 Now, you might be taking an herbal formula for the first time and you're not sure what it's going to do to you. You're not sure if it's going to make you feel weird or it's going to interfere with your current medications or if anything will happen at all, but maybe you're slightly worried. In this video, I want to share a little bit about my experience not only being a patient, which is primarily my experience comes from being a patient for years, taking herbal formulas daily for years. And some of the good, the bad and the ugly just so I can be real with you in practical. And in addition, the great advice of one of my mentors, mentors from China on whether you know an herbal formula is right for you or not. Hey, I'm Alex Hine, author of the book Master of the Day, current doctoral student in traditional or classical Chinese medicine. I've also included a beginner's guide there on the intro principles in Chinese medicine. In other words, how to add 10 years to your life with the foundational principles of Chinese medicine. You can click that first link in the description, add your name to that email is there and you'll get that guide right in your email inbox there. So the advice of one of my mentors, Dr. Heiner Fuhoff, he was telling a story one day about one of his mentors, Dr. Zhang. And Dr. Zhang was, they were discussing how you know if an herbal formula is right for the patient or not. And one of the things Dr. Zhang was saying was he was saying this expression of show push show, which is basically, is the body receiving or taking the formula well? Like is the patient getting stomach aches and cramps and headaches? Are they getting side effects from this formula that would basically make it really contraindicated if the patient wanted to take it in the long run? And I think there's so many other nuances we can explore there, but really this idea of the fit, how it fits with the body, right? Like the body is tilted towards one way with a disease or an illness or a tendency and the formula is designed to bring that tendency back towards the middle more. So sometimes it will do that, but there will be a host of other effects, much like any other pharmaceutical or any other drug. But in terms of my own experience, typically my results with herbs have fallen into four major categories. So those four categories are basically miraculous results, a little bit marginal results, no results, not sure if it did anything, or side effects, what I would call improperly prescribed or prescribed with an asterisk, like they help you, but there's also side effect to it. So in terms of the neutral category where the herb did nothing, I saw so many practitioners that didn't know herbs really well and they were prescribing formulas that probably should not have been used that way. Or they were just giving me generic things like a multivitamin and fish oil, so they didn't really know herbal formulas at all. That for me was the category it did nothing, but it did no harm. Sometimes an herbal formula has effect, but it's like, it's kind of okay. It's not that dramatic. And for me, when a patient says, eh, not quite sure, to me that's a clear fail. It didn't work. Maybe that means your constipation got a little bit better or diarrhea got a little bit better, but you're not sure if it's due to the herbal formula or something else. The next category on the negative side is clear side effects. So one of the formulas that I was taking for several months was a formula that was causing me digestive cramps. So intestinal cramps and actual pain that would last several hours. Now that didn't mean necessarily it was the wrong formula, but what it meant was that my body had already had a susceptibility or a weakness in my intestines that was causing it to react that way. So regardless of whether or not it was the right formula, the right medicine, my body could not use it. So it had to be approached through a different way. And then an example of a formula that's a home run when you nail it. During my acute burnout phase two years ago, at the time I actually hadn't slept in 24 hours due to just such high stress hormones. I had 15 symptoms that I'd never had in my whole life that were like the textbook for a body breaking down due to stress and due to burnout. And literally within two days, I slept like a drunk baby. I mean, I just literally just passed out. I had amazing sleep right away immediately for a straight month. I never had a heart palpitation after that. I never had a host of all the other symptoms. And within the next six months, all my acute symptoms were gone. But just the amazing time component to within two days of taking that formula. And that to me was really amazing and showed me the power of Chinese medicine. So coming back to the formula and the formula you may be put on, maybe by me in the future, does the body receive it? Does it take it well? Does it that meshing? Does it work? Does it tilt the body in the right direction and not too far in another direction? Are there not too many side effects? This is just one interesting consideration to think of. Now again, don't forget, I've included that free email course and the beginner guide right there in the description, how to add 10 years to your life with traditional or classical Chinese medicine. So you can click that and get it right there.