Although western medicine is widely used now, many people still believe in Chinese medicine. Especially for chronic diseases, many people still choose Chinese medicine for treatment. Many hospitals are providing Chinese medicine decoction services, but in order to improve the efficiency of decoction, many of them only decoct once and bag them to achieve curative effect and waste medicinal materials. It is safe and economical to cook Chinese medicine at home. The following is the knowledge I brought to you about the correct cooking methods of traditional Chinese medicine. Welcome to reading.

Select decocting apparatus

Choose casserole, enamel ware or stainless steel ware to avoid contact with iron, aluminum and harmful plastic products, so as to avoid chemical reaction, affect curative effect or produce side effects.

Soak before decocting

Add water until the water surface is 2 ~ 3 cm higher than the decoction pieces.

Generally, the soaking time of drugs mainly composed of flowers, leaves and stems is generally 20 ~ 30 minutes. Generally, the soaking time of drugs mainly consisting of roots, seeds, rhizomes and fruits is from half an hour to 1 hour. Water is fully immersed in the medicinal materials to facilitate the decoction of effective components.

Traditional Chinese medicine generally does not need to be cleaned before being decocted.

Chinese herbal medicines are mostly biopharmaceuticals, which are generally sold after processing, and generally do not need to be washed before decocting. If you really think the herbs are dirty, you can rinse them quickly with clear water before soaking them. Don't soak it, so as not to lose a lot of effective components easily soluble in water, which will affect the curative effect of traditional Chinese medicine.

Decocting time

Generally, the first frying takes 30 minutes from boiling and the second frying takes 20 minutes from boiling. The decocting time of tonic drugs can be appropriately prolonged.

Decocting times

Generally speaking, a dose of medicine can be decocted three times, at least twice. Because the effective components of the drug will first dissolve in the water that enters the drug tissue and then diffuse into the water outside the drug. When the concentration of the internal and external solutions of medicinal materials reaches equilibrium, the effective components are no longer dissolved due to osmotic pressure balance. At this time, only by filtering out the liquid medicine and decocting it with water can the effective components continue to be dissolved out. Achieve the purpose of making full use of medicinal materials and avoiding waste.

Decocting method

1, first put the medicine in a casserole, add water according to the dosage, and the added water must overflow the traditional Chinese medicine (don't add less, otherwise the traditional Chinese medicine will dry easily). In the process of soaking, it is best to stir it with a stirring rod from time to time, so that the soaking is more uniform. You can soak in cold water in hot days, extend the soaking time in cold days, or use warm water, which is better.

2. Soak the traditional Chinese medicine and put it on the gas stove to start cooking. Use high fire before cooking Chinese medicine, then turn to low fire and cook slowly for about 30 minutes. Look at your watch. If there is still a lot of medicinal soup, you can continue to boil it for a while. Remember never to boil Chinese medicine dry. After boiling, you can put a chopstick on the edge of the casserole to block the residue, and then filter it with a medicinal bath, which is better.

3. You can add warm water when cooking for the second time, and add half as much water as the first time. Boil for about 20 minutes to see if there is much medicine soup after boiling. If it's not much, you can just dump it. If there are many medicinal soups, you can cook them for a while.

4. If you have time, you can cook for the third time, adding half as much water as the second time. But generally speaking, cooking twice is enough. The effect of the third time is very low, but you can soak your feet after boiling the medicine soup.

Be careful when pouring Chinese medicine. It is best to use ceramics or stainless steel for Chinese medicine, so that Chinese medicine will not easily react with the equipment.

Medication method

General drugs can be decocted at the same time, but some drugs need different decocting time because of their different tastes, properties and clinical uses. Some of them need special treatment, and even the performance of the same drug is different from clinical application because of different decocting time. Therefore, decocting medicine should also pay attention to the method of human medicine.

1. Primary decoction: The purpose of primary decoction is to increase the solubility of drugs, reduce the toxicity of drugs and give full play to the curative effect. The following three situations need to be fried first.

(1) Minerals: shellfish and crustacean drugs, because of their hard texture, the effective components are not easy to decoct, so they must be decocted first. Such as gypsum, mirabilite, halloysitum rubrum, magnetite, ochre, pumice, lapis lazuli, native copper, oyster, concha Haliotidis, mother-of-pearl, clam shell, concha arcae, tortoise plastron, turtle shell, pangolin scales, keel, dragon teeth, turtle shell, buffalo horn, etc. You can mash and fry for 30 minutes.

② Toxic drugs: such as aconite, aconite, Phytolacca acinosa, etc. , should be boiled for 0 ~ 2 hours. Decocting first and decocting for a long time can achieve the purpose of reducing toxicity or expelling toxin.

③ Some plant medicines, such as Tianzhu Huang, Cannabis, Dendrobium, can only be effective if they are decocted first.

