Chinese herbal medicine is not the stronger the better
In daily life, more and more people believe that the stronger the decoction of Chinese herbal medicine, the better the effect. This is mainly because those who hold this belief naively think that by prolonging the cooking time of the herbal medicine, the difficult-to-cook effective ingredients in the herbal medicine can be fully extracted and dissolved in the soup.
In fact, the process of cooking Chinese herbal medicine is the continuous release and dissolution of the effective ingredients in the herbal medicine. When the concentration of the effective ingredients in the herbal medicine and the liquid reaches a balance, this process stops. Continuous cooking not only does not continue to dissolve the effective ingredients in the medicine, but also reduces the concentration of the effective ingredients in the liquid due to continuous volatilization, and even damages the effective ingredients in the long-term high temperature, resulting in a decrease in efficacy. In addition, over-concentrated herbal juice will intensify the bitterness, making it difficult for patients to take the medicine, and may cause side effects such as aversion and vomiting after taking the medicine.
The cooking time should be determined according to the nature of the medicine and the disease, the difficulty of the dissolution of the effective ingredients, and the condition of medication. Generally, the first decoction of the medicine takes 20 to 25 minutes, the second decoction takes 15 to 20 minutes, the first decoction of the medicine for relieving exterior symptoms takes 10 to 15 minutes, and the second decoction takes 10 minutes. The first decoction for nourishing the body takes 30 to 40 minutes, the second decoction takes 25 to 30 minutes, and if pre-boiling is required, it should be boiled for 10 to 30 minutes, and the subsequent medicine should be added in the final 5 to 10 minutes.
Cooking Chinese herbal medicine is a practical discipline that requires a lot of experience and skills. It is absolutely not allowed to change the variables of cooking arbitrarily because of one's own assumptions. Because once something is changed, the entire decoction of the herbal medicine will naturally be affected.
