Traditional medicines now available as temperatures drop
With Sunday marking the beginning of this year's 17th solar term, hanlu, or cold dew, which in the Chinese traditional calendar indicates falling temperatures, the annual gaofang season opened in Shanghai.
Local traditional Chinese medicine hospitals and pharmacies have started to unveil their gaofang clinics.
Shanghai Yueyang Hospital of Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine opened its TCM healthcare festival on Sunday, promoting TCM-based theories and methods of health enhancement and disease prevention as well as its gaofang service.
Doctors from Shanghai Yueyang Hospital of Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine explain how to identify herbal materials for local residents at a TCM healthcare festival on Sunday.
Gaofang is a seasonal herbal paste tonic made of condensed liquid herbal medicine chock full of ingredients like honey and brown sugar. Each paste is tailor-made according to a doctor's prescription.
Under TCM concepts, taking gaofang can enhance health, especially for elderly people and those with weak immunity and chronic diseases.
Yueyang, which has more than 40 years' experience in gaofang prescription and production, is the only facility in the city adhering to traditional means. It has a special plant with 100 bronze vessels to make the tonic.
For the convenience of office workers, the hospital has adopted modern small packages, which consists of daily dosage in each bag, rather than the traditional package of a big jar.
TCM doctors offered free consultation to residents at the festival.
Dr Zhou Yang, from Yueyang's disease prevention center, said that gaofang is a traditional Chinese medicine which can help treatment and rehabilitation. Compared with ordinary herbal soups, gaofang can have better effects.
"Gaofang is suitable for people with chronic diseases, patients under rehabilitation, those with weak immunity, people who are likely to feel fatigue or are under strong work pressure, the elderly and people with frequent respiratory infection," Zhou said.
"However, not everyone can take gaofang. People with certain chronic disease outburst and those with poor gastric function should have the disease treated or have the gastric function restored first. People should visit a TCM doctor to have an evaluation and get a tailor-made gaofang prescription instead of buying or taking gaofang at random."
