Botanical Name: Aconiti Radix lateralis preparata
Zhi Fu Zi
Category: Warm the Interior and Expel Cold
Taste: Acrid
Temperature: Hot
Channels Entered: Heart, Kidney, Spleen
Dosage: 3-15g
Key Characteristics: Revives devastated yang qi, tonifies the fire at the gate of vitality, guides the actions of other herbs into all 12 channels, expels cold-damp painful obstruction.
Cautions and Contraindications:
- Contraindicated in those with yin deficiency and abundant yang, true heat and false cold.
- Contraindicated during
Actions and Indications:
- Revives the yang and rescues from rebellion: for devastated yang disorders where the yang qi is extremely weak and the cold yin is abundant. Symptoms include diarrhea containing undigested food particles, chills, cold extremities, and a faint or almost imperceptible pulse. This condition often occurs after severs vomiting, diarrhea, or sweating. This herb is critical in those situations since it both assists the Heart yang to unblock the vessels and thereby improves circulation, and tonifies the Kidney yang to augment the fire and avoid loss of primal yang.
- Warms the fire and assists the yang: for any problem associated with weakness or deficiency of the Heart, Spleen, or Kidney yang. This is a widely used herb, especially when the pattern involves interior cold with insufficient yang.
- Disperses cold, warms the channels, and alleviates pain: for wind-cold-damp painful obstruction, especially when cold predominates. Also for cold blocking the organs, channels, sinews, bones, or blood vessels, and for yin flat abscesses.
