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Treating Infertility with Herbs – Moshe Heller

And I’m going to be speaking about treating infertility with Chinese herbs, with Moshen herbs with different, we’re gonna talk about one formula and how we can adjust it.

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Disclaimer: The following is an actual transcript. We do our best to make sure the transcript is as accurate as possible, however, it may contain spelling or grammatical errors. Due to the unique language of acupuncture, there will be errors, so we suggest you watch the video while reading the transcript.

Hello. I’d like to first of all thank the American Acupuncture Council for having me today. And I’m going to be speaking about treating infertility with Chinese herbs, with Moshen herbs with different, we’re gonna talk about one formula and how we can adjust it. And and I also wanted to let you know that I have another I will be having another talk about another two formulas, which are very Very applicable to this season, which is spring season.

One is called React and is used for allergies. And the other one is called g shield. And it is used for improving the immune system. So those are very relevant to the spring which is in its might. AC activity right now, and I you might be feeling it a little bit itchy eyes, nose, throat, and all the pollen is everywhere.

So happy spring and let’s start talking about the subject of today. As I mentioned, I am going to be talking about actually one formula, but two different variations of it that supports fertility in both genders. So the first formula, I named it Sprout and it’s the motion herbs formula for supporting uterine fertility.

And the other one is called Seed which is the motion herbs formula that supports sperm fertility. These are, this is going to be what we’re going to be talking about today, but I also wanted to start by talking generally. How do I approach treating fertility in Chinese medicine in general?

The first concept I wanted to discuss is yin and yang. This is something we all know and really is really an important aspect of regulating the body and preparing in, especially in preparation for conception. And of course yin and yang has to be balanced. The reason I wanted to mention it today is because I’ve been noticing in my office in the years that I have been in practice that I need to focus a little more on yin than young when I treat patients with fertility, and I my assumption is that this is due to the fact that.

our lives are in this modern society is very active and fast and moving, and we have too much too much, too fast and not enough downtime and not enough yin in our life. It’s becoming much more young and there’s much more young expectations from us. We need to perform, we need to support, we need to do all the things that kind of weigh on our young, but in order to create more young, we definitely need more yin.

So I find that a lot of times what I see is that there’s I need to focus on creating yin, not only in. Treatment, the treatment itself but also in supporting the patient in the process of getting ready to conceive. That means talking about foods that support in it means talking about activity and rest and so on and so forth.

So one of the basic things that I recommend for women and men who are trying to conceive in the process of getting pregnant One of the main kind of yin foods that I recommend is bone broth, and that’s just an example. So for all my fertility patients, I usually recommend to u to to use bone broth, almost like a supplement.

So they’ll have at least a cup of bone broth every day to support that yin. . And then we also discuss the idea of making sure that sleep and rest is part of the the general lifestyle and that there’s a lot of focus on that. And that leads me to the idea that we really always, or frequently, I find that I really need to work on strengthening the gene.

And what does that mean? In general that we are looking at Jing strengthening as we all know Jing is a really important aspect of. Of fertility especially in the idea of chi. In Chinese medicine we know that Jing is really if Jing is deficient, our ability to conceive or to produce sperm or to produce eggs is reduced.

And A lot of times because nowadays conception comes much later in life than the jing as we age is reduced. And therefore there’s always need a need to support or evaluate how much we need to support Jing in both genders. We will discuss the herbs that really work on strengthening jing, but also, as I said, lifestyle is a huge con aspect of preserving.

even supporting or strengthening the gene. And again, that is looking at diet, looking at activity and rest and and also making sure that you are using some kind of a an exercise that is not only cardiovascular, but also meditative, I would call it like yoga or chigong or anything that the patient feels comfortable with in that aspect.

So when we are supporting the uterine health, of course we are not only looking at Jing and yin and yang, but also at the health of the blood. And the health of the blood is really pretty important as we might assume. In, in, in conception. And a lot of times that is a really important thing to evaluate in a patient, to understand how to treat them.

On top of checking, what’s the. What how, what, how strong is the jing? How strong, how balance is the yin young. We also need to regulate or check the blood health and also the liver. Liver liver. Health, I would say meaning is there a liver cheese stagnation as part of the diagnosis?

