lets talk herbs

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prairiemantis

prairiemantis

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Really?? Why?? It's not like growing peyote for native American religious ceremonies & such...
well honestly, it could be seen like that , american ginsengis protected due to over harvesting and the amazing prices of said root. basically if people were allowed to dig it up when ever- wherever it would become very much endangered. unlike other plants mentioned, ginseng has excepted medical or health benefits. though it takes a long time to grow(ginseng that is) it doesn't take 10+ years and a very small native habitat,like other medicines, to do so.
legalities of plants...id say should really sit in the realm of common sense, people being people dont practice common sense on a large scale so laws are then made.
good people dont need laws and bad people dont listen to laws. this crazy little circle has rounded most all aspects of life. organic medicine included,
 
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Xue Sheng

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prairiemantis

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Why? Well the usual $$$$

NYSDEC



More Here


this is good info, thank you for that link.

"Ginseng requires soil that is generally moist and loamy (loose, fertile soil consisting of clay, sand and silt), without an overly heavy concentration of clay. If you are serious about the success of your ginseng crop, make sure you test the soil in the area where you are planting. It should be on the acidic side (pH around 4.5 to 5.5), and the calcium levels should be around 4000 pounds per acre. To encourage larger roots (the medicinal part of the plant), phosphorus should be present in the soil in concentrations of at least 95 pounds per acre. You can use commercial fertilizers to adjust the composition of your soil."

except id leave out any commercial fertilizers.
 

JadecloudAlchemist

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As Xue has pointed out Ginseng cost money.

http://www.catskillginseng.com/

This site has some serious Ginseng for sale. I think there is alot of scams on Ginseng out there. If anyone remembers the famous Jackie Chan movie Drunken master2 where Jackie gives another herb to someone instead of the actual praised Ginseng.

Praire I have never grown Ginseng I think it is a painful and tedious task that you really have to show interest in. Maybe for me I can be interested in that in another 20-30 years lol.
 

clfsean

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Wow... that is ridiculous...

Apparently it doesn't grow that well down here anyway, so oh well, but dang... all of that over a medicinal non-hallucinogenic one at that...
 

Xue Sheng

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Wow... that is ridiculous...

Apparently it doesn't grow that well down here anyway, so oh well, but dang... all of that over a medicinal non-hallucinogenic one at that...

Hey if just anyone could grow it then it would be everywhere and they couldn't justify asking for large piles of money to buy it :D
 

geezer

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ok so dit da jow, and dit da jui a world of mystery.
let us talk about how they are used and how not to use them.

ill start. a lot of dit da jow formulas had cinnabar listed. cinnabar is raw mercury ore. should it be used? or should we look at what we now know of murcury and not include it in the formula. i long for an educated thought on this.

OK to get back on-topic for a moment. How common do you suppose the inclusion of cinnabar is in dit dar jow sold today. I just bought some from a friend's sifu, which he in turn gets from his sifu in San Francisco. Nothing commercial. You bring your own bottle and he sells you about 8 ounces at a time. It smells good and seems to help when I'm working on the dummy. But god knows what's in it. You see my concern.

Now for something totally off-topic. Prariemantis, aren't you the guy in that youtube clip training with a big cluster of heavy chains hanging from the ceiling? If so, does that kind of training (or other exercises that involve arm-conditioning) affect your tats over time? Just curious.
 
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prairiemantis

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It smells good and seems to help when I'm working on the dummy. But god knows what's in it. You see my concern.
If so, does that kind of training (or other exercises that involve arm-conditioning) affect your tats over time? Just curious.

i know with out a doubt in my mind, some of the commercial jow sold does have cinnabar used in it, in fact i know someone who got so annoyed over this , that he threw out like 2 gal. of jow because he couldnt get the ingredient list from the sifu who made the jow, couldnt even get the techer to tell him if cinnabar was used. to me this is not a good teacher/sifu. nothing is so secret that a question like this shouldnt be answered to a satisfactory level. i know that cinnabar was used in some of the jows, when i was first introduced to kung fu, this was the normal, before i investigated it myself. i was given a pamplet on jow making, with a "basic" formula. cinnabar is listed. this tells me that a good % of the people making jows probably should do more homework.
id just flat out ask and see what is said of it.

as for the tattoos. yes and know. pending on colors and locations, but really i don't have much of an issue with it hurting the ink. just let it heal completly before conditioning. i can tell you this. every time i go to get work done on my arms, the artist has to use twice the ink, i do contribute this to conditioning.
 
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JadecloudAlchemist

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Here is Shen Nong Ben Cao Jing This does not list all the herbs and such but it does have Cinnabar in here:
http://www.bluepoppy.com/pdf_book/divinefarmer_fwd.pdf

It is a great read With Bob Flaw I think wrote this.

I am doubtful if a good amount of the Jades and Stone formulas are used in the States or taught for that matter. I think Shen Nong Ben Cao Jing is a reference book now and a more updated book is used. But there are alot of Herbal books both in Chinese and English and they can be expensive.

