If Chinese herbal medicine is prescribed and formulated by a well trained practitioner, it is very safe and rarely has side effects. Chinese medicine herbal treatment has a very long history of recorded safety. Our oldest herbal text book is ____ years old and we have human evidence about the safety of specific herbs as well as classical formulas over this time. To say that an herbal formula is a “modern formula,” means it might be young or only 200-500 years old. Many of our classical formulas are ——— years old, or ——- generations of safe use. In clinic, this is far better than any modern study could provide. A well trained acupuncturist can use their diagnostic skills to determine which formulas might be safe for one person, but contrindicated for another.

Another modern layer of safety is excellent testing procedures done by the best companies. It is true that many herbs are contaminated and not safe to take long term, but there are several companies, typically geared toward practitioners that do extensive testing to ensure the herbs are free from many contaminates including individual heavy metals, 100 pesticide tested, molds, bacteria, potency level, and microscopic cellular identity test that it is the herb that it is labeled to beta nd many other tests!

In our clinic we primarily use evergreen powder herbs which are among the few safest brands. Owned and run by Dr. John Chen and Chen, a pharmacologsist and acupuncturist, they employ a testing protocol developed by Harvard Doctor, Dr. Eisenberg called “seed to shelf purity". Learn more by visiting their website where they explain their thorough testing protocols.