidden World of Chinese Herbal Medicine with Dr. Mark T. Brinson

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This podcast is brought to you by Curacura. Curacura is an herbal prescription platform for traditional Chinese medicine doctors, making it easy to prescribe high quality herbal products or create fully customized formulas, all shipped directly to your patient.

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We built this podcast for two reasons to support practitioners with honest conversations and clinical insights, and to help people who are curious about traditional Chinese medicine understand how it works and how to find skilled, trustworthy doctors. This podcast is here to help bridge the gap between theory and practice, between practitioners and the public, and between tradition and modern care.

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Everyone, I’m, your host, Shuang Hou, a licensed acupuncturist and founder of Curacura. Today, I’m very excited to welcome Dr. Mark Brinson, founder of Evil Bone Water and a globally recognized expert in integrative traditional Chinese medicine with 35 years of clinical experience combining acupuncture, herbal medicine, osteopathic principles, and manual therapies to help patients get better.

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So, without further ado, let’s jump into it To prepare this. I actually listened your previous podcast and it’s so surprising that you were in, like, army. Yes.

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And how, how do you get to the herbal industry? Oh, gosh. So, I was in the army, infantry. And it was something that I did. I didn’t even really know what it was when I joined it, but I got very lucky because when I got into basic training, height, weight and test scores, I ended up in a special unit and a couple different special units when I was there.

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So it was a very good experience. But really it was in the army that I had an injury that would probably have gotten me kicked out of the special unit because it’s something that normally people just can’t function with.

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But I talked them into letting me go to the gym instead of some of the group workouts. And I actually corrected the problem on myself. And not only corrected on myself, but, during that amount of time that I was going to the gym, when all of them were doing push ups and sit ups and running, we did testing and I actually, actually got better than everybody else.

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So it was at that point that I got a real interest for structural medicine, for corrective exercise for the body. And it just, it just sprouted from there. But that led me to massage, therapy, well, personal training and, and, corrective exercise and strength and conditioning, coach stuff, and then physical, therapy, eventually after massage therapy.

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So I was kind of in it the whole time. And I’ll, I’ll be quite honest with you, when I went to school for Chinese medicine. I thought that the herb program was maybe too extensive. It was a really good program that I went to, but it had a thousand hours of herbology.

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And when I looked at it, I’m like, a thousand hours. That’s 500 herbs, 500 formulas, and that’s an hour for each one. I thought that it was just excessive because like many people, I had had the experience. I had already been in the health sciences or health professions, but I had the experience, like many people, where you try something and it might work and it might not.

[03:34.3]
You know, you’ll get 10 people that say, oh, this worked great. And then you’ll get five people that go, I tried it and didn’t do anything. And so in my practice at the time, where I was doing kind of functional training, I didn’t really recommend herbs that much. You know, this was the 90s.

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And, especially herbs. But, supplements even, I was very sparing with because you just couldn’t determine the parameters of how they worked. And then when I got into school for Chinese medicine, I was like, oh, that’s because you don’t have the proper diagnosis. You know, right herb, right person, right diagnosis.

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It always works. And if it doesn’t, you gave them the wrong herb or you gave him the wrong diagnosis. It’s. It’s really pretty simple. So that’s when I kind of fell in love with it. I was like, wow, this. This is what’s been missing, you know, in the west, we say will take ginseng, and then my first class in Chinese herbs, they use ginseng as the vehicle to introduce everything to us.

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And, like, no, there’s like, eight main types of ginseng that do all different things, you know, that have all different. And I was like, oh, well, that makes sense. So, it really wasn’t until I got into school for Chinese medicine that I fell in love with Chinese medicine. Before that, it was just.

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I just wanted the license. I think he got lucky because right now, I don’t. I don’t think as a lot of Chinese medicine schools are focusing on herbal medicine anymore. I think they’re more focusing on acupuncture techniques instead of the herbs even.

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I don’t know, for Florida, but, like, for California, we don’t emphasize too much on the herbs. And then even on the exam, the herbs question, like the board exam, the questions is very, like, very less. Yeah, yeah, no, exactly. And I’ve. I’ve worried about our profession for a while now, because I feel like the one Thing that the other professions can’t take away from us, so to speak, is the herbology.

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Because it isn’t something that you can learn in a weekend. It’s something that you can take a thousand hours of in school and just start to really grasp and then have to learn it well, you know what I mean? But once you learn it well, it’s magical. I, without. Without practicing Chinese herbs, I quite honestly.

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And this, this may sound a little bit harsh, but I quite honestly probably wouldn’t do any internal medicine in my practice. Because while Chinese medicine, while. Acupuncture can work, where internal medicine, when you combine acupuncture and herbs, you know, it’s just way, way better.

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And you know, it’s a shame. I think the level of education has changed for multiple different reasons. I think some of the lack of herbal education happened from liability reasons, but it also happened from lack of. And this.

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I’m not saying anything disparaging about the teachers that are out there now. I know there’s some amazing teachers, but also finding somebody that’s really good to teach herbs is not that easy. We were fortunate to have a bunch of double doctors from China that were master herbalists for like 30 or 40 years. So I just thought that was the average level of education that was there.

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You know, not only really knowing what an herb does, but knowing what that formula does. Not what it’s for, but what it does. So I, I have the same concerns and worries. I feel like, the more that we’ve gotten away from the true acupuncture herbs, you know, moxa, tui na, things like that and moved in towards more esoteric things.

