Recently I posted about a great Chinese Tonic Patent Medicine I found called Gejie Bushing Wan.
However, you have to be aware of a big problem if you’re not careful in Chinatown. I’m finding more and more instances of knock offs and counterfeits. If you don’t check your ingredients, you’ll learn the hard way. For example, the Gejie Bushing Wan I mentioned above was about 6 bucks and had a plethora of tonic herb ingredients. I found a two dollar version that looked exactly the same, why would I think the ingredients were different? Of course, the cheaper version was missing all the active herbal ingredients.
Be careful with Shou Wu Chih too. I get a lot of hits for Shou Wu Chih on this site, so there’s alot of interest on it. However, read the ingredients!! There’s a knock off version out there that doesn’t have the full ingredients.
Someone joked that “made in China” is becoming the ultimate warning label. I hope this will not become a truth, however, I’m going to have to stop recommending Chinese herbs if problems continue with counterfeits, fakes, contamination and other problems stemming from greed and carelessness. What makes this tragic is that people turn to Chinese tonic herbs to improve their health and well being.
Nitric Oxide From Vegetables
Looking to boost your nitric oxide levels? Then eat your vegetables, especially root and green leafy vegetables. We always knew eating vegetables was good for you, but now studies are showing why. Roots and Green Leaves are high in nitrates. These dietary nitrates will increase your nitric oxide levels. If you suffer from stomach ulcers, heart disease, baldness, erectile dysfunction, high blood pressure, certain immune disorders, slow healing or are interested in boosting your athletic performance, then you want to pay close attention! Beet Juice is one of the easiest ways to boost your nitrate intake–and it tastes great.
I googled around found this juice online. You can read about it on this blog:
Biotta Juice Blog.
Try making your own juice with beets, carrots and spinach.
Here’s an article on how it increases athletic performance:
Athletic Performance Boost from Vegetables.
Now it makes sense to eat and drink your veggies everyday!
Of Geckos and Contaminants
Good news and bad news. First the bad news. Be very careful taking chinese patent medicines from the herbal shops. Many of these supposedly “safe” herbals are contaminated with prescription drugs and worse — toxic metals like Mercury and Arsenic.
Read this good article that mentions many popular medicines and what problems were found: Patent Medicines and Contamination .
Now with that out of the way, I did find a cool one that is on the good list. It’s a “kidney nourishing” tonic made from gecko and other nitric oxide potentiating herbs. It’s called Gejie Bu Shing Wan and looks like this:
Here’s what a gecko looks like if you got it in your herbal prescription from an herbalist:
Typically you would boil one of these with your other tonic herbs in a tea or a soup. Bon Appetit!
Pumpkin Seed Powder — What?
I found an interesting tonic in a local supermarket. It was a bag of pumpkin seed powder. Since it was only about $1.20, I decided to throw it in the basket and try it out. To my surprise, it tasted delicious. It’s a taste that’s hard to describe, obviously nutty like peanut butter, but oddly foreign. It’s dark green in color too. Weird but good.
I always knew pumpkin seeds had the reputation for boosting testosterone and libido (commonly thought to be because of it’s high zinc content) but I was surprised to find that there is much research regarding pumpkin seeds and urinary incontinence and for a healthy prostrate. The bladder control is due to pumpkin seed being able to boost nitric oxide levels. Read this:
rabbits and pumpkin seeds.
Try this stuff out and let me know what you think!