Is there or is there a liver blood deficiency as part of the diagnosis? So we need to understand that in order to best support the uterine health of a female patient where When we are supporting the sperm health, we not only need to look at the things that we that I mentioned before, but instead of blood, a lot of times I evaluate the relationship between the heart and the kidney.

as I really think that the concept is that the one the heart fire is in relationship with the kidney Jing to allow for the production of healthy sperm. So I look at the kidney fire or kidney heart balance when I’m evaluating. The sperm health as part of the diagnostic process. So these are all really important things and we as we will talk more specifically as we go through the formulas to understand what kind of herbs you might be thinking of in each of those cases.

So let’s start with the formula sprout. Which is the uterine fertility support and it’s was created based on the Formula One shall down and it’s a one shall down. Is really Important formula. I think for for supporting fertility, it’s, as a base formula for supporting fertility.

The translation of that is rejuvenation, special pill. What it means basically is that this formula is made to. Revive the jing in a sense. So it’s a Jing Tonified formula and when I created it for the use of sprout for female fertility, I added herbs that support chin blood. As I mentioned before it is really important that we look at the blood as well as the function of the kidney.

Balancing kidney ian and young as, and as well as regulating the liver making sure liver blood is really full. And also that liver chi is flowing harmoniously. So this is all taking care all part of the creation of, or the formulation of the, this formula. So I’ve looked at many herbs and how do I Ma adjust the formula to support the natural potential of the body to, and how do I strengthen the kidney energy and support the jing and really regulate and strengthen the liver?

And so I have used different, I added different herbs like Xianchen which. A really important herb, I think in the, in supporting both the spleen energy and the fluids and the yin of the body. So this is American jining, as you may know which really helps to not only nourish chi and young, but also supports kidney.

Yin. Therefore, I think it has an effect on supporting Jing. I also added Zu as a way to consolidate the kidney energy and help with. With holding on to the Jing that has been created as well as to support Liberty Tea flow and also calming the she and spirit. So I also in both Sprout and in seed, I added Herbs outside of our Chinese herb preparations or varieties.

I added in sprout two Ayurvedic herbs. One is called, one is Ashwaganda, which is. Pretty much the Indian Jining or sometimes referred to as the Indian Jining. It is a real balance and it’s like parallel to the the American jining in its ability to. Both give support the young, but also in a calming way and not overstimulating, and also added chat, which is asparagus root for its calming, nourishing, and yin building aspects.

To support the formula’s yin building ability. So if we look at Sprout the on the left, you will see here the main, the herbs that I, that originate from Huang, Shadan. I’ve reduced some of them, eliminated some of them, and and substituted with others. On the right side of the four of the list, as you can see here the interesting thing, one of the main herbs in Huang Shaan is Shaya which is basic chi tonic but also, Generates fluids and really helps support the transformation of fluids and and nourishing the, in nourishing the yin.

. The other herbs that are included is and are the two young produ young strengthening form herbs. . So these young strengthening herbs especially barian, have a very moish nature. Therefore they really support both kidney young, but also kidney jing and and they’re very balanced in that way as well.

We, I also added two herbs two herbs in the formula that is . Both support yin and blood and and Jing also in, for that matter. So these are the herbs that are, or from the original formula, which is Shong, which I mentioned before, wan and Zu. These are all the original formula of but I also added another.

Two herbs that really support the young, I added and wan to enhance the young ability the young strengthening aspect of this formula. But as again, both Tu and are also support the and are not too stimulating in terms of young activity. I added the next group of herbs is SH

and Za. These are all focused on strengthening the Central Chi. Sharon helps in moving the chi in the middle burner, as well as supporting it and is really important. So to, to reduce the. The CLOs of some of the herbs that are in this formula. So it’s there also to support that.

The next set of herbs are UE and UE and which really help in nourishing blood and supporting liver. The liver blood in particular. And then the following set of herbs is

Ma sorry, fu and which help to move liver chi and also calms the. . And then finally we add, I added some herbs that support the Kidney that, sorry, the uterus. These are herbs that are sometimes used for what, what is called concern for miscarriage. So these herbs help to calm and nourish the uterus and prevent prevent any, Danger of miscarriage.

