 About 12 years ago, I bought a one-way ticket to move to China thinking that I would become a monk. And one of my very first stops was the Shaolin Temple, because I'd been studying traditional Chinese martial arts for a very long time, and this was supposedly the Mecca of martial arts. Now, one of the fascinating things associated with the Shaolin Temple are these what are called fall-hit wines. These liniments you apply to prevent bruises at the heel of broken bones that are shrouded in mystery and legends and actually are well protected by the Chinese pharmaceutical companies, the exact ingredients. But in this video, I thought I would share a little bit about one of them and what some of the clinical research actually says about them. Hey guys, I'm Dr. Alex Hine, author of the health book Master of the Day and doctor of acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine. So before we jump into this video, there are two very important links right below the video. The first is for a free guide, four daily rituals that could potentially help you add years to your life with traditional Chinese medicine. And the second is if you'd like to become a patient of mine locally in Los Angeles or virtually via telemedicine, there's a link below to contact my private practice and learn more. Now, when I first developed my obsession with the Shaolin Temple, it was when I ordered a home kit for iron palm training. I don't know if you guys have ever seen this, but Shaolin monks do a certain kind of training where they will actually effectively bruise and damage their bones and their connective tissue to actually become more dense. I mean, even this clinical research showing that resistance training of any kind with weights will increase bone density, right? But this is extreme resistance training, right? This is, you know, you're hitting your hand against steel blocks and gravel and hard beans for 30 to 60 minutes a day. And I had bought this kit where it is a sequential training system for learning what's called iron palm. And the first level is mung beans. So you get a bag of mung beans and you basically do the sequence. So you do your palm, the back of the palm, the knife, the blade, and then the fingers. And so you're training basically the palms, the back hand, the blade, right for a knife hand strike, and then, you know, like eagle claw techniques have these kind of claw looking motions. But in a lot of Southern style martial arts in China, for example, there's a strike called bugie where it's just thrusting fingers. And it's basically you throw it into somebody's eyes. But if your fingers and your joints are weak, you're probably going to break your fingers if you hit someone's forehead. So these kinds of training techniques are used. And one of the ways you offset the physical damage, for example, if you do this 30 minutes a day, the first thing I noticed was you could see bruising all around the bones in my hands, right? You could see mild swelling and bruising from the back of my hand hitting. The first level was mung beans. The second was gravel, right? So it's just a paper linen bag with gravel inside and you're smacking it for a half hour straight. Now these liniments that are prescribed are typically alcohol extracts. And you basically would spend 10 to 15 minutes like this, rubbing it into all the areas and the joints that you were hitting. Now, that's one usage of this, right? For really sports medicine. But the other is really for injuries. So for example, people who have rolled their ankle and they have sprained or strained it and there's swelling and there's heat and inflammation, you can utilize these compounded formulas externally as liniments to help decrease the swelling and inflammation. Now there's an interesting Chinese medicine lesson here because a lot of what these formulas are comprised of will, for one, we know some of the general ingredients because you see them in different regions of China and from different, you know, special secret lineages. But a lot of them have some of the same base ingredients that are herbs that we call blood movers. So certain herbs we use in Chinese medicine like Baishao, which is peony, Danshen and other herbs that are used for inflammation, specifically clearing heat like Huangqin, scutillaria, which is I think skull cap. These herbs are combined into these compounded formulas that have several synergistic purposes. So for example, we take the herb Baishao. Baishao is used day to day for many different conditions. It has a direct effect on what Chinese medicine calls the blood. So the blood includes things like actual blood circulation, hormones, for example, high Baishao formulas we use for women's health, severe abdominal cramps, endometriosis, issues with just dysmenorrhea overall. But it's also used for physical pain, muscular pain at the same time. Now Baishao is one of those herbs that is sometimes in some of these Shaolin formulas. It's a very common herb, there's no secret to it, but there's actually interesting clinical research showing that it really does work for pain. I mean it does, clinically, I use it every single day, but sometimes it's nice to see some of the research. So let's check that out. Now in one particular study, researchers were trying to see the effect that Baishao had on pain. So it was demonstrated in one study that what's called Pionafloren, one of the chief active ingredients in the root of Baishao, peony, was effective in relieving colorectal distension, induced visceral pain in rats, okay? So the analgesic, the pain relieving effect of it was mediated by certain receptors in the body. Now Baishao is not only used for, for example, the first thing I think of is really abdominal pain. There's a famous formula called Xiaojendong, minor build the middle decoction, which is used for basically chronic stomach pain. It also can be used for, as you just heard, colorectal pain, right? Issues related to digestion and bloating, abdominal pain, and also women's health. In addition to muscular pain. So people that are training really hard and are having delayed onset muscle soreness, that doms can also be moderated by high Baishao formulas. So in this case though, for the secret Xiaojendong formulas, they're applied topically. So they're external trauma elements and there are all kinds of other ingredients in there as well, like Akinite, Fuzzi, one of the most toxic plants on the planet that we actually do administer internally quite often, but it's processed in a certain way to be very, very safe. But Akinite in the same way can have a certain pain relieving effect. So these Xiaojendong formulas, we're actually gonna post a little list of some of the common ingredients here because Wikipedia actually has an entry into some of what's in these Xiaojendong formulas. It's really, really interesting to research and has been very safely guarded for probably thousands of years at this point. And they really do work clinically in my experience. Some of them we use as what's called herbal ice. There's a formula called Sanhuangsan that we also use in that way. Instead of icing something, we red-use herbs to move the blood and to decrease inflammation as opposed to slowing things down and keeping them stuck. It's a fascinating history and a fascinating science behind these trauma elements. So that's what I have for you here today, guys. Check out those links below the video if you wanna become a patient or check out that free guide I've put together and I will see you soon.