Want to tackle a tiger? Eat your gaofang

By Zhang Qian  |   2008-11-4  |     NEWSPAPER EDITION

IF you want to tackle a tiger in the spring, eat your gaofang tonic paste in winter to build up your energy. But it's strong stuff, don't overdo it, Zhang Qian advises.

Many healthy Chinese people regularly dose themselves with traditional medicine throughout the year, and as winter approaches, it is time for reinforcing food therapy to build energy for spring.

Gaofang is a condensed tonic of herbs and animal ingredients in a paste that reinforces energy, both yang and yin, as needed. It is many people's favorite winter tonic, but it's potent and care is advised since many people dose themselves incorrectly.

Traditional Chinese medicine practitioners prescribe it according to one's constitution, and many kinds with different ingredients and properties are commercially available. A prescription can also be compounded by a TCM pharmacy some people do it at home.

Ingredients may include ginseng root, velvet deer antlers, the abdominal side of a tortoise shell, ganoderma lucidum or lingzhi, gelatin made of donkey hide and other plant and animal ingredients.

TCM practitioners urge people not to overdo it, to take the right amount with warm water, and to take it at the proper time of year at the proper time of day.

More is not better. Responsible self-medication, after consulting a practitioner, helps guarantee good energy reinforcement and minimizes or eliminates negative side effects.

Winter, according to TCM, is the season to store energy that can "sprout" in the spring.

A Chinese saying goes, "If you take good reinforcement in winter, you can beat a tiger in the spring." And gaofang is the tonic for tiger fighters.

Taking gaofang properly is as important as a correct prescription to get the benefits, says Dr Zhou Duan, chief of the Internal Medicine Department of Longhua Hospital attached to Shanghai TCM University.