Some people add sugar to their herbal decoctions because they find the taste too bitter to swallow. However, Chinese medicine experts say that not all herbal medicines are suitable for adding sugar, as adding sugar reduces the effectiveness of the decoctions while also reducing the bitter taste.
According to experts, Chinese herbal medicines have four different properties: cold, hot, warm, and cool, as well as five different tastes: spicy, sweet, sour, bitter, and salty. Different tastes of herbal medicines have different medicinal effects. Adding sugar to some bitter-tasting herbal decoctions can change the medicinal properties and affect the therapeutic effects. For example, some bitter-tasting herbal medicines can stimulate the peripheral nerves and reflexively increase the secretion of saliva and gastric juice to aid digestion and promote appetite. If a lot of sugar is added, completely masking the bitter taste, the above-mentioned stomach-strengthening effect will be lost. In addition, the chemical composition of Chinese herbal medicines is generally complex, and sugar, especially brown sugar, contains a large amount of iron and calcium elements. Once combined with proteins and tannins in herbal medicines, chemical reactions occur, causing some active ingredients in the herbal decoctions to solidify and denature, thus affecting the effectiveness of the medicine to some extent.
Therefore, whether to add sugar to herbal decoctions should be consulted with a Chinese medicine practitioner before taking the medicine.