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I think it’s moved us further away from our core. But I also think it’s made it very, very easy for other professions to sort of pick off this and pick off that. Oh, we can do cupping. We’re just going to call it something else. We can do Gua Sha. We’re just going to call it Graston. So recently I visit a Japanese acupuncturist in, United States.

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Then they were telling me is that the herbs, in Japan is considered pharmaceutical. Western doctors can prescribe it. That is the exact thing that’s going on in America. But it’s on a much. It’s not, it’s. It’s just in its baby.

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It’s in its infancy now. I mean, the FDA has been after us for quite some time, but they also kind of leave us alone in some ways. It’s just. I’m sure in Japan it’s a lot easier to kind of crack down on all that. But, yeah, it’s really, really important.

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I mean, and this is, I don’t know how great of a business model is, but let’s say, for instance, I’m treating something with internal medicine, and I can only use acupuncture. The patient says adamantly, only acupuncture. I know that could take me two months of regular treatments.

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If they tell me that I can use herbs all of a sudden because their doctor said it was okay, then I know it might take two or three weeks. You know what I mean? It’s just as. It’s as simple as that. The dry needle. I don’t know. I don’t know how the dry needle goes in Florida. Yeah. And I’ll be honest. All of their lobbying and all of their, legislative stuff, it’s too strong.

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I actually learned true dry needling as a PT back in 1994, believe it or not. And I just didn’t like it because it was too harsh. I do a general Japanese style of acupuncture that I really like. But, you know, it’s. What they’re doing is they’re trying to do acupuncture under the guise of calling it dry needling, which is whatever.

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But I also kind of really feel. Feel like if you have a license as a physician or you have a, you know, the doctorate in pt or you have the chiropractic physician license, I feel like if you’re really well trained to do all the things, I think we should be crossing over a lot instead of worrying about what everybody else does.

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But I also say that knowing full and well that they can’t do that with herbs. You know, most dr. expect to pick up a weekend course and be like, oh, yeah, I can. I can prescribe some, you know, zhi bai di huang wan or whatever and whatnot. And they might get away with, ten formulas, but they might not even get away with that because, as you know, one of the things I see that’s really funny when students come out of school is, they’ll use herbs for a couple years, and then they’ll get frustrated and they’ll say, the herbs don’t work.

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You know, so I’m going to get this fancy brand or I’m going to get this whatever, because, you know, these herbs, they just don’t work. I’m going to use a higher dose. No, you’re just not prescribing properly for the proper. What do you call it? Proper diagnosis, you know, proper formula.

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And I say that because like in my clinic, and that’s what everybody thinks, that when they get out, it can’t be them. It can’t be that they’re. It’s, it’s got to be the herbs aren’t great or the herbs don’t work. But in my, clinic, little. Just t pills. 90% of what I, well, 70% of what I prescribe are T pills because they’re cheap.

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People take them and they work if you prescribe them properly and if the price is right. If they don’t work, I always tell my patients, I gave you the wrong formula, let’s work it out. And they’re always like, okay, you know, we’ll figure that out. But yeah, you’re, you’re, you’re absolutely right.

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I think though that because of that strain that’s being put on us by the other professions, I want to see an exodus back to formulas. And I want to see at the school level where they’re not afraid to teach students formulas too. Because I’ve heard a lot of things recently where the students are like, oh my gosh, you got to be really careful with that. That’s toxic.

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That’s what I’m like, what are you talking about? And then talking about the herbs like they, you know, doesn’t work, or like you have to learn the herb, like how to properly using the herb. After the school, I was really amazed by your knowledge of the various variety of the traditional Chinese medicines, which is like over the counter in the Hong Kong or the mainland China markets.

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How do you gain all that knowledge? Like when I first met you, I’m like, how do you know all those? Like, so even some of the herbs I did not even know. Like, just tell me all the secrets. Oh my dear, it’s because I’m old. And let me tell you how that plays into things.

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When you go back, this is very important when you go back to the 90s in America. So I started school for Chinese medicine in 1995, I think. So we didn’t have granules. There were no granules, right. We had crude herbs or we had the Chinese patents.

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And what a lot of people don’t know, like when you see a cool little, little box of Siang Pure or something like that, and then you open the box of Siang Pure, right? And then you pull out the Siang Pure, it looks just like the box, right? So, and you may know this, a lot of people don’t that this is how all Chinese patents came.

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Like the box matched the bottle and they were all a very unique configuration. So like in our herbal pharmacy, we had a very extensive herbal pharmacy in school. But you got to where you could recognize the formula. Like I can vividly remember Xiao Yao Wan has a green box with a triangle, white triangle that says Xiao yao wan in the middle.

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So I could point to that particular one. Jia Wei Xiao Yao Wan had the same gray box but a yellow triangle. So I could get the Jiawei Xiaoyao wan right. Now this wasn’t just like, for us, this was for. Because a lot of the people that were buying these things were illiterate. They couldn’t actually read them.

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So this was a long standing thing with patent medicines where your box and your bottle like matched. So when you went back to that, that’s, that’s kind of like all we had. So it was much more embracing of some of the teas, you know, that you would get.

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I’ve got like, I’ve got like basically half a quarter of your pharmacy sitting here on my desk of the stuff that you guys carry. So. So with that, when I would go to get something, in addition to any patents that I got, I ended up making friends with the owners of several of the different oriental medicine, either pharmacies or groceries.