So these are ngk. Then the last two, as I said, were the ashwaganda and Shava, the Ayurvedic herbs. So this creates a very rounded formula. I’ve used, I’ve been using this formula to support my fertility patients for many years before coming out with it. With motion. So I know from my experience that it works well whether in any case, when you are working on a fertility patient, you will also need to address, and you could do this with acupuncture, with some diet, with some lifestyle recommendation or with Or if you are actually, making a specific or making a a formula for your patient, you will definitely need to evaluate the specific constitutional imbalances of each patient to really address the more specific needs of every patient.

So every patient has more needs. So Sprout is a general formula, trying to hit the most common disorders and supporting the most basic needs of anybody going through fertility issues. That could be a support formula for you, but please make sure. Whether with acupuncture or with other techniques that you support the more individual aspects of each patient that you are trying to support their fertility.

When we talk about seed, which is the ba which is the formula that I use to support sperm health. Again here we use the same formula Huang shall done to be our basic general formula. But I’ve modified it again to. Sperm health by addressing a variety of common presentations that happen with males who are, or males who are looking for support for their for her, their sperm quality.

But also I usually would recommend if a woman is coming to get or help with their fertility. I, and I’m not seeing necessarily the. The other part that I recommend that they take seed to support their health qual their sperm quality. So it, what I took in in, in account when I was forming this formula is, Different issues like how to support sperm count, how to support sperm motility, and how to support sperm morphology.

So I included herbs in all for supporting all those aspects as well as different constitutional aspects and the stresses that we encounter in our day-to-day life. To help in calming those to so that we are able to form a better quality sperm. So from a Chinese medicine perspective, we really st focus on strengthening the jing and also regulating the liver chi, as we all know, the liver chi the liver.

Channel really and circles the gen genitalia. And therefore once we move the liver chi, it helps in circulating the chi around the testicles. And that’s really important for a lot of men or people who are trying to enhance their sperm quality. Always address the liver.

Whether it’s, again, with acupuncture and points that really help to promote the circulation in the genitalia area points like liver five, for example. It’s one of my favorite points to help with that and really get chief flowing in that particular. And also I really take a very specific look at this.

What’s the balance between the heart and the kidney? A lot of times what we see, if there’s too much heat in the heart and not enough young in the kidney, that means that maybe we need to regulate or try to balance the two. And I always believe that the. That the sperm quality is much influence, both, both the all three aspects of sperm health is affected by this balance of energy between the heart and the kidney.

So I always, I. Take a really deep look at what that balance is in order to try to harmonize it and make it more harmonized and Therefore I think the herbs or whatever you’re doing might work better too. And our, the body will create better quality sperm. I’ve modified the base format, the Aldan, by also adding some Western an Ayurvedic herbs, including Demi which is a western herb that used for increasing libido.

And as I mentioned Ashwaganda before in the other formula. That has really shown, there’s some actually research, actual research that shows that it increases sperm count. So this is another addition to the formula. So let’s take a look at the the structure of this formula because . One of the things that is helpful, I think that especially if you’re doing herbs, you can use the idea that I used here, but also adjust it.

If you want to create your own formula, you can adjust it to the needs of your specific patient. As you can see, the first herbs that I’ve our first herbs in the list are, her and all are really important herbs for increasing jing and blood and yin. We know is a really important Jing tonic.

That is, that is, I found I thought it was really important to add to this formula. And as we mentioned before, and is part of the are part of the Huang Chan combination. The next herbs. Zu and Tu are all herbs that help to Shia of course, is part of Huang is as I mentioned, it helps to support the kidneys, but also through strengthening the spleen.

And then we have Zu U, which is. As stringent as well. Astu Suzu Shri is actually part of the al down formula to Suzu. Also and you saw that in that I added that to sprout. We as I mentioned before FU and Newgen and. Are both also as stringent herbs that help to consolidate and strengthen the kidneys.

And are really important herbs for regulating the liver and helping bringing down that young. Especially in muan, p, we know helps to bring down the young and prevent any liver, young rising. So it balances the liver chi. And and also Baha, we know helps to with liver blood.

Then we have sh wonk are really important strengthening the chi herbs. And then we have y

Sue Young and are. Really a group of young strengthening gin Jin Tonifying herbs. In this formula. Then I add Chen, which helps to regulate the blood and connect the kidney and the heart and the kidney. So it really is helpful or supports this kind of connection between the kidney and the heart as well.

