 The idea that food is medicine seems to be logical to a lot of people, but I think that sometimes people get in a little bit of a bind where they think that a little bit of ginger tea or a little bit of chamomile tea or a little bit of lavender or valerian is going to really treat or cure serious disease and in my experience it won't. So I thought in this video we would talk about something that I think is really important and Chinese medicine has a very deep understanding of, which is that there's food grade medicine and there is, for lack of a better word, medical grade medicine. Hey guys, Dr. Alex Hine, doctor of Chinese medicine and licensed acupuncturist. So before we jump in here to this video here today, two links right below this video that are important. The first is if you'd like to become a patient of my locally in Los Angeles or virtually via telemedicine, reach out and contact my private practice below this video and there's also a free download there for you, which is four daily rituals that can potentially help you out years to your life with Chinese medicine. So there are lots of these natural medicine groups on Facebook and there are communities that are in person or online forums or books out simple home remedies you can use at home and this whole industry of home remedies I think is very interesting and very empowering for a lot of people because who wants to put all the power in the hands of the doctor the only person that can provide the helpful medical advice. I sure as hell don't and you probably don't but there is a certain level where the home remedies are more so in the category of home remedies and not really strong enough to be clinical medicine. So for example you know you see people talking about putting a squeeze of lemon in their water the lemon juice with some cayenne or something else for the master cleanse or you see people having cinnamon or ginger or whatever it is in their oatmeal and it's great general wellness advice it's good longevity advice but I think people get a little bit delusional when we think that the squeeze of lemon and water is going to seriously detox your liver or gallbladder they probably won't or that the little bit of cinnamon is going to help you with your digestion in a major way it probably won't and so I think we need to talk about what is food great and what is medical great in my field the ancient medical ancestors the physicians that have come before me talked specifically and tangibly about what that looks like. So let's take a look at you know the morning cinnamon that I put in my oatmeal right this definitely falls into the food grade category but I'm going to show you how much I actually put in my oatmeal so we have point six four of a gram it's my morning oatmeal let's lay it out here so we can see side by side okay that's literally what it looks like morning oatmeal all right so here's an example of food grade versus medical grade a common herb that people know is ginger right ginger is used all over the world in many different cuisines it's used food grade like a little bit of powdered ginger into food whether it's a curry it's used just in many different kinds of cuisines in terms of a main stay culinary spice sometimes it's sliced into stir fries sometimes it's even baked in whole chunks into food but in general ginger is a commonly used herb people know the herb ginger right it's also in teas that are digested blends and things like that but when we talk about again food grade versus medical grade some herbs are only medical grade meaning you would never want to have a person or a patient consume that just willy-nilly daily and some herbs are really just food grade you have to consume a massive quantity 30 50 or 100 grams at one time or in three doses in a day for it to be significant in terms of what it can treat so when we talk about ginger I want to show you a side-by-side comparison of what would be food grade ginger usage in a meal for example and what would be a medical grade formula called jupy-tang which has just two herbs an ancient formula for basically burping acid reflux in digestion specific kind of it and in comparison we use this jupy which is chen-pi tangerine peel at 12 grams and ginger at 24 grams so let's take a look at these side-by-side so you can do the difference between food grade like in your morning oatmeal versus medical grade will seriously treat acute nausea for example okay now let's compare the other one which is this formula jupy-tang an ancient formula for nausea reflux and vomiting this is chen-pi dry tangerine peel 12 grams just over 12 and then 24 grams ginger we'll just throw it on top that's what this one looks like here that's this one so about 24 plus 12 36 grams this was the morning oatmeal what do we say it was like half a gram something like that so this is on the right is what really you can use to stop acutely stop nausea and vomiting and indigestion and this is really more food grade medicine and I think people sometimes get confused that this is going to cause significant change in symptoms when you really need this or even much more much higher of a dosage this idea of food grade medicine and medical grade medicine I think is really important and very interesting there's that famous quote maybe by Hippocrates that the dose makes the poison right and it's the same as true food even food being medicine the dose makes the poison the most basic example that is eating excess food even good food a lot of people will gain weight and otherwise the quality of the food is another big consideration but when we're talking about this it is important to know that if some person's really sick they need strong medicine and that's strong medicine could be a really strong Chinese formula that I would never give to someone who's not sick because you could potentially harm the patient and often will have side effects and then we come back to the middle where there's some slight symptoms they don't need to have the strongest heaviest hitting formula they don't need chemotherapy and radiation right cancer being way out here they just need something for their acid reflux in their insomnia for a couple months and then down here is those baby little signs of things just going out of balance you can just feel okay I don't know what I ate or I ate too much I've been drinking too much coffee and you're feeling a little bit of that indigestion starting to build and it's happened a few days in a row and now you maybe need to do some food grade medicine and a little bit of medical grade medicine understanding that the severity of the patient's illness should of course be tailored to the treatment and maybe what that person's needs is really just that spoonful of cinnamon in their oatmeal in the morning and maybe what they need is a strong form of medicine and maybe even pharmaceutical medicine depending on what's going on so I think it's important because there are a lot of people who are kind of playing doctor so to speak thinking that lemon juice is gonna cure their liver gallbladder disease and it won't and it may be good over here but over here you need some really seriously hard-hitting stuff so food grade medicine medical grade medicine sometimes it's the same herb in Chinese medicine just a much higher dosage sometimes there are herbs that are only medical grade as in they have a strong effect on physiology hi guys that's what I have for you here today and again before you go I have two other related videos right here that are related to this video that will help you