2. After the decoction: the effective components of drugs such as flowers, leaves and some rhizomes are volatile or destroyed when they are decocted, so those who are not resistant to decoction should be placed after the decoction to reduce the loss of volatile oil and avoid the decomposition and destruction of effective components.

(1) Drugs with fragrant smell and containing a large amount of volatile oil, such as mint, agastaches, costustoot, cardamom, Amomum villosum, Amomum villosum, sandalwood, Dalbergia odorifera, Aquilaria Resinatum, Artemisia annua, asarum, etc. It should be taken in the evening, generally 5- 10 minutes before the decoction of traditional Chinese medicine is decocted.

② Drugs that should not be decocted for a long time, such as Uncaria rhynchophylla, almond, rhubarb and senna, should be decocted later.

3. Treasure tip: wrap some medicine gauze and fry it with other medicines. There are three main kinds of medicines that need to be decocted. First, fine-seed medicines, such as plantain seeds, lepidium seeds and semen Celosiae, are particularly sticky when fried. If you don't fry, it's easy to stick to the pot and the medicine juice is not easy to filter out. Second, some drugs, such as pollen typhae, indigo naturalis, Lygodium japonicum, kitchen soil and so on. It is easy to overflow or precipitate when frying, so it needs to be wrapped and cooked; Third, some fluffy drugs, such as Inula, loquat leaves and so on. It is not easy to filter out after decoction, which will irritate the throat and cause side effects such as cough and vomiting.

4, another fried: some precious Chinese medicines such as ginseng, American ginseng, cordyceps, velvet antler and so on. Should be taken alone or finely ground, otherwise it is easy to cause waste.

5. Melt: Colloidal drugs such as antler glue and donkey-hide gelatin. It should not be decocted with other general drugs. They need to be stewed in a separate container, or boiled with a small amount of water and then mixed with other drugs.

6. Decocting soup instead of water: generally, it is a drug with large volume and large water absorption, such as loofah sponge, kitchen soil, Lysimachia christinae, glutinous rice root, etc. Should be decocted with water first, and the obtained juice should be removed before decocting other drugs.

7. Dissolution: Glauber's salt and sodium sulfate can also be dissolved and washed into decoction for application.

8. Raw juice: such as fresh raw juice, raw lotus root, pear juice, leek juice, ginger juice, cogongrass rhizome juice, bamboo juice, etc. It is not suitable for frying, but it can be cooked and fried.

9. Mixture and oral administration: For some valuable drugs whose active ingredients are insoluble in water or easily decomposed after heating, such as ginseng powder, bezoar powder, antelope powder, notoginseng, musk powder, scorpion powder, cinnamon powder, kansui powder, etc. Mix the medicinal powder with the decocted decoction, and take it after stirring evenly.

Pay attention to the details of decocting traditional Chinese medicine

(1) Don't touch the medicine:

When putting the medicine into the decocting container, many people touch the medicine with their hands before decocting. In fact, this habit will affect the efficacy of medicinal materials. If you have applied hand cream or soap to your hands at this time, it is a kind of pollution to Chinese medicine, which is the most easily overlooked detail. Therefore, it is best not to touch Chinese medicine by hand, but to pour it directly into the container.

(2) Don't use an iron pot:

The container of decoction is also very important, and it is also one of the important factors that seriously affect the curative effect. Casseroles and pottery pots are the best decocting containers; Glass containers and enamel containers (intact) followed; Iron pot, copper pot, aluminum pot and tin pot can't be used to decoct medicine.

This is because the chemical composition of traditional Chinese medicine is very complicated. Because copper, iron, aluminum and other metals have active chemical properties, they are easy to react with the chemical components of traditional Chinese medicine. For example, iron is easy to react with tannic acid to generate iron tannic acid, which will deepen the color of the liquid medicine and make the liquid medicine have a rust smell, which will affect the drug effect; Aluminum reacts with organic acids to generate compounds, which are absorbed by human body and accumulate in tissues such as liver and kidney, causing damage to human body; Bronzes are prone to oxidation when heated, resulting in copper rust that is harmful to human body. All these will affect the quality of decoction and directly affect the clinical efficacy of traditional Chinese medicine decoction.

In addition, some people will use the casserole for cooking at home to decoct the medicine, so be sure to wash it clean, so that there will be no oily flowers on the surface after putting it in clear water. Because oil will affect the curative effect of Chinese medicine.

(3) using distilled water:

Don't think that simply putting water in the medicine jar will make everything all right. In fact, water quality is also the key. Water quality will also have an impact on the efficacy of traditional Chinese medicine. Decocting water, conditional can use distilled water or pure water, also can use cold water. Tap water can be heated to remove chlorine, but it cannot be directly boiled with hot water or boiling water. It can only be used after cooling.

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