How will a knowledge of the Chinese herbal sciences benefit your clinical practice?

Our website contains many full-length articles on Chinese herbology. The following articles focus on revealing key differences between clinical Chinese herbology and western, or European, styles of herbalism. The last two articles explain worldwide trends in politics, economics, and regulation that every herbalist and aspiring herbalist should consider before making educational and career choices.

• Correct and incorrect ways of choosing herbs. This introduction to Chinese herbology discusses reveals how and how not to use ginseng and rhubarb root, and contrasts a more symptomatic approach in choosing herbs with a method for matching herbs to whole-body patterns of symptoms and signs.
• Have you ever used ginger, cayenne, rhubarb root, ginseng, gingko, ephedra, or daikon radish? Test your knowledge of how to distinguish correct from incorrect uses of these herbs — this is a short multiple choice quiz that illustrates how to use knowledge of simple symptom-sign patterns to understand indications and contraindications in Chinese herbology.
• This interview with the developers of the HerbalThink-TCM software explains some of the challenges of teaching Chinese herbology. Interactive-learning software helps students learn complex pattern-recognition skills that enable them to go far beyond the simplistic "herb X for disease Y" strategy commonly practiced by many herbalists.
• The world is rapidly changing, and the ways herbal health care is practiced is also changing. Before you invest in several years of education, learn about several major trends that we believe will impact the practice of herbalism over the next 10 years: the Internet Revolution, the "College Bubble", Chinese adulteration scandals, regulatory wars.
• The quality of both conventional and alternative modes of health care (including TCM herbology) is under assault by corporate obsession with profit-maximization, resulting in deceptive marketing and corruption of regulatory and educational institutions. Learn how these Orwellian schemes for maximizing health-care industry profits endanger traditional herbal practices. Practice TCM herbology ethically, and protect your patients/clients from disinformation and from manipulative schemes that affect everything from herbal marketing strategies to decisions about educational curriculum at schools of herbal medicine.