This summer I have been riding into the Massachusetts woods in search of the beautiful red, lacquered Ganoderma Tsugae that grows here on eastern hemlock, which is a North American relative of the Chinese medicinal mushroom língzhī 靈芝. Being on horseback on my sturdy and eager horse, Spencer, allows me to cover more ground than I might on foot. Where I live, there are many miles of forest to explore so I set out for the hemlock groves.
One of my students, Polina Shneyderman, recently posted her results using Zhīzǐ Chǐ Tāng as follows:
I wanted to share a case that was helped so much by a tiny formula I learned from Sharon in her GMP. I have a patient who is a textbook Guìzhī Tāng pattern and who has done really well on different modifications of Guìzhī Tāng. She has Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, where her body produces too much collagen, and as a result, she has heart palpitations, agitation, and very loose joints. Guìzhī Tāng has helped with heart palpitations, periods, cold, and body aches. One thing I could not tackle was her waking up before her alarm in the morning, feeling a sense of terror or fear of missing something important.
I learned from Sharon that there is a formula called Zhīzǐ Chǐ Tāng—zhīzǐ and dàndòuchǐ—and that it can help with this kind of terror. I added these two herbs to her formula, and she now sleeps soundly and peacefully until her alarm wakes her up. The bonus—her blood pressure is normal now, too—patients with EDS tend to have dangerously low blood pressure.
Just wanted to share a success story and thank Sharon and other White Pine mentors who help us all be better clinicians.
In the next post, I will discuss this […]
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