1 herb to detox your liver boost energy and clear skin in 7 days

Did you know that there's a single herb that ancient doctors in China prescribed for people who are tired all the time, dealing with stress, and even breaking out with skin problems? In traditional Chinese medicine, it's known as chaihu burum. And today, modern science is proving why it's still one of the best herbs to support your liver, boost energy, and clear your skin, often in as little as 7 days or a week. Now, in this video, you'll learn exactly what this herb does, how it was used in ancient medicine, what modern science says about it, and how you can start using it today. Hey guys, I'm Dr. Alex Hine, board licensed doctor of acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine and author of the health book Master the Day. So, let's jump in. Let's start off with the story of the free and easy wanderer. Over 2,000 years ago, in one of the oldest medical texts in the world, doctors described using this herb whenever the liver became blocked. Now, they noticed something interesting. When the liver was stuck, people didn't just get digestive problems. They also felt irritable, exhausted, and their skin would flare up, too. So, they used something called chaiu or buplurum root to free the liver and get the chi moving again. Now, patients often notice that within a week, their digestion improved, their mood lifted, and their skin looked clear. Now, here's something that most people don't know. The most famous formula with chaiu is called Xiaoa. often translated as free and easy wanderer. But why is there such a corny and poetic name? To answer that, we have to step back over 2,000 years into Dowist philosophy because there was a great sage named Dwangza who wrote a book filled with stories and parables about how to live in harmony with the universe. And in his first chapter of a book, he describes a giant bird called the Pong who soarses effortlessly thousands of miles above the world. Now, the small bird below mocks it, saying, "Why fly so high? Isn't it exhausting?" But Jang's point was that when you follow the Dao, the natural flow of life, movement is sort of effortless, like floating on the wind. And so that's what Xiaoya means. It means basically to wander freely without resistance, without stress, without being bound by frustrations. And that's exactly what happens when we say the liverqi flows smoothly. So the formula called Shyasan was named after this Dowist ideal. You know, it was a poetic way to name the effects of this formula. And it wasn't just medicine. It was a bit like philosophy in a teacup. You know, you take this powder and you too could become a free and easy wanderer, letting stress and frustration roll off your back while energy and joy return. Now, that's why Shyosan, this formula with chaiu as the leading herb has been prescribed for centuries for stress, fatigue, PMS, and even skin problems. It helps you really reconnect with that effortless flow that Dwangza described. Now, when we talk about the effect that chai or buplurum has on the body, the way I describe it to my patients is that chaiu basically treats that pent up feeling after a long workday. You know, when I work a day where I have too many patients in one day, I don't have enough breaks and I have very difficult cases where I have to use my brain constantly. By the end of the day, I get a sort of charged feeling. Now that charged feeling is of course high cortisol, right? Because I'm doing too much and I'm resting too little. Now it feels almost like a pressure in my chest, a tension, agitation, a feeling like I want to yell at people in traffic. Now that is exactly what we call liver cheese stagnation. Now whether or not specifically it relates to an anatomical liver is a whole different conversation. But you have to understand that the symptoms of liver chi stagnation are effectively treated by formulas containing this herb chai. So what we have to do is what Chinese medicine calls unblock the liver, unblock constraint. Now you don't have to use medicines or prescribed medications to do this, right? A good long workout after a stressful day will have the exact same effect. But ancient doctors had to come up with a term to describe this phenomenon. Another thing that's worth noting this historical anecdote back in the day in the west, women would be going to their physicians saying, "I feel this stuffiness in my ribs." They would go in with all these other complaints, headaches, migraines, feeling anxious, they can't sleep, kind of neurotic like symptoms. And doctors would call them hypocchondrics. But the reason they call them hypochondriacs is that the area below the ribs is called the hypocchondrial region below the ribs. And women would often say there's like a stuffy sensation or like a belt over the chest with all these other symptoms. And because western doctors couldn't measure that with any kind of scientific instruments, they called it hypocchondria. As if the women were just making this up. Now they weren't. Hypochondriacts are a real thing. I have patients who have truly minor symptoms. But these women were not making it up. They just couldn't