That strengthens the kidneys and cre and support circulation. And Huang are another two herbs that I added si for its balanced or support of kidney Jing in particular. And Huang Jin is also a fantastic underused, I think herb for supporting kidney gene and in strengthening the blood overall.

That’s the group of herbs, the Chinese herbs included in In seed. And then we have we have three herbs added to that damiana and ashwaganda, which I mentioned before. I also added So Palmetto because of its effect on. Supporting prostate health as well as balancing the body’s I think yin yang balance by making sure that there’s the eliminating the.

Testosterone that might be circulating in our system. Those were the two formulas that I wanted to review. I wanted to, again, really thank the American Acupuncture Council for supporting these webinars. And you can have the website of motion herbs on the, this last slide. Thank you and please visit us at the above website for more information.

Thank you very much.

Using Ma Huang in Formulas

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Why Classic Herbal Formulas?

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Hi. I’m Sharon Weizenbaum and I’m so happy to be there in this first episode of a year long series of short talks. And I want to heartily thank the American Acupuncture Council for hosting me to do this lecture. And let’s go to the slides and I’ll tell you more about myself when we get there.

Okay. So why classic formulas is the title of this lecture. And then we’ll go deeper throughout the whole year. And I personally have a dedication to and fascination with classic formulas, and I hope to inspire practitioners to delve into this more. So why classic formula. So what we’re going to do in this short lecture is first a little bit about me and then answer the question.

What does classical mean in terms of Chinese medicine and what doesn’t it mean? And what’s special about being a classical herbalists. And we’ll look at it as a way of seeing and also the formulas. So first a little bit about me. I live on a farm in Western, Massachusetts with a bunch of horses and dogs and goats and chickens and sheep.

And and I am also the director of the White Pine Institute, which is an educational organization through which I teach the graduate mentorship program a two year herbal training program that has a focus on classical herbal medicine. And I’m also the founder of, and on the advisory board of an organization called the White Pine Circle, which is an educational, a membership organization that develops a lot of community around Chinese medicine, east Asian medicine.

So I’ve been practicing for about 40 years now. I was in my early twenties when I graduated from acupuncture school, which was the New England School of Acupuncture in Massachusetts, long time ago. Okay. And here’s just a, some of my. Influences. And I lived in mainland China for a little while and studied with Joe show me and her main disciple of Dr.

And then these other doctors. All classic formula doctors, there’s a puncture line and all of these I’ve invited to teach here at the white pine Institute. In fact Dr. Foo young laying there with a couple of our dogs is in front of our clinic and Institute. , Dr. Hong Kong has come so.

Study with him. And I’m below some of my other deep influences. Andy Ellis, Eric brand, your onside men. So that’s a little bit of background about my training, my teachers it’s very broad. Okay, so this idea of the classics, I’m going to look at this character DJing a little bit, and that’s the character for.

The word classical. And so let’s look at this character and get an idea of what does classical. Actually mean, what does this character Jim mean? We know there’s the nature being the Nanjing, the eating the Shannon Bonzo soldiering, and it’s all this character that we translate usually as classical.

So this character is made up of the silk radicle and the silk radicle has to do with. Threads. And we have here, these silkworms that are exuding these threads. And so here are some characters below that all have to do with thread, like things. So whenever you see the silk radical, which is in the character DJing, it has to do with lines and threads of things.

And just to mention that the character Jane is also the character for. Channel like in the channels, in our bodies, the meridians. And so these, lines, these threads like patternings. So this character has the silk radicle in it. And the other part of the character is this character Jean and. Jim, he refers to the water rivers that flow beneath the earth.

It is the water that flows in the dark underworld. So that’s a quote from the show in Janesville, which is a hun dynasty dictionary. So you have this idea of these threads that are flowing underground, like the meridians of our body, that that are invisible to us. And yet they also give rise to the life that is visible, so we can think of the channels as under neath the skin, but also invisible.

But the channel, the health of the channels has everything to do. What goes on the surface of the body that we can see, we’ll bring this back to these classical texts here. This gene also has to do with the longitudal longitudinal, which is these vertical lines on the planet. So we have some sense of these lines being vertical.

