Bu Nao Wan and Jian Nao Wan (veg) are similar formulas designed to sharpen focus, calm the mind, and improve memory, and have a long history of use among adults and teenagers in China—they are especially popular among students preparing for exams, not just those with ADHD.

A number of studies over the decades on humans and animal models have demonstrated that these two formulas or their active herbal ingredients had results including: improved concentration with trial participants producing more accurate, higher quality work; improved spatial learning and memory ability; markedly improved completion time and task-focus; improve circulation to the brain; upregulated the cholinergic system and promoted neuronal plasticity; provided a ten-fold amplification of the tranquilizing effect of barbiturates; reduced brain inflammation and upregulated hippocampal neural networks; and significantly restored BCCAO impaired cognitive function.

Please note that these formulas are not stimulants and will not feel the same way as Adderall. They are designed to support better focus and memory, and quiet the mind in a sustainable way. However, many customers do report noticing a difference after only a day or two of using these formulas.

A recent customer posted this review under our latest Instagram post about these formulas: "As someone who’s struggled w/ ADHD/anxiety, this product is amazingly effective at treating my tendency to procrastinate and lose focus. Highly recommend!"

The most commonly asked question we get is if the dosage is a typo. The dosages on the instructions are correct! Traditional Chinese Medicine formulas are made of whole pressed herbs and thus may have significantly higher dosages than synthetic pharmaceuticals. Luckily, these pills (known as “tea pills”) are extremely small, and multiple tea pills can be swallowed at one time with water. Please follow the suggested dosage on the package for the best effect.

The Eastern Philosophy began as a passion project on Instagram providing rigorously researched long-form write-ups on Traditional Chinese Medicine, with a goal of providing high-quality clinical studies as well as historical primary sources to explain Chinese medicine theory and remedies.

We are an Asian-owned small business that so far has never spent any money on advertising or PR; instead, we dedicate all of our resources into providing meticulously researched content, including content researched and written by an award-winning scholar-practitioner of Chinese medicine. You can follow us on Instagram @theeasternphilosophy, or on TikTok @easternphilosophy, where we are currently the largest Chinese herbal medicine-focused account.

“Long COVID” is a troubling development that has emerged amidst the pandemic, with a significant portion of survivors reporting persisting brain fog: symptoms that include poor memory, difficulty concentrating, and fatigue.

While this is a common symptom also seen in Chronic Lyme and Epstein-Barr, modern medical understanding of brain fog is still in its infancy, with no approved treatments and few studies.

Many experts agree, however, that the condition is attributed to inflammation in the brain caused by “persistent immune activation after initial infection subsides,” according to the NIH’s Dr. Avindra Nath. This immune activation may be caused by lingering virus that the immune system cannot clear, as well as virus-triggered autoimmunity and inflammation. The psychological trauma of COVID can also cause neural inflammation.

Is there a Traditional Chinese Medicine explanation and approach in treating chronic viral illness?

During the Ming Dynasty, as a pandemic ravaged China, the physician Wu Youke (1582–1652) proposed a pathomechanism and treatment for “persistent immune activation,” almost two centuries before the Western world discovered "agents that cause infectious disease.”

Frustrated by the lack of medical knowledge at the time, Wu Youke theorized that “pathogenic qi” lodges in membranes in the body that protect them from immunity, causing headache and exhaustion. His findings accord with the modern discovery that pathogens can form biofilms to resist immunity and pharmaceuticals.

Wu created an herbal formula designed to attack pathogenic qi, and new research has shown that several ingredients he used can break down biofilms, clear inflammation and lingering virus, and regulate gut flora imbalance, all which mitigate neuroinflammation (more detail on this in our upcoming newsletter).

Brain fog can be a crippling symptom, but with over 2,000 years of accumulated experience in treating pandemic disease, and time-tested solutions to improve memory and support brain function, Chinese herbal medicine and acupuncture provide invaluable tools for treating the symptoms that modern medicine has yet to provide answers for.

The traditional Chinese medical practice of gua sha has become trendy in the West, where many claim that it can smooth face wrinkles, decrease puffiness, or reduce fat. In reality, this cosmetic application is a very new phenomenon that bears almost no resemblance to the powerful healing modality that folk doctors and physicians have used in China for 2500 years. In this multi-post series, we examine the history of gua sha in ancient & modern Chinese medicine, and scientific research into its healing mechanism.

The first written record of gua sha comes from the ~400 BC medical manuscript, Prescriptions for 52 Diseases. In an entry for pediatric febrile seizures, the author recommends scraping over the convulsed muscles until “red marks like fly’s wings” appear.” This is a distinct feature of gua sha notably missing from its cosmetic use, namely that scraping should produce petechiae from extravasated blood cells, resulting in red dots on the skin. Extravasation was seen to be key to gua sha’s healing mechanism, allowing for the release of “pathogens with the blood.

