Building a Pharmacy

I was taught by real chinese herbalists. We learned to write out traditional formulas in Pinyin with the gram dosage for each ingredient. After diagnosing a patient, we would design an individualized formula, measuring out each root, leaf or flower, to essentially give them a strong tea to go home and brew up and drink over several days.

Most Chinese formulas involve several individual herbs. We rarely use herbs alone. A typical formula can have 6-10 different herbs in it. Because of this, a typical chinese herbal pharmacy can have over 150 different single herbs so that you have every herb on hand you might need for all the various formulas. This is the pharmacy I started 22 years ago and it is still the pharmacy I am growing today.

Contemporary Chinese herbal medicine has moved away from using raw single herbs and instead herbalists often stock extract powders, which are a dehydrated extract of a single herb or a combination. These powders are then mixed and matched into individualized formulas and the patient takes a small amount dissolved in water which essentially makes a tea without the hassle of brewing it up and storing it for several days. Some patients resist the tea or powdered extract methods because they involve drinking about 1/4 - 1/3 cup of tea 3-4x/day. If the formula doesn’t take good it can hard to get patients to drink it.

I’ve always preferred alcohol extracts, or tinctures, as a way to take herbal medicine. It is easy to carry with you, it requires no water or cup, and you can take it anywhere, anytime. I had the idea that I could tincture up traditional chinese formulas with all the raw herbs I had, and I could make a large tincture pharmacy where I could mix and match and design individualized formulas for my patients.

Over the past 5 years that is exactly what I have done. I now carry over 120 individual raw herbs, over 50 different extract powder single herbs and almost 100 different formulas in tincture form. My goal is to have a large, varied pharmacy with herbal medicine available in several forms to give the patient several options in hopes for increased compliance and the best clinical results. It also allows me to highly individualize my prescriptions for my patients. I also carry a varied selection of formulas in capsules for those who prefer that method.