So we have, the human body and the channels run off. Exclusively vertically, not totally because we have the channel of the diversity, but so we have some sense of this idea of vertical. Also the character DJing, it refers to the warp of a weaving. We want to understand that the war of the weaving is these lines that are there.

That then when we go back and forth, the weft, that’s where again, the visible is and the warp ends up being invisible. So we could say the name aging is this DJing, this war. This invisible, these invisible lines that these, this gene, this classic is connected to this tapestry of Chinese medicine that we understand today.

There’s so much that comes out of the classics and the classics are this underlying wisdom. That perhaps was even received vertically from heaven and this underlying visit, intelligence that is, that informs everything we know about Chinese medicine, so we talk about all kinds of acupuncture techniques and things like that, but it all goes back to the classics.

So everything that I’ve studied, it was connected to the classics, everything we’ve, all studies is connected to the closet. Some way. So there this uniting thread, so we could say that this character Jane is an information pathway that’s coming vertically back and forth from, and back to heaven.

It’s invisible, but it’s the foundation for all that’s visible. So I think that’s very beautiful and here are some other. Uses of the word, like the nature thing, the Tanya eating the, my DJing, the pulse classic, and some other meanings of words that include the character. Jane. We even have the six confirmations, the Leo Jean, the warp of a weaving and.

So I’m going to go on. We don’t have a lot of time, so I’m going to just run through. So here’s some of these classics, what I consider classics. So the is the classic that tells us all about the individual herbs, the mythical Tanya. Is about the formulas potentially that’s booked that doesn’t exist.

So we don’t really know, but it’s the decoction classic, the emerging and the nation are talking about the principles, underlying the message. The principles that underlie the method of acupuncture and the method of acupuncture is expressed in the Nanjing. The method relating to herbs is in the Shanghai sobbing.

And so the being one of course is made up of the and the . And these are all from. Around the Han dynasty or earlier, all of these books are, 1800 years old or more. These, I consider classical texts. And so in general, when we’re talking about classics, we’re talking about things that came from about 2000 years ago as the foundation for what doing.

What is not classical are things that came much later. And, I know when I went to school that the idea of classics, it was very vague. And so you could consider anyone else. School of the spleen and stomach that’s classical, but actually that was so much later the, when being texts weren’t until the 15 hundreds, John Janua is modern compared to the classics and so all of that.

Things came much later and they’re all built off of the classics and all of these texts when being texts that are written by a variety of people judging you age, you done, she leaned on you and they all they all knew the classics very well and they extrapolated from them and even things, that.

That we think of as like using the master a couple points for the teaching, the extraordinary channels of the eight vessels. Even those are, the master couple points weren’t associated with the Bama until about the 15 hundreds, so a lot of these things are talked about as classical and it’s important, I think to recognize.

That a lot of these are not classical, so for me, I don’t consider the wending texts as classical texts. They’re rooted in the classical texts, but they really were not written about until much, much later. So what is it about the classics that I love so much? For me the nature itself, wasn’t very accessible until I started to realize that it’s about being right with sick with time, that the whole idea of the honky nature.

The whole book is telling us how to be right with time, and there’s getting up in the morning and going to sleep, following the movement of the road, the apparent movement of the sun around the earth know this, that it’s talking about, these various expressions of time in relation to space and that health is being right with that.

And what happens when you’re not right with it? You know what happens if. The sun comes up it’s seven in the morning, but I wake up at three o’clock. In other words, my body is going too fast for time, or, I am meant to poop every day, but it takes me three days to book like my body’s going too slow for time.

So health is always seen as what is our relationship to these rhythms in time, everything from the pulse to the breath, to the digestion to waking and sleeping are all. About being right with time. Illness is about not being right with time. So this is a view of the body and unhealth of illness and also of what to do about illness.

And so when you start looking through things from the classical perspective, this is what I really love so much is looking at my patients, looking at the world through this perspective of being right with time. And Here’s a nice picture of this like rotation of union, which is about all of the ways that time is moving inside of our bodies.

And we have this relationship with nature and that health is about being right with those rhythms and that our healing gestures are about helping people align with the natural world around them. If you ha, if you start with this perspective, then you look at the Hong Dean aging, which is our foundational, theoretical texts, all kinds of things.

