Among the thousands of herbs, I am afraid that mugwort is one of the most widely used herbs in folklore. Many people's knowledge of it begins with the long handful of mugwort that hangs on the door at the end of each year.

Mugwort repels all poisons

Every year in May, the weather becomes warm, the rain increases, mosquitoes breed, and infectious diseases are also more up. Therefore, the lunar month of May is known as the "month of the hundred poison". Epidemic disease, focus on prevention, seasonal wormwood has become the first choice for people to prevent disease health care medicine.

The Dragon Boat Festival, families are to moxa, calamus inserted in the door eyebrow, or moxa leaves, calamus and other woven into the shape of a man or tiger, known as moxa, moxa tiger; or made into a beautiful wreaths, jewelry to wear, fragrant, used to drive away the miasma. "In the afternoon of May 5th, the Heavenly Master rode the Ai Tiger. The bushy sword cuts down the centipede, and a hundred insects return to hell." It is said that moxa leaves with calamus drive away all insects and eliminate diseases. Research has found that smoked moxa leaves, moxa sticks or moxa velvet have a killing or inhibiting effect on many kinds of germs and can be used for indoor disinfection. In "Herbal China" TV series, 76-year-old Hu old man lit the mugwort, gently closed the door and let the burning mugwort fumigate the room, which is used to get rid of the filth and prevent epidemics.

Mugwort is also often used to make incense bags. Hu Qing Yu Tang, Fang Hui Chun Tang, Tong Ren Tang, Tong Jun Tang ...... each medical hall every Dragon Boat Festival, will launch their own formula of special incense bags, pleasing pattern design, year after year, but the same is the wormwood leaves, calamus, Angelica dahurica and other aromatic disease-eliminating herbs. Beautiful shape to attract the public eye, but people still value the essence of its health care, children are also. My nephew's daughter got my gift to her after the bag, immediately wear in the chest, happy to say: "the bugs will not come to bite me!"

Mugwort contains volatile oil, it is a broad-spectrum antibacterial, antiviral drugs, on a variety of viruses and bacteria have inhibition and killing effect on respiratory diseases have a very good effect. My colleagues, Dang Ju Xing and Yu Xiaoxia, have extracted mugwort oil from mugwort and studied its active ingredients for the prevention and treatment of chronic bronchitis, and achieved results.

Moxibustion to get rid of intractable diseases

The leaves of moxa dried, put in a mortar and pestle repeatedly pounded, remove the stems and stalks, you can get the important raw material of moxibustion - moxa velvet. Acupuncture and moxibustion is a common subject carried out in hospitals, and it is also a medical treatment that really brings out the color of the leaves.

People who often go to acupuncture, the smell of moxa will never be unfamiliar. Mugwort is burned, emitting a strong and unique odor, some people smell the peace of mind, some people smell the excitement, and in the fumigation of the moxa, those pain, so quietly disappear.

About moxibustion, our ancestors tried a lot of medicinal herbs, and after careful selection and deliberation, they chose moxa as the base material for moxibustion. Not only moxa, but also aged moxa. Li Shizhen said: "Where the use of moxa leaves, must be used for a long time with the old, the treatment to make soft and fine, known as ripe moxa, if the raw moxa, moxibustion fire is easy to injure the muscles and veins". This is actually for moxibustion, but because of this rhetoric, so that later generations even soak feet, into the pillow, etc., are to Chen Ai as the first choice.

Nowadays, a lot of patients like to ask, "Doctor, look at my body, can I go to do moxibustion? In my opinion, most people are actually suitable.

Today's urban men and women, like to drink iced drinks, blowing cold air, wearing bare arms and legs, the mouth does not forget to chant their own Yang deficiency, uterine cold, at this time from the dispersal of cold and dampness to the identification of the evidence, often get one or two, and moxibustion, play exactly this role.

Borrowing the popularity of the "uterine cold" rhetoric, all the way to moxa footbag, moxa warming package, moxa incense packets, but where a woman seems to be the uterine cold, but where the uterine cold should be used moxa, visible in the hearts of ordinary people nowadays moxa is an important position.

I did have to do a bib with mugwort as the main material, dedicated to the expulsion of abdominal cold, used to treat intractable stomach pain, lumbago, dysmenorrhea, etc., the effect is really good.

Another many always screamed their cold hands and feet throughout the year, "cold-blooded men and women", you can also try to use a cloth bag filled with cooked mugwort in shoes and socks, warm feet.

But Chinese medicine is concerned about the symptom, I would never encourage patients to blindly use moxa leaves to cure the disease. For some of the cold and hot mixed cases, I often in the prescription, indicating that another package of moxa leaves, the method is: recommend that the patient decoction, the first two decoctions of the juice is to drink, the third decoction to join the moxa leaves, this time the resulting juice is used for external washing or soaking, often improve the therapeutic effect.

In the documentary, Han Shanming, the heir to the herb therapy, cured Ms. Xu's tearlessness with moxibustion, which is not to say that moxibustion can cure eye disease, but after a rigorous diagnosis of the disease and diagnosis, accurately find the stasis of the meridians in the body, through the characteristics of moxa leaves pungent dispersal of warmth and open it, so that the foci of the disease out of the body, and the eye disease of the appearance of the disease and then healed. Therefore, Han Shanming moxibustion site selected in the Yongquan, Sanyinjiao and other lower extremity points, it is to play the role of fire return to the source, the role of the liver to resolve the depression, in just one month in order to cure the stubborn disease.