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Because a lot of times the groceries had pretty extensive pharmacies that were in there. And it was because the people knew it. The people didn’t go in and ask for like Siang Pure. They brought their box in or they knew by the box the color, you know, they just come and they, they would get it. Because it’s also cross language, you know, I mean, cross cultural, cross language.

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So I made it a point and I’m actually, believe it or not, maybe an introvert or maybe I’m an extroverted introvert now, I’m not really sure. But I used to be pretty shy. But I made myself go in and and just kind of talk to people each time I went in.

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So every time that I go in for one thing, I would make sure that I picked up, something like weird, you know, something different that I hadn’t seen or why is somebody buying that? Or even ask the person, why do you buy that? And you know, they were more than happy often to help the white guy figure out why he was buying that and tell me the story about it.

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So a lot of the products in the China version or the Hong Kong version is really different from what we get from the US Market. Because you’ve been through that history. Like, what was causing all that happens.

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Yeah, so. And that’s what brings us, or brings me to exactly that point. So it was around 1998, eight, maybe 1999. Up until that point, what we got was what the Chinese market got, you know what I mean?

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For the most part, now there still were some gateways on certain qualities of herbs. You know, there are some things that in Asia they keep, they keep for their population, for the most part, unless you have a really good connection. I got spoiled in school because all of these, you know, these 18 double doctors from China, they all had connections.

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So we had these huge jars I used to always study in the herb room, because it was quiet, but it also smelled so good or so different, like unlike anything you’ve smelled, but similar to everything you’ve smelled, if that makes any sense. But we’d have these huge jars with just amazing specimens.

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And on herb day, I would help sort all the herbs when they came in and whatnot. I didn’t realize they were getting upper quality herbs because of their connections in China. So you kind of have to have connections to get those these days. But what happened is around 98, it was right around the time that China started to kind of.

[15:48.4]
China has communism and capitalism on a seesaw. It’s a little like this. They were like, wait a second, this capitalism thing isn’t really so bad. So back then, I mean, everything was cheap. I could get a patent for two bucks, two dollars and fifty cents.

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I could get. And this isn’t just because this isn’t like old me saying, a candy bar used to be 5 cents when I was a kid. And I walked uphill both ways in the snow to get one, you know, five miles. This isn’t like that because the prices have gone up more than anything I’ve seen.

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In all of the market, from real estate to everything else, the prices have increased because basically the Chinese figured out, or all the Asian market figured out. They’re like, these are really cheap over there. We can get more for them. You know, you have to understand that back then there wasn’t there was email, there was maybe email.

[16:41.0]
There wasn’t any Internet really. You know, to transfer a picture online could take you several hours just for one picture to come across. So there wasn’t a lot of communication. But as the communication started and started to ramp up towards the end of the 90s, all of a sudden they figured out we are really, really underpriced so we saw a little price creep a little bit.

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But also, you know, this is medicine to them. So we, it did take time for the prices to start to really ramp up. But for the first time. And it was Zheng Gu Shui. Yeah. 19. Yep.

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In 98 it was the first one that we saw. All of a sudden the ones that for. Were imported to us or came to us were a little different. Right? They were, they had dropped off about four herbs from the original formula and most people didn’t notice.

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But I’m weird about stuff like that. Like I really look at my. If I want to use, if I want to use all kinds of different teas and I want to use different powders and stuff like that, you have to be a label watcher. You know what I mean? You have to look at what the formula is if it’s really going to be good.

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So I looked at it and I’m like That’s a little different. You couldn’t feel it. But I could kind of tell for some reason. And so, but anyway, it was still a great formula. So I’m like, all right, well that’s fine. So what they figured out is that within the next six or seven years, by the time 2005 rolled around, they figured out that they could change the formulas for the American market and the Americans wouldn’t know.

[18:17.6]
Silly Americans. And it’s not, it’s. It’s a cultural thing. We are ingrained to think, oh, I got some lavender. Lavender is, lavender is. Lavender is lavender. And you know, with the Chinese herbs that is not the case. And we don’t think about it that way with food.

[18:34.8]
If I say I got you a piece of steak and it’s like some chuck steak or I got you a filet mignon, you would know the difference. But, but there’s way difference from, from C. Grade lavender and like a double A triple A lavender.

[18:50.4]
I mean it’s, it’s amazing. You can see it, you can feel it. But we weren’t exposed to that. We were just exposed to. This is what there was. So as they started to find out that we started to get substitutions with, with quite a few things. This, this goes into, you know, there’s this been this stupid thing in America that says, oh, that cheap Chinese crap.

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There is no such thing. There is no such thing. Because let’s say for instance that I go to. And this is exactly what happens. I go to the Yu Lam Pharmacy, excuse me, the Yu Lam manufacturer in China. That makes Zheng Gu Shui right?

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And I tell them I want you to make me a really good version of this. You know what they’ll do? They will make me a really good version of it, probably if my account’s big enough, better than the version that I want made. But if I tell them I want you to make it as cheap as you possibly can, they will also do that.

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There’s not like in America, there’s this ethics things with business that doesn’t come into that. They’re like, oh, you want us to make it cheap? We’ll make it cheap. We’ll use the scraps that we have left over with all of our stuff to make this, this product for you, and you will get it really cheap. So it’s. It’s not the Chinese manufacturing to blame for that.