be measured. Now in Chinese medicine, this is a measurable, diagnosible, treatable complex of symptoms called liver chi stagnation. And the reason is that you cannot measure the early ma stages of the stress response. There's no scientific instrumentation that can actually measure that. Which is why for burnout in particular and stress, labs are so often ineffective and not useful. The labs may say you're normal, but you don't feel normal. Trust what you feel. That stuffiness in the ribs is interestingly the Shyang zone, the liver and gallbladder zone in Chinese medicine. Interesting fun fact. Now, this formula called Shayasan is really about becoming this free and easy wanderer, right? Like living with less stress and more flow. And chaoo is just one of the many powerful herbs that can help you get there. That's why I put together a free guide called the best Chinese herbs you should know about. It's a quick download right below this video here and it shows you some of my top picks for energy, your skin, and your overall health. So, you can grab it free right in the description box there below. Now, how does your liver become blocked? Right? What does this really mean scientifically speaking? Let's talk about something called fatty liver. Because from the way that food suddenly becomes body fat or fatty liver, there's a great lesson here on Chinese medicine physiology. When we talk about fatty liver and body fat, you're basically seeing the internal deposition of fat in the way that you see the external deposition of physical body fat. So doctors in my field call fatty liver basically the garbage from the middle burner, your digestive system, being deposited into your organs. So typically with fatty liver, you see just a high calorie diet or of course a high carbohydrate diet as the two main correlations that I see. And almost always the person will notice recent weight gain and recent fat gain alongside the development of fatty liver. But secondarily, you almost always see upper GI issues like acid reflux with the development of fatty liver at the same time. How does something like that become blocked? If you think about overeating, your body has this whole gastric soup that it dumps into the stomach to try to digest a big meal. But if you consistently overeat or you drink tons of soda with high fructose corn syrup or high sugar and high refined foods, your body is digesting way more calories than it possibly can. And what happens is it has to go somewhere. It's organic tissue. It has to go in and out. Like it has to be pushed out or has to push sideways. It has to go somewhere. Overeating creates a localized stagnation which typically affects the gallbladder too. Usually people like this have reflux and gallbladder issues and then fatty liver. Now in terms of lifestyle, what can you actually do about this though? I would say there's two kinds of chi stagnation you should pay attention to. The first kind of chi stagnation is emotional stagnation. Right? This is the result of the stress response. Famous Dr. Lee Shin in our field says that you want to pay attention to the first doctor which is the body. Meaning this is the first doctor that tries to fix the symptoms and fix the imbalance, the high heart rate, the reflux, the nausea, tries to compensate and fix the problems. But if it cannot, that's when an actual doctor has to intervene. This is the early stage canary in the coal mine before an issue starts to become more serious. So what you can do here is physical exercise. Number one preference here. The second kind of stagnation is digestive stagnation. This is the overeating phenomenon. we just talked about where as you overeat, this produces a localized stagnation which produces heat. For us, that heat is acid reflux and typically gallbladder symptoms, pressure, pain, a bitter or sour taste in the mouth, nausea, or gallbladder attacks. These are your early stage canaries in the coalmine. They're very serious that you have to pay attention to. These are signs of stagnation happening in the digestive system that are now producing illness. Now, don't forget guys, if you're curious where a lot of these symptoms are coming from, make sure you download that free guide I just mentioned before because it will really help you sus out what are the best Chinese herbs for your pattern here. Now, if you've gone through all the labs and the imaging, you doctor has told you you're fine, but you don't feel fine or you don't want to take medications or you want to get off medications by finding the actual cause of your problem. I work with a limited number of new patients in my clinic in Los Angeles or virtually via tele medicine and this is helping you figure out the exact root cause and doing a customized East Asian medicine basically herbal prescription to help fix a lot of what's going on. So you can check out more about working with me by going to dr alexhine.com/cl clinic or reading more in the bio of this video here because that will push you towards booking a free visit or a visit with me there. And before you go, there's another video here on an incredible Chinese herb that can help with a lot of these same symptoms, too.