1/4 teaspoon of this works like ibuprofen (Doctors won't tell you...)

So imagine this, you wake up with that familiar stiffness in your body. Maybe it's your lower back, or maybe it's your neck in the morning, maybe it's your knees when you first stand up. And before you even fully register what you're feeling, your hand is already reaching for the same thing it always reaches for. A couple of ibuprofen, maybe Advil, maybe something a little bit stronger if it's been building for a few days. And within about 30 minutes, you feel that edge come off, the inflammation settles down, and you move on with your day like nothing happened. And for probably millions of people in the world, that's just normal. But what if I told you that for thousands of years before ibuprofen was ever invented, physicians were already using a combination of two natural substances that reduce inflammation, improve circulation, and relieve pain in a surprisingly similar way. And that today, modern research is starting to confirm that these substances act on many of the same inflammatory pathways that drugs like ibuprofen target. And the wild part is that in the right form, you don't need that much. Sometimes as little as a quarter of a teaspoon. What's up, guys? I'm Dr. Alex Hein, a licensed doctor of acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine and author of the health book, Master of the Day. Let's jump in. So one of my Chinese medicine mentors booked a one-way ticket to China like I did when he was in his 20s or teens. And while he was living there in the city, he was actually in a bad car accident which fractured his tailbone. This guy's a foreigner. He didn't know anything about Chinese medicine or anything like that. But because the pain was so severe and his, you know, his coccyx was fractured and he had other issues broken as well, he had actually gone to a Chinese medicine clinic because it was highly referred from somebody. This man actually put a finger up his butt to reset his tailbone and actually he said while it was one of the grossest and most uncomfortable things he's ever done and this is in an era before gloves being used medically, he said that the medicine that was given that he took topically for both that injury as well as a broken foot within a week or two, most of his fractures had healed to the point where he was safely able to walk on them and he was shocked by the level of recovery with no residual issues afterward. You know, this is how he found traditional Chinese medicine because he had a relatively serious car accident but not only did not develop any long-term issues from the bone breaks, his healing and recovery time were dramatically shortened because again where he was in China, they used a soft cast so that they could apply healing litaments on top and even internally for a lot of these breaks. Now that blew his mind because not only was the pain relieved fast from the treatment that he had received but he didn't even believe in this Chinese medicine nonsense but the results were there and unlike many kinds of bone breaks where those issues become chronic and they become rheumatic where people feel that throughout their life, he had nothing long-term. Now we think about pain in modern medicine. Pain like this is usually explained partially as inflammation where certain chemical pathways get activated, prostaglandins increase and tissue becomes irritated and the goal is to block that process so you feel relief and drugs like ibuprofen are very good for that. They inhibit those inflammatory pathways very effectively but in traditional Chinese medicine, we look at this from a slightly different angle where inflammation and pain are often seen as a result of stagnation meaning what's called blood and qi are not moving the way they should. Circulation becomes impaired, tissues don't get properly nourished and over time that lack of movement turns into heat, swelling and pain and there's a great quote and a great simple phrase from Chinese medicine that captures this idea where there is no free flow, there is pain. Where there's free flow, there's no pain. So instead of just asking how do we block inflammation, we ask why things are not moving in the first place especially when it comes to chronic injuries and this is where two of the most famous substances in traditional medicine come in something called the ruxiang and moyao which you might recognize as frankincense and myrrh like from the bible but what's fascinating is that these were not obscure herbs used by a small group of practitioners. These were some of the most prized medicinal substances in the ancient world traded along the silk road, transported across deserts and mountains and reserved in many cases for royalty, warriors and physicians treating serious injuries. So if you go back and you can imagine like an ancient battlefield or even just daily life thousands of years ago where physical labor, injury and trauma were a part of everyday existence physicians needed tools that could reduce pain, reduce swelling and help the tissue recover quickly and ruxiang and moyao became known as one of the most reliable combinations for that exact purpose. So there are even records of these substances being used not only in China but across Persia, Egypt and the Middle East often burned ceremonially but just as often ground into powders, or applied to the body to treat wounds, fractures and sort of that deep fixed pain and in Chinese medicine they were