Hardly any energy, little motivation, depressed mood, poor concentration, no joy! - TCM improves mood, concentration and drive and can help you to cope with everyday life again.
– Specialist information www.swissmedicinfo.ch
In the text above, I have simply replaced the name of an authorised medicine with "TCM". The text can be read verbatim on the front page of the Swiss Medical Journal issue 14/15 2023.
What I find interesting about the original text is that the medicine was authorised by Swissmedic without any guaranteed effect, as it only says "may", which is synonymous with "does not necessarily have to".
TCM can, but does not necessarily have to. TCM cannot cure advanced cancer either. But wait a minute: I had a patient aged around 65 with an advanced stage of bronchial carcinoma. The hospital had given up on him, sent him home after a long and exhausting therapy and predicted that he would only have a few weeks to live. He came to me and I gave him a TCM herbal mixture. He took it regularly for around three years. At some point he was over the herbal mixture. The stuff tasted horrible and he stopped taking it. He died after a few months. Miracles do happen. Sometimes.
TCM can do a lot and often amazing things. An accurate diagnosis is the first step. It is the key to successful therapy. Well-trained TCM specialists with sufficient clinical experience are needed. Health insurance companies and the state could save a lot of money if they invested more in the training of competent complementary medicine specialists.
So. I'm enjoying the Easter holidays and went for an early morning walk in the woods. The above topic crossed my mind and I decided to put it down on paper. That's what happened.
Now the forest has a lot to offer: I collect wild garlic, nettles, tree drops (goutweed), lesser celandine, garlic hederich, wild spinach, burnet (Sanguisorba officinalis = Di Yu) and even find a few morels.
Brennnessel
Knoblauchhederich
Scharbockskraut
Phyteuma spicatum (Ährige Teufelskralle, Waldspinat)
Our native spiked devil's claw is not related to the African devil's claw, which is used in some phytotherapeutic rheumatism remedies. The latter is called Harpagophytum procumbens and belongs to a completely different plant family.
Sanguisorba (Di Yu) = grosser Wiesenknopf, Pimpernelle
The first plant to awaken before all the others in spring is this one:
Das ist Aronstab (Arum)
Arum belongs to the araceae family, which also includes the plants Pinellia (Ban Xia), Typhonium (Bai Fu Zi) and Arisaema (Tian Nan Xing) known in TCM, all of which are quite or very poisonous plants if consumed unprocessed.
The root tuber taro (Colocasia esculenta), which is available in Asian shops, also belongs to the araceae. Taro is also poisonous when uncooked. It's amazing that our authorities allow it, but ban ju hua (chrysanthemum flowers)!
When I was an assistant doctor for pneumology in a high-altitude clinic after my state examination, a farmer did not want to take the medication prescribed to him. He swore by his own aronia schnapps. He said it cleared the bronchial tubes better.
If you want to find out how poisonous arum is, chew a few square millimetres of a fresh leaf for a while. It will give you an interesting sensation.
I love arum leaves, get a portion every spring and cook myself a delicious dish:
Bitte nicht nachmachen. Es wäre mir nicht recht, würde jemand deswegen auf dem Notfall landen!
Let's turn to more harmless plants:
In the garden in front of the house, the spring onions that I planted in autumn are ready to be eaten. The lamb's lettuce, which I let flower and go to seed, forms a broad green carpet. The flavour that these little plants develop over the winter is incredible. Sweet lamb's lettuce from the tunnel, as sold in the shops, can never match this flavour. I let last year's palm kale stalk up and am now harvesting the shoots like Chinese broccoli or Cime di Rapa. The leeks have grown as thick as an arm. Chard, peterli, rocket and artichokes have also survived the mild winter and are sprouting again.
Palmkohl im zweiten Jahr
Lauch
Peterli
Rucola
Nüsslisalat
I hack out the goji berry bush. The roots are tough, sprout many metres in all directions and from these sprout new shoots that shoot up directly into other bushes, into gooseberries, into blueberries. An unsightly bush, this goji! And sick too. The leaves, which we cooked like spinach, are infested with an Asian gall mite. And the bush has annoying thorns and the fruit is small. Maybe I've got the wrong variety. Get rid of this stuff! Into the shredder, then at least there will be new compost.
I haven't found any Easter eggs, but for breakfast we sometimes have what the Cantonese call "Tschuck", known as Shi Fan in Mandarin, or congee in English, the traditional bland rice porridge that has been cooked for hours. And because it's Easter at the moment: the "Tschuck" with a thousand yoghurt is less bland, but takes some getting used to for our taste buds. Maybe add a little spring onion, chives and ginger. Thousand-year-old eggs are duck eggs fermented in a special way, salty, gelatinous and somehow slightly spicy - I can't quite describe it. After the tenth attempt, you start to like them - maybe. Preserved in this way, this type of egg can be kept for years.
Nice Easter greetings, also from the garden:
Severin Bühlmann, Easter 2023
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