Explanation of the Term "Tonics" in the Words of Dr. Leung

Good health is about balance. According to Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), an individual is healthy if their YIN and YANG are in balance. If this balance is disturbed, health problems arise. The YIN/YANG balance can be disrupted by a variety of factors, including, but not limited to, a polluted environment, toxins in our food and drinking water, uncritical use of drugs and alcohol, smoking, work and family stress, excessive consumption of certain types of food, etc. The ideal way to maintain this balance is to eliminate these phenomena, which essentially means quitting smoking, leaving a stressful job, or refraining from excessive drug use. Unfortunately, this is often difficult because some contributing circumstances are beyond our control. The next best way is the solution where we turn to tonics, which the Chinese have used for millennia in an effort to help the body regain and maintain the YIN/YANG balance. Scientific research in recent decades has shown that many tonics exhibit one or more pharmacological or biological activities beneficial to our health; these include anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, immuno-modulating, energizing, liver-protecting, detoxifying, hypotensive, hypoglycemic, anti-atherosclerotic, hypolipidemic, and anti-allergenic effects.

The use of tonics for the purpose of restoring and maintaining good health has been practiced for more than two thousand years. Tonics are one of the three main types of medicaments used in TCM practice:

1. Mild to strong (often toxic) drugs for treating serious, sometimes acute problems (e.g., aconite, cinnabar, scorpion).
2. Weak tonics as support in resolving disturbed YIN/YANG balance and for maintaining good health; these can be weak medicines or common foods (e.g., processed fo-ti, lycium fruit, Job's tears, astragalus, ginseng, schisandra, etc.).
3. Foods with special properties to support maintaining good health, usually consumed when available as part of the diet (e.g., watercress, walnut, tea, chrysanthemum tea, sea cucumber, mung bean, tofu, etc.).

While "tonic" as a term may be new to Western consumers of herbal medicines/supplements, it is not unknown to TCM doctors or the Chinese, as it has existed for more than two millennia. Since the purpose of using tonics is to gently support the restoration of human body balance from a state of disruption, the nature of these tonics is generally mild and non-toxic, which is evidenced by a long history of safe use.

There are several dozen Chinese tonic herbs that Chinese people commonly use as a regular supplement to their diet. In developing PhytoChi®, we selected those that are proven based on their special traditional properties, are easily available, are non-toxic in nature, and for which knowledge gained on the basis of modern science exists. However, selecting the herbs and formulating the recipe alone is not enough to create exceptionally high-quality and beneficial herbal products. A high-quality herbal recipe must be perfectly composed and must contain pure high-quality herbs listed in the recipe. Thus, in formulating the recipe and the actual production of PhytoChi®, we follow these two cardinal rules to achieve a perfect result in manufacturing high-quality herbal products, which I introduced to the world more than 20 years ago, long before other experts in the herbal field even began to realize the importance of using the correct herbs and extracts in herbal recipes for research or production:

1. In formulating the PhytoChi® recipe, the most essential wisdom of TCM was utilized, alongside findings from modern scientific research. The selected tonic herbs are those with the best reputation in TCM in terms of their ability to help normalize the most common issues, such as stiff and painful joints, energy deficiency, allergies, stress, high blood pressure, diabetes, etc., or modern science has shown they exhibit certain beneficial properties (antioxidant, liver protection, immuno-stimulating, anti-allergenic, anti-inflammatory, hypolipemic, hypoglycemic functions, etc.).
2. A recipe that looks good on paper doesn't necessarily mean a high-quality product will be the result. It must truly contain the correct herbs or extracts; otherwise, the resulting product will be of questionable quality. The herbs used in PhytoChi® are generally sourced from proven sources and are appropriately extracted. For example, the processed fo-ti used is truly processed fo-ti and not raw fo-ti. [In a few English books dealing with Chinese herbs, two are distinguished; raw fo-ti is many times more toxic than processed fo-ti and is mainly used as a cleanser, not as a tonic.] We also extract herbs based on how they are traditionally extracted, so it's not just about using any solvent to extract arbitrary or pharmacologically irrelevant components for the purpose of creating so-called standardized extracts. For example, when astragalus is to be used as a tonic, it is traditionally prepared by gentle boiling in water for a long time. We thus extract it with hot/boiling water to produce a total extract that is no different from the one traditionally used; whereas we do not extract it with alcohol or other solvents to selectively remove certain specific chemical components that have nothing to do with the effects of astragalus as a tonic. And if we have scientifically based evidence that a certain modern extraction method can yield more active components, then we adopt this method, especially in cases where the resulting extract also contains all components of the traditional extract. An example is our schisandra extract.

PhytoChi® is an excellent herbal tonic because its production combines traditional wisdom and modern scientifically based technology, which exactly matches our principle of using scientific knowledge without ignoring traditional wisdom.