almost always paired together because one moves the blood strongly the other breaks up stasis and alleviates pain but together they create a kind of synergy that physicians came to rely on whenever the pain was stubborn, fixed and especially not relieving on its own. You know now when we look at the modern research we start to understand why this combination was so effective because those compounds found in frankincense particularly boswellic acids have been shown to inhibit certain enzymes which play a key role in the inflammatory cascade. Now there was actually even a randomized double-blind placebo-controlled study the gold standard of medicine where they gave people a single dose of boswellia extract and then measured how much pain they could tolerate and what they found was that within just a few hours the pain threshold and pain tolerance both increased significantly compared to placebo meaning the same stimulus that would feel normally painful just didn't feel as intense anymore. So practically speaking how can you use these right if you're watching this you're in pain this is where it becomes practical you can actually use this in a specific and structured way depending on the form you work with so if you're using the raw herbs a typical clinical range would be somewhere around six to ten grams each of ruxiao and moyao per day usually they're decocted together in water and taken in divided doses so this is how it's done traditionally in a more classical setting and when you're treating more deep or more stubborn pain but for most people today a more accessible option is using powders or granules so in that case a usual range is like one to three grams per herb per dose taken one to two times per day which for many extracts roughly translates to about a quarter to a half teaspoon depending on the concentration and the way you take it actually matters because for pain you generally want it on a relatively empty stomach or between meals so it can circulate more effectively and you'll often notice that when it's the right match the effect isn't just numbing the pain it feels like the area is loosening and circulation is improving the dosing always depends on the individual the condition the quality of the extract and make sure you're working with someone who really understands how to match the formula to the pattern but the point is you don't need massive amounts for a noticeable effect which is part of why this combination has been used consistently for so many centuries now one thing I see over and over again is that chronic pain and chronic stress tend to feed into each other because when your nervous system is constantly activated your muscles stay tight circulation worsens and inflammation increases it basically starts as like an occasional discomfort slowly becomes something that just feels part of your baseline life but the tricky part is that from the outside a lot of these patterns look the same meaning that two people can both have low back pain or joint stiffness but for completely different underlying reasons one might be more inflammation one might be more circulation one might be more nervous system issue so if you don't know which pattern you fall into it's very hard to know what's actually going to help so if that sounds like you I actually put together a free root cause quiz very short right below this video which will help you figure out which pattern your body is leaning toward so you can stop guessing and actually figure out where the pain is coming from you can go to dralexheim.com forward slash quiz or check out the link in the comment pin below now one final thought here on the different kinds of pain one of the most helpful ways to think about this is to separate pain into two broad categories because not all pain is the same even though it feels like it on the surface the first is what we call inflammatory pain where there's swelling and heat and irritation and that's where things like ibuprofen tend to work well because they suppress that inflammatory cascade but the second type which is incredibly common and often overlooked is stagnation-based pain where the issue is not just inflammation but poor circulation the tissue is not receiving good blood flow the area feels tight fixed or achy and in those cases suppressing inflammation on its own doesn't fully solve the problem because the underlying lack of circulation is still there so this is exactly where these herbs like ruxiang and moyao shine because they don't just reduce inflammation they actually help restore blood movement and blood flow in the tissue which is why people describe the sensation as warming up or finally starting to release rather than just going numb now when you zoom out the idea here is not that there's just one natural substance that replaces everything else but that there are tools like ruxiang and moyao that have been used for centuries to help the body resolve inflammation restore circulation and reduce pain in a way that supports the underlying healing process so once you start approaching the body from that perspective you're not just silencing symptoms but actually changing the internal terrain that's when you get more substantial improvements now if you guys want to go deeper into this i put together another video where i actually break down the exact herbal formulas we use for chronic inflammation and stubborn pain so in particular what herbs work the best for stubborn painful joints so check it out right up here