If I am able to find the complete Shen Nong Ben Cao Jing I will gladly post it here if anyone else finds it please post it as well. There are quite a lot of translations of it so it would be nice to compare.


[FONT=TimesNewRoman,Italic]More on Shen Nong's work by Bob Flaw:[/FONT]

[FONT=TimesNewRoman,Italic]http://books.google.com/books?id=NjC-eTffFeQC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Shen+Nong+Ben+Cao+Jing#PPA9,M1[/FONT]

And
http://books.google.com/books?id=Ht9X7ElgAG8C&pg=PA1&dq=Shen+Nong+Ben+Cao+Jing&lr
This is a $200 book and you can read it online for free it is about 700 pages enjoy
 

geezer

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i know with out a doubt in my mind, some of the commercial jow sold does have cinnabar used in it, in fact i know someone who got so annoyed over this , that he threw out like 2 gal. of jow because he couldnt get the ingredient list from the sifu who made the jow, couldnt even get the techer to tell him if cinnabar was used. to me this is not a good teacher/sifu. nothing is so secret that a question like this shouldnt be answered to a satisfactory level. i know that cinnabar was used in some of the jows, when i was first introduced to kung fu, this was the normal, before i investigated it myself. i was given a pamplet on jow making, with a "basic" formula. cinnabar is listed. this tells me that a good % of the people making jows probably should do more homework.
id just flat out ask and see what is said of it.

I'm going to see if I can find out if the jow I bought has cinnabar in it, but if I can't, I'm not really very keen to just toss it. I mean, I chewed up one (or was it two?) mercury oral thermometers as a kid, played with pure mercury on a couple of occasions and also regularly used mercurechrome on cuts and scrapes too. And I survived ingesting other questionable substances in the late 60's and 70's. Folks will tell you I'm already mad as a hatter (hatters--another group subject to high levels of mercury exposure). How much more harm could a little externally applied jow do now. But I won't buy any more until I can verify that it's cinnabar-free.
 
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prairiemantis

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everything i have found by Bob Flaw and bluepoppy press has proven valuable in martial medicine. just a great series of books. some are out of print, but can be found, good stuff

geezer i would not throw it away either, unless there is reason to believe its no good, and like you said, you've eaten stranger things lol just keep it in mind. there are other common things in jows that are no good. herbs mixed that shouldn't be and things like that. i think the rule of thumb is know the person you buy your jow from, or alternativly make your own, its much cheaper that way anyway. you know the average jow costs near nothing to make, alcohol not included. it is sold with considerable capitalistic mark-up, due to the "secret" formula, but guess what its not a secret. its just involved, which could justify the 20$ i spose.
 
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prairiemantis

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anyone have a thought about buying dit da jow and having it arrive in a plastic bottle. seems to me that this is not good, kinda like using aluminum to make the jow, it may react with the herbs/alcohol used. still you find this everywhere. whats up? is it a cost thing, a shipping thing? i dont get it. why not use glass? or earthware. do we really need jow to feed the petro industry?
 

Tensei85

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anyone have a thought about buying dit da jow and having it arrive in a plastic bottle. seems to me that this is not good, kinda like using aluminum to make the jow, it may react with the herbs/alcohol used. still you find this everywhere. whats up? is it a cost thing, a shipping thing? i dont get it. why not use glass? or earthware. do we really need jow to feed the petro industry?

Yea, I would have to say its more cost effective to buy plastic jow bottles as opposed to glass. Though I always store mine in glass containers, personally don't care for the plastic. But I knew some dit da jow sellers and they payed well under a $1 for each plastic jow verses the glass which was more.

And of course shipping would be much cheaper for plastic verses glass as well.
 

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Have you guys heard of Dragon Juice? Or Dragon Breath, or something like that. It's another liniment in Chinese medicine. I have a friend who is a learned man in Chinese medicines, acupuncture, herbology, etc... He doesnt have the equipment to extract (expell?) the herbs to make dit da jow, and he suggested maybe using the Dragon stuff - If i wanted him to make it. he wasnt trying to steer me away from it, just offered what he could make.

Ever heard of it? sorry I cant remember exactly what he called it now, but it was Dragon <something>. It might have been Flying Dragon? Anyway, since he's a friend of our family, and has PhD's out the wazoo, I trust his stuff. Not sure if it would do the same thing as the dit da jow.

Thanks!
 

Tensei85

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Have you guys heard of Dragon Juice? Or Dragon Breath, or something like that. It's another liniment in Chinese medicine. I have a friend who is a learned man in Chinese medicines, acupuncture, herbology, etc... He doesnt have the equipment to extract (expell?) the herbs to make dit da jow, and he suggested maybe using the Dragon stuff - If i wanted him to make it. he wasnt trying to steer me away from it, just offered what he could make.

Ever heard of it? sorry I cant remember exactly what he called it now, but it was Dragon <something>. It might have been Flying Dragon? Anyway, since he's a friend of our family, and has PhD's out the wazoo, I trust his stuff. Not sure if it would do the same thing as the dit da jow.

Thanks!

Hmm, maybe are you talking about Dragon's Blood??

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon's_blood
 

JadecloudAlchemist

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