Chinese medicine consider that yang is going to disappear and yin is going to grow up in autumn, so convergence is important at that time in order to avoid energy from going out. The main qi in autumn is dry. What is most important in regimen is to relieve dryness and tonify yin and replenish qi.
When it comes to replenish, panax is undoubtedly the first choice. While panax is a replenish qi drug, which will lead to some bad effect to strong people. It will lead to qi block, chest pain and abdominal distension.
Gen-seng can treat yin deficiency by reinforcing body fluid and put out fire, it is suitable for more people in fact. Gen-seng can tonify without dryness, it can drink as tea, making soup, porridge, chop or it can also put into mouth as slice.
American ginseng has several types. Wild American ginseng has black and dense stripe in it as lines. When split, it is white and yellow, light and loose, smelly and concentrated. Planted American ginseng is light yellow, its skin is smooth, less black but dense, it is strong and heavy, bitter with a little sweet. Suncured white ginseng root has irregular horizontal grain in it, it is white inside, no smelly but bitter and sour or fishy smell when chewing. Its property is cold and cool.
To be aware, there is an inferior American ginseng has been extracted nutrition already. Then dried to pretend as good one. This panax is grey in split part, dry without and oil, stick, less smell and no taste when chewing for a while.
To remember, panax can not use with tea. There are a lot of tannic acid in tea which can destroy nutrition in American ginseng. So you had better drink tea two or three days after taking American ginseng. In addition, panax can not taken with turnip too. In Chinese medicine, turnip can make qi go down and digest. If taken with panax, the tonify function is just balanced with the go down function.