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It’s totally what people order. You know, it’s as simple as that. So anyway, that’s. That’s kind of what happened first. They started to kind of catch on to that, that we didn’t know the difference. And I’ll be honest with you, 2005, 2008, 2010, I don’t think it really appreciably changed.

[20:31.3]
I don’t really think it changed the quality enough to even worry about. You know, it wasn’t like it made the quality that different because, you have to figure, like with T pills and things like that, they were sending out to a lot of the world, and it was a good product for a lot of the world.

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It wasn’t like a great product, but it didn’t really need to be. The great, you know, herbalists were using still crude herbs. That was like there was a choice. You either had tea pills or you had crude herbs. Maybe I thought it was a little different because I thought that was just because I think in the 90s or somewhere between, FDA came in and then certainly there’s all the regulations.

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And so certain herbs were forbidden to be imported from, you know, other countries. I thought that was the case because, like, what were recently happening to. I don’t know if you know this, but like, for California, the wildlife association just passed it right to protecting the horses and donkey was part of the category and then therefore E Jiao was banded.

[21:36.8]
Well, it does. And there’s two things that play a role in that, that, that actually granules are kind of involved with. Well, first things first, like, like you saying that there are. That there are substances that have been banned because of FDA regulation.

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The FDA has been after us forever. And right around 98 or 99. I can’t remember the exact year there was a crackdown on the fda, especially on natural products, making claims. There were a lot of people that got in trouble. And then after about a year, it kind of like, died off.

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But we have had a lot of things that have been banned for not just ethical reasons, but for safety reasons, etc. That got almost like a category of things inadvertently banned. Because here’s what the problem is. Well, let’s go easy first, before anything controversial.

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So when something comes into America, there is a very extensive list of what things need to be labeled as. So it’s really weird because, if I have.

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Say, for instance, I have in a product today, American ginseng, Siberian ginseng, or Korean ginseng, Right. All that the FDA wants it to say is ginseng. Oh, so you and I know those are all very different. Yes.

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And there’s a. There’s. There’s tian qi. There’s a whole lot of different things. What that ended up happening is when things start to come in for importance. Let’s say, for instance, I’m totally making this up. This is not true. But let’s say that san qi, got flagged for some reason that it was bad.

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Well, then everything in that category gets flagged. Oh, right. So the same thing with stuff like, with things with like, Fu Zi (Prepared Aconite Root). Right. If Fu Zi is prepared properly, it’s extremely safe. But they don’t know anything about Yan fu fu zi (salt-fried) or they don’t know the proper preparation of it, so they just ban all of it. Really.

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Oh, that’s why wu tou (Radix Aconiti )too. Because Wu Tou is part of the Fu Zi, the plants. Exactly. So you’re like, why did that disappear? And it disappeared because there is a bad actor in that family somewhere. Or even more commonly, there was contaminated versions that were coming in.

[24:06.3]
There was a town, I want to say, in northern Africa or where people were having liver failure was just like, crazy. Everybody was getting liver failure, and they couldn’t figure out exactly what it was. But it was determined that it was coming from the tumeric that they were using.

[24:27.5]
And it was further determined that it was coming from this one region where they happened to have really crappy heavy metal soil and a lot of other things that were going on yet what ended up happening. All turmeric got banned until they could figure out where it was coming from.

[24:43.7]
And you can imagine in North Africa, that was just, like, horrible. But it turned out it was just one bad actor that triggered all of that. But that’s what a lot of these things come from. And a lot of these things that happen with one bad actor, especially if the media catches onto it, then it, the ban remains.

[25:00.7]
That’s the same story as Ma Huang (Ephedra sinica), right? Because someone died using it as a weight loss. So, so that one’s one of my favorite ones because it happened early in the 90s. Things that quieted down in, in like, as far as herbs go, they, they weren’t bothering us much.

[25:16.4]
Very more or very much. But they did this study and I, I want to say it was Ireland, it was the uk, let’s just put it that way. They did this study where they were using two of the most popular weight drug drugs at the time, weight loss drugs at the time.

[25:34.3]
You probably never heard about these. These are from a long time ago, but there was phenermine and fenis, something or another, basically long precursors to amphetamines or whatnot. And they called it fen phen. So if you use just one of them, it was pretty safe. Although it would have you running around like a little, like a little squirrel all the time. Right?

[25:52.9]
If you use just the other one, same thing, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel. But if you use the two together, then they would really. But you, you would drop weight like crazy within two months. You’d eat nothing and you just drop weight. I mean, there’s street drugs that do that too. But these were prescription drugs.

[26:10.5]
So sorry, I’m not advocating that. But the reason I say that is it’s, it’s so funny because after all these years of banning, I’ve seen people prescribe that recently again, it’s quietly slipped back in.

[26:26.3]
It’s like usually nurses, they, they’re like, I know this stuff’s horrible for me, but I’m going to lose all the weight that I need to in two months. Humans are stupid sometimes. When they were trying to go for all of these peer reviewed studies and whatnot for fen phen combined to push them together.

[26:45.3]
What they did in the UK for some reason is they added Ma Huang, like a little. I used to have some in my clinic when I first started out. But you put just a little sprig like in your morning tea and you are awake, you are alive. Because it also really, improves oxygen uptake, you know, which is what we’re using it for.

[27:05.4]
So it’s not just that it makes you awake, it’s that it, it really gets, gets oxygen, into your system really great. So you, it’s kind of like a Good feeling, you know what I mean? But anyway, in that study, it was like 20 people or something like that, and people started dying.