Ancient people say: the needle is not, the moxibustion of the appropriate. And the current medical means more is the use of acupuncture and moxibustion combined approach: first selected treatment points into the needle, followed by the needle handle with a section of burning moxa, in order to increase the effect of acupuncture and moxibustion, which is the warm acupuncture and moxibustion. There are also moxa boxes or moxa canisters placed directly on the skin that have been laced with needles, while the needle, moxibustion, doubling the effect.

But if you are using it at home, most people don't choose needles, but you can buy moxibustion boxes directly. Nowadays, most businesses are well thought out, buy home moxibustion kit, often comes with a strap. The strap is fixed on the part of the need for moxibustion, and then put the lit moxa into the moxa box, the moxibustion box into the strap into the reserved position can be safe and convenient, free movement, but also can be adjusted at any time the posture and moxibustion position, it can be said to be a must-have home good.

In medicine to regulate menstruation to send a child

In the many years under the influence of the palace drama, we know that in addition to the saffron can be abortive, but also know that smoked moxa can protect the fetus. Therefore, we all know that moxa is a warm medicine, can stop bleeding, can dissipate cold, and thus become a gynecological medicine.

"Materia Medica" book, said, moxa leaves, warm blood and menstruation, the gas to open the depression of the medicine. Switching orifices, wake up all the sinking and hiding within the closure of the disease. If the gas and blood, phlegm and drink, accumulation for the disease, asthma against gas, bone vapor plaque, paralysis, carbuncle, scrofula tuberculosis and other diseases, moxibustion of the disease immediately. If into the food pills and drinks in the soup, warming and removing dampness, regulating the meridians, strong uterus, so women's side of the more used. Such as "Ai Fu warm uterus pill", is a child-sending medicine, cured a lot of women who really cold uterus.

Another leakage, dysmenorrhea, bleeding during pregnancy, as well as a variety of menstrual disorders, almost always without the presence of mugwort. I and several gynecologists once did a brief discussion, I'm afraid that mugwort and motherwort are the two most common medicines in their prescriptions.

One of my favorite gynecological prescriptions for treating infertility is Jiao Ai Tang (胶艾汤), which is a classic prescription from The Essentials of the Golden Chamber. I also use it as the main formula of the ointment, and the clinical effect is quite good.

Modern science, according to many young people nowadays like to use the characteristics of essential oils, the leaves of mugwort extracted from the mugwort oil. Its efficacy continues to regulate menstruation as the most important feature, but also to treat skin allergies or itching in the fall: simply apply it to the affected area as if it were windex. If a child has prickly heat, you can also rub some mugwort oil on the prickly heat, and the effect of prickly heat is also good

Into the food fragrance tantalizing

This documentary introduces a classic pasta of Li Shizhen's hometown of Herb Spring, Ai Wo Wo. This is the same idea as those green dumplings and green dumplings we eat at the Qingming Festival, that is, to eat the leaves of the mugwort in a different way and use it for health care.

Unforgettable early childhood, picking mugwort to do the green cake situation vividly. Every year, a few days before the Qingming Festival, we will carry a basket to pick mugwort, take home with boiling water, used to make green cake. Often after dinner, my mother would clean up the dishes, take out the glutinous rice flour, mix it with cool water, steam it in a cage, pour it into a stone mortar, add the mugwort, and repeatedly pound the mortar and pestle until the mugwort was completely rotten and dissolved into the rice flour, and then use the cake seal to brand the words "Fortune" and "Lushou". Early the next morning, take the cake steamed, used to make tribute, sacrifices to ancestors; and that day's breakfast must be sweet Qingming cake. That and into the Ai Qing's special cakes, there is a unique fragrance, unforgettable.

Mugwort is also often used as a raw material for food therapy. For example, mugwort fried eggs, the mugwort leaves after washing and chopping, add eggs stirred, put salt, pepper, into the frying pan fried to eat. Another example is the moxa leaf meat round, the meat and moxa leaves were minced and mixed, put the right amount of salt, ginger, peanut oil, cornstarch, egg white and mix well, processed into meat round or meat cake, or boiled or fried or steamed to cooked food. Both have the effect of appetizing food. With this dish, you may eat a few more mouthfuls of rice.

There are also moxa leaf ginger egg flower soup and moxa leaf gelatin porridge, which can be called medicinal meals to get rid of diseases and health care. The former with 15 grams of mugwort leaves, ginger 5 slices, 2 eggs, the production of the first mugwort leaves into a gauze bag, with ginger slices together into the pot to cook for 3 minutes, discard the mugwort bag, ginger not used, hit the egg, and then cook for 2 minutes. The latter with 20 grams of Colla Corii Asini, 10 grams of dried mugwort leaves, brown sugar 1 spoon, practice: dry mugwort leaves first 3 bowls of water decoction for 20 minutes, pour out the juice; will be crushed colla Corii Asini, added to the juice, cook until completely dissolved, add brown sugar and mix well, drink while warm. Both prescriptions have the effect of warming menstruation, dispersing cold and relieving pain, which is suitable for people with cold body, cold hands and feet, and cold pain in the abdomen to get rid of diseases and health care, and for women with irregular menstruation and dysmenorrheal disease, which has a regulating effect. (Shi Renchao)