Why do wild medicinal herbs have better medicinal efficacy than cultivated ones?
Traditional Chinese medicine was born in primitive society. Li Shizhen bravely tasted hundreds of herbs and organized the medicinal materials of nature into a book. Traditional Chinese medicine has never been interrupted, and traditional Chinese medicine and Chinese medicinal materials are also treasures of China, but people often cannot find authentic medicinal materials to make medicine, and then rashly claim that Chinese medicine is ineffective. Open a certain online shopping platform, and you will find that in a certain prefecture in southern China, the entire place is doing medicinal material business, with prices as low as 9.9 yuan and still free shipping. If it were wild, the cost probably would not even be enough, but it still sells especially well. They use large-scale cultivation and large-scale harvesting. Then that is not surprising. Today we are going to discuss the comparison of medicinal efficacy between wild and cultivated herbs, so let us get to the point.
1: Four natures and five flavors
Chinese medicinal materials pay attention to the four natures and five flavors. The four natures refer to drugs having four different medicinal properties: cold, hot, warm, and cool, also called the four properties; the five flavors refer to drugs having five different medicinal tastes: sour, bitter, sweet, pungent, and salty. Each Chinese medicine has different four natures and five flavors, and therefore has different therapeutic effects. The theory of the four natures and five flavors was first recorded in Shennong Bencao Jing, whose preface says: "Drugs have the five flavors of sour, salty, sweet, bitter, and pungent, and also have the four natures of cold, hot, warm, and cool." In the book, the four natures are combined with the five flavors to jointly indicate the medicinal property characteristics of each drug, creating the herbal writing format of first indicating medicinal properties and then discussing drug efficacy and indicated syndromes, and laying the foundation for using the theory of the four natures and five flavors to guide clinical medication. Where do these four natures and five flavors come from? The environment in which they grow played a decisive role. The environment of wild Chinese medicinal materials is the result of natural selection, belonging to the optimal solution in biology. During the growth process, they fully absorb the "qi" and "flavor" of the natural environment, that is, the energy and information of a specific environment. Cultivated medicinal materials, however, completely lack this environment, so their medicinal efficacy is far behind. Let me give an example close to home: if you use medicinal black-bone chicken as a medicinal guide, but instead use a farmed broiler, setting aside those two fatty lumps on its chest, the hormones remaining in the meat and the white lime powder inhaled every day are enough to completely ruin the prescription. What about the promised flowers and plants, and the little insects and grains and sand particles that baby chickens eat every day? It is not necessarily that the doctor is not skilled; it may also be that one is greedy for cheapness, or assumes that all chickens are the same, and it is ruined by one's own choice. Besides, this is for treating illness, not for eating chicken. If you insist that farmed chicken tastes better than home-raised chicken, then I can only admire you immensely. As for the white-feathered broilers farmed by KFC and McDonald's, go eat your fill.
2: Degeneration of seed sources
Nature is the best teacher. The survival of the fittest will gradually screen out unsuitable and inferior ones, and only in this way can the true nature of medicinal materials be ensured. Wild herbs have relatively stable smell, shape, and medicinal efficacy. Away from nature's natural matching, medicinal properties and smells will gradually shift in an artificial direction, becoming more and more high-yielding. In appearance, each generation becomes more uniform than the last, the texture becomes lighter and lighter, and if nutrients are not used, they will become smaller and smaller, and the smell will become weaker and weaker. As for medicinal efficacy, it is even farther off.
3: Pesticides, chemical fertilizers, hormones, heavy metals
Chinese medicinal materials are originally meant to absorb the essence of the sun and moon, endure wind and sun, and grow slowly over sufficient time. Of course, news reports can be seen every day, so I will not go into it.
By the way, a little advertisement: I am just a farmer, specially looking for wild medicinal materials. If you need any, come find me.