[27:24.4]
And by the time they stopped the study, it was too late. A bunch of more people died, you know what I mean? Even though they had stopped it because the things just don’t go together, there wasn’t an herbalist that was helping in it. The herbalist wasn’t looking at the dose. They just said, oh, we’ll add Ma Huang to it. Safe. So instead of the drugs having the majority of the problem, they’re like, oh, this was the Ma Huang.

[27:47.6]
No, it was the two amphetamines that you were taking on top of Ma Huang with Ma Huang on top, inappropriately that did that. But still, that, that’s, that’s what happened to that. And that’s what happened. What’s happened in several cases before. And I’m not saying things like with the astrologic acid and whatnot aren’t, bad and should be handled with great care.

[28:07.6]
But we are, we are physicians, we are master herbalists that if somebody is going to handle it, it should be us handling it. You know what I mean? And we’re, you know, I mean, I can’t speak for all of us, but also we’re not going to take our Ma Huang in our clinic and go make methamphetamine.

[28:28.9]
With it. Which was another problem why some things get banned too. I think you need to the proper education. So back to your points. Like this is what we learned for. And I don’t know, just really ridiculous to see people misusing this for commercial purpose.

[28:46.8]
And you know, I’ve heard they’re trying to remove Ma Huang from the textbook of traditional Chinese medicine in the United States, which is another thing, right? Like if you don’t teach, I mean, yes, you can’t really buy it anywhere now, but like, if you don’t teach them the true story of Ma huang, then maybe 50 years later people will just think, oh, Ma Huang is kind of like an energy herb that you take and they give you high and they give you energy.

[29:14.2]
But, but it’s actually not for that, right? It’s for wind, cold, and then it’s a really, important herbs for in traditional Chinese medicine. Like nothing can really replace it for, you know, wind cold and even, even Covid cough. You know, it’s actually really powerful.

[29:30.5]
So it’s really, I don’t know, like seeing that happens is kind of, well, and, and comes up to the point, I mean, it, it brings up the point, when do we stop? So with some newer graduates, I heard some stuff over the years because I use, Zhang Nao I use camphor.

[29:47.6]
And, I’ve seen some people see a video that I’m doing where I’m just breaking bricks of camphor, putting in the thing, and they’re like, oh, my gosh, you’re so brave. No respirator and no gloves. And I’m like, thinking to myself, because it does have a toxicity, but the toxicity is like, ingested is like 2 to 4 grams, which is a. Is a lot.

[30:09.3]
And on the skin, it’s like 50 milligrams, like a, like a dose of something with camphor. And it usually has like. Well, ours has 9 micrograms. Like, there’s like, nothing. You know what I mean? But they’ve learned. Toxicity, toxicity bad.

[30:25.4]
I mean, when I went to school, we were. I was tasting the toxic herbs and, you know, you know that they’re toxic. But I wanted to. One of my tongue. To tingle. But no, but, but seriously, like, teaching them. I do think there should be a point if our license was strong enough and we were together as a unit, as a.

[30:44.9]
We are Chinese medicine physicians. If we were, that enough, there would be no question, because it’s just like, who are you going to go to to get something, an herb prescribed? Is there anybody else out there that should be prescribing herbs besides us? If there.

[31:00.0]
You have to have a prescription for it, certainly not an MD So I hope that we see. Yeah, I hope that we stop seeing that. And I know that a lot of it’s for liability reasons too. You know, schools don’t want to tell people, oh, you should never use that. In this case.

[31:16.0]
No, you can use it, but the average person shouldn’t use it for X, you know, Y or Z. And then speaking of Zhang Nao, you know, because I read your. The evil bone water ingredients and I saw Zhang Nao in there. Right? So, you know, in China, like, we use Zhang Nao to expel the insects from wardrobe. Right.

[31:37.7]
So I’m like, if I put it on and then go to like, hiking or on the beach, then I can leave the insects away or the mosquitoes away and then that works. So I don’t know if you heard that feedback from your customer. No, no, 100%.

[31:54.1]
And when we first heard it, I was like, that’s really weird. But then I went to the Ocala National Forest, which think the wilds of Florida for three days to test it out. I Got bit by nothing. And also, if you spritz, it vents. But then I looked into it further, and as it turns out, Zhang Nao was one of the first natural bug repellents.

[32:17.7]
Like, the only one that worked. So in the, in the World War, when we were against the Japanese, we were having a super big problem with bugs. And it turns out that good Zhang Nao can only be sourced. It can’t be sourced from American camphor trees.

[32:33.9]
They don’t have enough of it in there. It’s got to be sourced from this one area of Southeast Asia. That’s it. That’s. That’s where the good stuff comes from. So during that world war, it became as valuable as gold. I mean, more valuable than gold. Until we learned how to synthesize it.

[32:50.6]
We learned how to synthesize it from the stumps of the southern pine tree, which is what natural turpentine comes from. Like natural turpentine. Pine oil trees are amazing. There’s so many herbs that have so many things available.

[33:07.3]
But the providence is important. I think that’s where we get into some issues too. Most people don’t know that with tariffs, et cetera. Tariffs did affect us, but not like everybody thought they would. It didn’t affect that many crudes because.