Start to make sense about that text. What it’s actually talking about. That sounds jibberish, if you don’t have this perspective. So once you have this perspective, it starts to be like, wow, what they’re talking about is so profound. And so time is something we attuned to and aligned with.

It’s always cycling and managing everything. How do we attune to it first by orienting ourselves with time and space within the center of our own bodies, our own beings, all we then can we feel this great turning, how it’s working in our bodies and we can start to see it in other people. This is the perspective that working from the class.

Offers us for me. And here’s a picture of this is the yellow emperor in the middle, and you can see that the yellow emperor is facing south as cheapo, instructs us. He says the siege faces south. And what that means is that if you want to be a C. You should pay self and once you face self, you can see here’s.

How long do you facing south? And that means he’s facing the red Phoenix here. And look at what’s on Hong D’s right? Is the white time. And so if you’re facing south, you might notice that the white tiger is going to be the west direction. And the green dragon is going to be in the Eastern direction. And what is going to be behind you is the north, which is the black turtle.

Now you might notice. These white tiger and green dragon are the names of herbal formulas. And so if you take this perspective and start reading the Shanghai lawn through this perspective, you start seeing that these formulas are designed to establish right relationship with the directions, so I’ll give you an example.

We have this blue, green dragon decoction, shouting long term. And what is the direction of the east? The direction of the east is too. It’s Ty young, the great young it’s supposed to bring the young up and out. So what if you don’t have a good relationship with the Eastern direction? You’re not going to go up and out and bring all this warmth up and out in your mind.

So your relationship would be Eastern direction is your body is actually going to slow. And what do you get? You get cold because that young isn’t rising in you. So what do you do about it? You bring in the punch in heart. Ingredients of the minor blue-green dragon decoction and that pungent warmth. It’s not just that it expels cold from your body, which it does, but it also reestablishes your right relationship with the movement of the east.

So that’s just an example then you can, for me, when I discovered this cyclical relationship, With the Shanghai online, it was like a domino effect. Like all of the ideas about the confirmation started to fall into place like boom. Now I understand what these formulas are doing.

I want to really offer this beautiful perspective and that when we start seeing in this way, we’re using formulas to reestablish the person’s right relationship with nature. So this is the world view of the classics. Later texts do not have this worldview very much at all. What happened was we started to be very separate from the university.

We started to have the inside and the outside, like where pathogens are outside of me and they can get in me and I have to get them out of me. That view took much more precedence over time. So from a classical perspective, we don’t exactly get rid of pathogens. It’s our body’s job to get rid of pathogens and what we do with.

Herbs and the classical formulas express this beautifully is we re-establish the person’s body function. So when I give shouting tongue I’m reestablishing a function, and the result of that is that the cold pathogen is resolved. So from a classical perspective, we’re never going around and trying to.

Get rid of, or kill any pathogens. We’re reestablishing the body’s function to do that for itself. And it’s very powerful. So another aspect, I’m not sure where we are in time. I think we’re just coming towards the end and I’m open to any questions, but the other reason for why classical formulas, I hope I’ve inspired you a little bit with my enthusiasm for it.

But another Another reason for it is that all of the formulas, the architecture of the formulas are designed to reestablish this body function. And there they work in a sort of lock and key kind of way. So what you find when you start looking at the body through this perspective and seeing the formulas is when you get it right.

When you see it correctly and you reestablish the function with the formula, that all kinds of things start to resolve automatically, and I’m going to stop my sharing here. And so rather than just going into build G or. Move cheesy or supplement the kidney. Your. Going a step deeper into this invisible realm and reestablishing the function so that those organs started functioning well on their own.

So there’s often a rather miraculous untiring or resolving of issues beyond just going directly for the organ or directly going through. What I hope to do in this series is go into some of these formulas and how they work. And and each time discussing this particular worldview and how the formulas fit in with that.

And this is also, I want to mention the White Pine Circle or membership organization, because there are many practitioners there that are teaching. Once you’re a member, you so many wonderful. Little resources and workshops that also elaborate on some of these ideas. So I want to invite you guys to check that out.

All so that’s it for my talk. And if there’s anybody who would like to ask a question, I’m really happy to answer.

Okay. I don’t see any questions, but I will be back in a month and we’ll probably be looking at that one of my favorite formulas, which is great. Your tongue in that. Okay, thank you.