Jade Windscreen

We learned this in our first quarter of Chinese medicine school, and if you read through the advertisements and support materials for any of the multitude of herbal products you will see this……

Jade Windscreen is for building the immune systems in those who easily get colds.

I’m one of those people.I’ve easily gotten colds my entire life.I wish it were not so.I remember reading about Jade Windscreen and thinking my troubles were over. But, after taking it for a week or so, I woke one winter night in a panic thinking the house was on fire.It was not, but I had this odd smell of burning paper in my nose. Which followed me around for a few days until I stopped the Jade Windscreen.Let’s look at this from the point of view of constitution. The main herb in Jade Windscreen is Huang Qi. And the body type associated with Huang Qi tends to be a bit on the heavy side, and what in the usual Chinese medicine lingo we would say is damp, with a bit of a fluid metabolism problem. The Bai Zhu in that formulas also is one of the main herbs that Zhang Zhong-Jing used to correct water metabolism problems. The Fang Feng? While it does release the exterior, it also can be a bit drying as it promotes the expulsion of water via the sweat.For a guy like me that tends toward dryness it is little wonder this stuff kindled an internal fire!

Consider that different body types have affinities for different herbs, and need to be regulated in different ways.

Someone who does not tend toward dampness, likely will have trouble with drying formulas like Jade Windscreen. Perhaps you have noticed in your clinical work that some textbook seemingly easy to apply formulas are terrifically ineffective.Huang suggests if you have a Cinnamon Twig person who frequently gets colds in front of you, see how they do on Gui Zhi Tang. Likewise, if they are a Bupleurum type consider Xiao Chai Hu Tang. There may also be opportunities to combine Jade Windscreen with these more constitutional formulas as well. As always, by the presentation, chose the herbs!