[33:22.8]
Well, first of all, because the APA fought to make sure that it didn’t affect, AP American something, Herbal commerce products. I can’t remember the name, but, they fought to have things considered essential herbs. There are some herbs that we just can’t grow in America with the same medicinal density.

[33:40.8]
We just can’t. There’s some in China that, like American ginseng, they can’t grow like cooling ginseng with any kind of medicinal density. So they’re considered essential. But one of the things that changed is all of a sudden after the 90s, schools started using granules, right?

[34:00.0]
And so not powders. I’m not talking about powders. I’m talking about granules. And, you know, granules are standardized. They have a filler that’s with them that makes a scoop standardized as like one dose or whatever it happens to be. But what most people don’t know is like, essential oils, I guess you would say, which is a bad, maybe a bad analogy, but they’re concentrates.

[34:25.7]
So with concentrates, it takes a whole lot more product or herb to produce that amount. And that ends up one of the things that can end up causing some shortages or leading to it. The essential oil boom that happened was one of the Things that really does.

[34:44.1]
Cause, I’m not, I’m not a tremendous fan of essential oils because of that. Because it takes a whole lot of say for instance, mint bo he to create mint essential oils.

[34:59.5]
We’re talking kilos and kilos and kilos to make just that one little bottle. And that’s what happened. All of a sudden in the late 90s, early 2000s and whatnot, these things started to become popular. We also started to use granules. Now I don’t know why most of the schools switch to granules.

[35:18.8]
And nobody’s going to like me for saying this. I’m not a particular fan, and I’m just not really a super fan because people don’t take them any better than they take, than they take their crude herbs. They are easier to make, I will say that. But I’m kind of a die hard, T pill guy because I know my people take them.

[35:36.7]
You know, not to say that I don’t offer higher quality pills like press tablets or don’t make formulas if somebody, there’s somebody I know that will make them. But these aren’t, these aren’t really particularly sustainable.

[35:51.8]
They use a lot of crude herbs. And that’s one of the things that has led to some of the shortages that we’ve had. But also it’s led to shortages in a different way. Usually a shortage is multifaceted. Right. These are actually not considered like a granule is not considered a crude herb and an essential herb.

[36:13.1]
Even though this is just tingho, this is not considered an herb. This is considered an extract. So when it comes across the border, it is taxed or tariffed as an extract, whereas the crude herb slips right through.

[36:30.8]
And the other big thing that’s happened tremendously with shortages is popularity. And now it’s just, I mean it’s crazy with where influencers, the TikTokers and things like that. All of a sudden we’ll have something that dries up and we don’t know why it’s so expensive or why we can’t get it.

[36:48.6]
And it’s because all of a sudden we’ve got all of these Americans that are putting like five, they’re putting like a cup of goji berries or something in their shake when it takes like three to be medicinal, you know what I mean? And anyway, that’s another story.

[37:04.4]
What were you saying? Something about like a Wu Wei Zi (Schisandra chinensis), which. Yes, a product. Like a company using that for energy drink or something. Yeah, that was the first time That I saw something like this. And this again, goes to me. You’re interviewing me because I’m old and I’ve seen this stuff now. I know.

[37:24.0]
But no, this is, this is stuff that I live through. So all of a sudden, Wu Wei Zi was one of the ones that I, I would use clinically sometimes. And I went to buy some Wu Wei Zi at the time used to be like $3. I mean, we. Don’t you guys have to understand, like when you hear an herb and for, you know, a kilo or a half a kilo or something like that, it’s like 34 bucks.

[37:49.4]
You go $34, it’s. It’s still so cheap. And yes, it did used to be $5 or $8. But we get these things for just, for the work that goes into the harvesting, for the growing, for the sustainability. We get these things so cheap.

[38:05.2]
But you just couldn’t find Wu Wei Zi. And what it ended up happening, Schizandra. So what it ended up happening is Arizona Iced Tea. And I love that company. It’s a, It’s a great company. The guys are that own it are great. You know, they’ve. They’ve kept their cans at a dollar forever.

[38:20.3]
They’re like, we don’t need to make more money. We’ll just keep them at a dollar. You know, and they have one that’s. That’s energy. That’s a lot of juices. It’s a really good formula, to be honest with you. It’s mostly like juices and maybe a little bit of vitamin, but herbs. I was like, wow, this is a really, you know, this is a really decent mix.

[38:36.5]
But what they did is when it became popular, they went over and they bought 90% of the grow fields. Like they just said, went to the grow fields and said, look, you are going to sell this stuff. When you go to market for $3 a pound or $3 a kilo, we’ll give you $5 a kilo if you give us everything that you got.

[38:57.1]
And of course, the grow fields were like, heck, yeah. So for three years they had all the grow fields. And so we were getting it for like four times that price, if it was even available. And so that’s. Things like that is where substitutions come in very often.

[39:12.8]
So if you see something that your formula for even something as simple as Zhi Bai Di Huang Wan, all of a sudden you can’t get it or it has something else in it and it shouldn’t, you know, with a classic formula that’s typically something that’s happened. And I only say that because I’ve had three different people tell me that Zhi Bai Di Huang Wan right now is hard to get, which, it shouldn’t be.

[39:34.4]
It’s very classic. Well, Cura Cura has it. There you go.

[39:43.1]
When you have scarcity, the price goes up. And when the price goes up, there’s depletion. And when there’s depletion, there’s counterfeits very often. And so that’s what ends up getting things like all screwed up too, because something will come in that’s counterfeited.

