For the extraction of Chinese medicine, there are traditional methods such as infusion, reflux, water decoction and sublimation, etc. Modern techniques include membrane separation, fluid extraction, ultra-micro crushing, enzymatic methods, etc. The advantages of extracting Chinese herbal medicines are that higher purity products can be obtained, easy to operate, and the finished products are available in paste, powder, liquid, etc. In particular, the advanced process makes the extraction efficient, easy to discover the active ingredients in Chinese herbal medicines, and the quality of the products is higher.
What does the extraction of Chinese medicine do? Firstly, it can be made into components of proprietary Chinese medicines; secondly, it is widely used in the field of health food; thirdly, it is added into some functional foods and cosmetics.
So, herbal extracts come from Chinese medicine and originate from TCM, does it belong to Chinese medicine?
The doctor's view is that they do not. They are chemical drugs, also known as "Western medicines", and what is extracted is not the original anyway.
Why is something extracted from a Chinese medicine no longer a Chinese medicine? The names of herbal extracts are mostly found in "XX esters, acids, bases, enzymes, veggies, alcohols", which are completely westernised names.
1. Traditional Chinese medicines have their own main treatment, efficacy, characteristics and bias, and contain a variety of active ingredients that interact with each other and influence and restrict each other, but the active ingredients of extracts are relatively single, and their composition ratio has changed significantly compared to that of herbs.
For example, the extract of Huanglian, also known as berberine hydrochloride, is used for "intestinal infections"; the terpene lactone extract of Ginkgo biloba is used for angina pectoris and cerebral infarction. The indications for these extracts are of the Western medicine type.
3. From the clinical application of the drug, there are many non-diagnostic applications, mainly to facilitate reading by Western medicine, and single ingredients are more easily accepted by Western medicine. Western doctors prescribe them without being able to speak of dialectical treatment.
From these points it can be seen that it is the "what" of herbal extracts, knowing what herbs they come from, "by what method they are extracted" and "for what ailments they are used after extraction", that is the criterion for judging They are not herbal medicines. Since they are not used according to traditional Chinese medicine theory, they cannot be called herbal medicines.
Although Chinese herbal medicines and herbal extracts, or "chemical medicines", are based on the same composition of substances, and the active ingredients are the ones that work, they are obtained through purification, which is a method of research and development for Western medicine, and are applied to Western medical conditions.
Since herbal extracts are derived from Chinese medicine and the purity of the extracted ingredients is high, are they more effective than Chinese medicine?
There is a ready example. In the 1950s and 1960s, when dysentery was prevalent in our country due to poor sanitation, the effective method handed down by Chinese medicine at that time was to use the herb Huang Lian, and many people were cured. However, due to the large number of patients, the amount of Huang Lian was limited and not available, so someone analysed it and learnt that the ingredient that worked was called "Berberine", commonly known as "Huanglianin", and extracted the same from other plants and used it clinically. This is a common limitation of Western medicine today.
However, the problem of drug resistance does not exist when you continue to use Huang Lian Chinese herbal medicine for dysentery, you just stop taking it when you are well. Although Chinese herbs also work with safranin, there are other ingredients that work synergistically in the application of safranin to the body. The extracted safranin, on the other hand, is inorganic and works over time, from high to low, possibly gradually decreasing.
This is just one small case and there are many more examples of the rest. One of the disadvantages of Chinese herbal extracts is that the purity of the extract tends to get out of hand with its potency, commonly seen in glycyrrhizic acid and genistein.
In conclusion, there are differences in the pharmacology of Chinese herbal extracts and traditional Chinese medicine. Chinese herbal medicine has the meaning of the five elements being related to each other, while extracts are a Western medical term, and extracts have certain limitations, but why do they still need a lot of extracts? Because it can expand the drugs for western medicine, open up the market for health products, and also establish the necessary identification charts and standards for Chinese medicine, and at the same time, provide natural and better synthetic drugs for medicine.