A folk practice throughout antiquity, gua sha gained widespread acceptance as a legitimate healing method in the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1912) Dynasties, with records showing it was successfully applied to a disease involving fever and severe abdominal pain, attributed to exposure to “dung heap pestilence” or sha (痧)—likely a bacterial or viral infection.

In the 1960s, the Chinese government conducted a large-scale clinical survey of gua sha led by Dr. Jiang Jing-Bo. Through the publication of Gua Sha Treatment Methodology, Jiang expanded the use of gua sha to 400+ medical conditions, from hypertension to colds. Gua sha remains an extremely common healing modality in China and the Chinese diaspora applied to the neck and back for the treatment of colds, neck tension, heat stroke, and more.

Jiang and other modern scholars also defined advanced parameters for gua sha, in which petechiae color and distribution can be used as a diagnostic tool for the health and condition of the body.

Researchers have begun investigating gua sha’s mechanism of action, with recent studies demonstrating that the traditional Chinese medical practice resulting in red petechiae upregulates the immune system, in particular heme oxygenase-1, a molecule with strong anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidant action.

As extravasated blood cells from the gua sha process are reabsorbed into the circulatory system, they stimulate the release of HO-1, bilirubin and biliverdin, producing an anti-inflammatory response. This helps explain gua sha’s use in treating allergies, asthma, IBS, and colds.

Gua sha also manually stimulates surface lymph and microvascular circulation. A 2019 animal study found that gua sha can effectively stimulate the absorption of interstitial fluid into the lymph and capillary beds, notably improving local circulation. This helps explain why gua sha has also been found to help mitigate painful breast engorgement in new nursing mothers, and partially explains how cosmetic application to the face may assist in relieving puffiness (although this should not be considered gua sha in its intended medical form).

Modern scholars, including Dr. Jiang Jing-Bo—who led the large-scale clinical survey of gua sha—defined advanced parameters for gua sha to serve as a diagnostic tool:

In healthy individuals: sha are very light red, sparse and evenly distributed

Crimson red and densely distributed sha: indicates there is too much “heat,” pointing to an inflammatory state

Darker red or purple sha: indicates cold or blood stagnation—signs of poor circulation

Faint light red sha, scraping triggers pain & soreness: indicates patient may be “deficient”; often occurs in women during menstruation

Further, because acupuncture points down the spine correspond to specific internal organs, denser distributions of sha in particular areas can indicate problems with specific organs, i.e., sha clustered from the 1-6th vertebrae can be a sign of problems with the lung and heart. As a result, gua sha is also used as a means of diagnosing illnesses before they become more serious.

Do these findings change your perception of gua sha?

Banlangen is the dry root of the plant Isatis indigotica, with a clinical medical history spanning thousands of years in China.

First documented as an herbal medicine in The Divine Husbandman's Herbal Foundation Canon, a well-known medical text from the Han Dynasty (200 AD), it’s since been highlighted as a classic anti-viral and anti-influenza agent in China’s official Pharmacopoeia. It’s also one of the most clinically studied herbs in TCM, with anti-viral and anti-inflammatory properties confirmed both in vivo and in vitro.

Most often sold in packets of granules that dissolve in water to make a tea, Banlangen has experienced a huge surge in popularity during SARS and now COVID, with sales in China rising 3,130% in one day after a research team found that Banlangen granules were effective against COVID in a series of in vitro (test tube) studies.

While further in vivo studies would be helpful to demonstrate efficacy against COVID, we are unlikely to see large placebo-controlled human trials for banlangen, unless a “big pharma” company decides to synthesize the herb and foot the multi-million dollar costs such a study would entail.

However, we can look to Banlangen’s performance against other viruses as an indication of its potential to prevent or help in the treatment of COVID. While people often think of herbal medicine as being less effective than synthetic medicine, in one remarkable study, researchers found that natural compounds and extracts from Banlangen have better therapeutic action against influenza virus (FM1) than the commercial synthetic antiviral drug ribavirin.

Moreover, compared with ribavirin, natural Banlangen compounds or extracts have significantly higher prophylactic (preventative) activity against influenza virus (FM1).

Banlangen extracts were observed to exert their anti-influenza activity by inhibiting virus multiplication and blocking virus attachment. In vivo experiments from another study also revealed a Banlangen extract to significantly inhibit pneumonia and virus proliferation in lung tissue.

What has your experience been with Banlangen for colds or COVID?