[40:00.4]
And now all of a sudden we become known for counterfeiting. But also it’s really messed up because it’s not sustainable. You know, so say something like seahorse, right, the seahorse that were harvested traditionally, like in the 90s, it was the same families that had been doing it for, you know, decades, I mean maybe millennia had been doing it.

[40:21.7]
And so when they went out, they would only get the ones of a certain size, just like a hunter here in America, only the ones of a certain size. And if there weren’t any more, there weren’t any more. They just raised their prices, you know what I mean? And they cultivated and made sure that there were going to be more the next year. Well now with the global market and global demand, they might do that.

[40:41.6]
But then you’ll get somebody that comes in and just grabs all the ones that they can and then depletes the whole thing. So then for years you go through a depletion, which is actually one of the things that’s going on with Japanese moxa right now. Because the Japanese, while they don’t do internal herbs, they do a lot of moxa and really high grade moxa.

[40:59.2]
High grade moxa. Right now they say if it’s going to be available again from Japan, it might be three years and it might not even be then because they had like kind of, a lull and then there’s nobody taking up the new farmer positions and. Yeah, so it’s really the global, kind of the global demand that’s led to most of this maybe a little bit now.

[41:20.7]
But like back in 90s where the Chinese herbal markets is a lack of regulations. And so you will see so many different grades of Chinese, herbs in the market. And because of the needs, increasing, you will even capture like the fake herb.

[41:39.7]
Like for example, Fu Ling (Poria), right, Is really famous for dampness and everyone think they have a dampness. And certainly, you know, fuling price increasing and so a lot of people trying to jump into that market. So they offer cassava the cut as the Fu Ling cube.

[41:58.5]
So the quality of the herb is like, really important. Especially like in China, we values the origins, where the herbs grow from the province. The province, the altitude, the soil, the, the climate. Yeah.

[42:14.4]
And you value it because it does make a huge difference. Yeah. And even like how you cut it, you know, like Fu Ling roll and Fu Ling cube is completely different cutting technique, like how they cut it, where you cut it. So there is for anybody that ever wants to be a super geek, not, no offense to people that already are, but there is a, it is the pharmacopeia of the People’s Republic of China.

[42:42.3]
It even goes into the microscopy. So how you determine all that under a microscope, it talks to you about how big, in what cross section, everything about how a piece should be cut. So, as an example. Yeah, you’re totally right.

[42:58.3]
And this is like getting, this is like getting really into it. But so like cinnamon pieces, you know, that are, you don’t really see these. And we’re blessed, we are so blessed to be able to have them. But when we used to chop that up, there was something that they were like, do you want to crush it?

[43:15.4]
Do you want to grind it? Do you want whatever? And I was like, I’m like, no, I feel like, I feel like I want it like the size of a golf ball. And I don’t know why I thought that. But, my thing is like, why would I grind everything if they didn’t grind things in ancient China?

[43:31.7]
They didn’t because they were perfectly capable of grinding grain for thousands of years. Why don’t they say if you want to grind the herb, grind the herbs? They don’t. They’re like, put it in the chunks or put it in whatever. It turns out that that’s about the size that’s supposed to be perfect for perfect extraction. I mean, this is like a hard science, but yeah, but you get the person that doesn’t know, and then they’re like, oh, well, it didn’t really work that well.

[43:55.5]
Well, there’s also workarounds for that. So say for instance, that, I mean, I’m blessed to have the same her agents to have the, the same imperial grade herbs for all of these years. There’s never any variation. I also don’t have any high demand herbs. I, I, my greatest hope is that none of my exotics don’t, ever become popular somehow where they’re like oh, you know, you use that because then all of a sudden I’m going to have a problem.

[44:21.4]
But with something like this, let’s say, for instance, I’ve never had this happen. But let’s say, for instance, I couldn’t get this Gui Pi. I couldn’t get this Gui Zhi . I could use Gui Zhi from a domestic source that was like a, good.

[44:36.6]
A good high B quality, or maybe an A quality. I could use that. But what I would have to do is I would have to alter my. The amount. So say it’s 100 grams. I would probably put in 120 or 140 grams. I’d have to really think about that and math it out and do a couple of experiments to see how it worked.

[44:56.3]
But, yeah, you’re exactly right. Just because it says it’s that herb does not mean that it’s got enough medicine in it to actually use it. But also, like, with what you guys do, as far as preserving the legacy and everything else, that’s why.

[45:15.7]
That’s why I love you guys. That’s why we’ve partnered with you guys. You guys are, are keeping the real stuff alive. Thank you. I don’t know how familiar you are with Cura Cura or the people out there, you know, in, in the world. But when I went to one of the conferences that we attended and had a booth, I went up to their booth immediately and was just super excited.

[45:37.9]
I mean, I was like an instant fan. And it’s because the things that I have put, like, in front of the screen here, all of the weird, all of the interesting, all of the, the things, they had them at their booth and I don’t, I don’t.

[45:55.9]
You know, I think we’ve gotten a little bit snobby in schools over the past few years where it’s like, oh, you’ve got to use granules. They’re like the best. And there is stuff that’s available in the Chinese groceries, but is also. It’s consumer grade, which means read that as safe.

[46:12.7]
Right. But it’s also physician grade. So sometimes I use them as standalones, but sometimes I use them as adjuncts. So say, for instance, I have somebody on Yin Qiao. I might give them something like a cold and flu tea that works brilliantly along with it. And people love that.

