Sanqi (pseudo-ginseng), also named Tianqi, is the most precious natural herb in Chinese medicine. Produced in the southeast of Yunnan Province in Southeast China, it has been used for hundreds of years to improve the overall health of human body by adjusting the internal balance.
Sanqi needs to live in a climate with warm winters and cool summers, little strong sunshine, soft and infiltrative soil, and expedite drainage system as well.
By Chinese standards, Sanqi is not an ancient herb, being first described only about 400 years ago, in Li Shizhen's Compendium of Materia Medica (c. 1590). It is cultivated mainly in southern China, in the provinces of Yunnan, Guangxi, and Guangdong. Sanqi is closely related to Asian ginseng and American ginseng. Like ginseng, it also contains ginsenosides as its major active components. However, unlike ginseng, Sanqi's most well-known traditional use is not as a tonic but as a hemostatic, and is a common ingredient in many hemostatic formulas both for internal and external applications. The most famous formula of this kind is Yunnan Baoyao (Yunnan White Drug-Powder), which uses Sanqi as a major component. Because of its hemostatic function, Sanqi is the most common medicine in armies.
In addition, Sanqi has obvious curative effect on cardiovascular, immunomodulating and anti-inflammatory diseases, and helps normalize blood lipids and blood pressure, etc., as well. It is now also used in tonic formulas. |