[46:28.8]
They love getting, like an extra boost. Sometimes just giving them herbs is, Is a little bit boring. But, I’m glad to see that, that you guys are preserving that. It’s that’s an excellent pharmacy idea. I know it’s, I know it’s a lot harder to do.

[46:45.5]
Oh, thank you. I do know that we do value the legacy and that’s why, like, when I heard Evil Bone Water and then, hear your story, I’m like, I need to get this product immediately. I, I just feel like nowadays not so many people are focusing on the crafting portion of it, which is really important.

[47:09.6]
If you’re, you know, if, if you’re considering all the, you know, zheng gu shui or Po Sum On oil, those were not manufacturer produced at the very beginning. Those are just, you know, family owned. And then they produce it because they have a really great ingredient and they came up with the formulas based on their experiences.

[47:29.2]
And the crafting is like putting a lot of heart and love in there. So that’s one of the reason why I love Evil Bone Water is because I saw all your, you know, stories on Instagram, like telling people, you know, like all your favorite machines and then how, you know, how those were, crafted and then, and then again like when I went to your booth and see the herbs, that you have, I, I’m super amazed because those are like super high quality.

[48:02.0]
Even the Rou Gui that you were, you know, display before, now so many people understand the differences and I think so it used to be the topicals. Everybody says, even like I love Tom Bizio, tiger tooth from the tiger’s mouth, tooth from the tiger’s paw.

[48:20.2]
Anyway, anyway, mouth great, great, great. But even, he would, would say just like everybody traditional would be like, well, you use just your leftover herbs, you use your old stock herbs, use your scrap herbs for topicals. Because they’re going to sit for so long, you know, the process is so long, it’ll extract whatever it can extract.

[48:38.4]
I think we were probably one of the first ones that said, no, we’re just going to use the best that we could possibly use. And it’s made such a difference. It’s really a testament to what the original formula, the original family formula is just sublime. It’s just perfect.

[48:54.9]
We can’t honor those, people enough. Just perfect. And we’re not ever going to let it get adulterated by growth. You know what I mean? That’s the one thing that we will not change. We might change how we package it, we might change how we ship it, but we’re not going to change the quality that we use with it.

[49:14.0]
But, and I know we got to wrap up soon. But I want to tell you something before. Yes. So with all these people that are looking at getting into herbs, or using your pharmacy because of all the various things that you have there. First of all, I never mind if people, like, reach out to me, and ask about certain things.

[49:35.8]
That’s part of what I want to do. I’m, I guess, semi retired as a clinician now because evil bone water takes up a lot of my time. We’re in over 4,000 clinics. We just ship out like crazy and we continue to grow. But if you feel like your herbal knowledge in school wasn’t what it should be, you feel like it was kind of lacking or whatnot, I’m going to tell you something that nobody else has told you before.

[50:02.6]
That’s going to sound kind of silly. This book right here. So this used to be by Margaret Nazir. This used to be one of the absolute necessities that you would have, for school.

[50:19.0]
I mean, this was like your clinical companion that has every patent listed. The other one was Chinese Herbal Medicines by Jake Paul Fracken. And I actually took, a couple classes with him which were excellent. Everybody, these are kind of equal.

[50:35.0]
I just like the way this is organized a little bit better. And I’ll tell you why. Because you turn to a page and it has, I don’t know if you can see that, but it has the Chinese and then it has the pinyin, and then it has the English translation.

[50:51.9]
So Chinese pinyin, English translation. And then it goes through the, the functions. So it doesn’t tell you what it’s used for first, but it tells you it moves chi or it tonifies, blood or whatever. But then it tells you the applications, many of the ways to use it, and then it even gives you special modifications and things like that.

[51:13.2]
So it really goes a long way towards you learning how the formula behaves. Formulas are not meant to be given to somebody because they have sciatica or given to somebody because they have gastroenteritis or because they have, you know, a sore shoulder.

[51:32.5]
They’re meant to be given to somebody because of exactly which channels it enters, how it moves, if it nourishes, if it clears. And I learned probably more from this book. You can tell I’ve got a lot of notes in it and a lot of weird stuff all stuck in it. I learned more from that.

[51:49.5]
But for trying to use a pretty comprehensive formulary like Curacura has, I would recommend something like that because you’re going to see A lot of things that they’re not going to be in the main materia medicas, but all of these consumer products that are just amazing. And there’s so many good stories that are in some of these books with it too.

[52:07.4]
So if I could just, if I could recommend one thing for people to embrace that. Don’t be an herb snob. I mean, I’m kind of an herb snob, but at the same time I think that the consumer grade stuff and all in between have their place and just work exceptionally well.

[52:26.6]
And then also I just want to, express my gratitude towards the evil bone water product. Evil bone water is really, help more people experience the power and the charm of the traditional Chinese medicine.

[52:43.1]
So thank you so much for keep this, you know, precious tradition alive for generations. Yeah, I really wanted it to be an emissary to the common person that doesn’t know Chinese medicine. And believe it or not, the camphor and menthol levels are really quite low compared to most topicals.

[53:00.1]
It just doesn’t feel that way because of the other herbs. It feels like they’re a lot higher because I wanted it to be super safe so people can take use this. It can be impactful, it can lead them all. It’s like a gateway drug. It can lead them all back to us for other things.

[53:15.7]
That’s what I want it to be.