I will help out anyone looking for strong Dit Da Jow
Let me know how I can be of service
Great thread! It’s awesome to have someone as knowledgeable in Dit Da Jow/Chinese medicine as Dale on this forum. Dale, I read on another board that you mention, you should never have to wait longer than 8 weeks for medicine (dit da jow) and it will not get any stronger. Can you please explain so I can understand why, because I keep hearing the longer the better and 6 months should be minimum and have heard that after a couple of years the dit da jow is strongest. Thanks in advance! Have a great weekend everyone.
There are a lot of myths and old wives tales about Dit Da Jow.
Due to using higher proof solvents, there is no need to wait months for something that is ready in weeks.
You do not have to let anything sit that long.
I feel that it comes from using lower proof solvents back in the day and storing them to let the lower proof solvents extract as much active components into the solution.
after 2-3 months there is nothing happening. the medicine is not going to get stronger, as its already at maximum saturation for active components.
You can do things to help extract more from the herbs. Breaking the cell walls down helps, you can do this by grinding the herbs, or by cooking them for specific periods of time.
Let me know how I can be of service.
Thanks Dale for the reply. Makes total sense. Take care.
Question for Dale.
I got a question for you, Dale, if you don’t mind.
I have this traditional iron palm training formula that calls for rhino skin. What’s a good substitute? Can you just use donkey skin or something like that? I suspect what the formula actually needs from a scientific perspective is just collagen and that the call for rhino skin in particular is just superstition.
Also, I’m having a hard time finding “gui wei”/(the ‘carda’ part of angelica sinensis) which I believe is just the thin strands at the end of a piece of dang gui/. Can you think of any reason why regular old dang gui should be replaced with gui wei (literally “dang gui tails”)
If you don’t feel like giving out the free advice, I understand. I have all my herbs ready except for the two mentioned above and, ironically, the herb shops I have been to did not have doctors present. In Xi’an, they are like pharmacies. You just bring in your prescription and the clerks get your meds. Eastern and western “drugs” all under the same roof. Usually you have something like western drugs on the left, eastern formulas in bottles or oinments etc. on the right and the dried herbs at the back of the store.
Omar,
I can imagine they wanted Rhino Skin as it was thick and strong and they wanted it to do the same thing for a student training their hands.
I would substitute some pig skin.
Funny that you are having a hard time finding Gui Wei which are the tails of the root. They are easy to find here in the USA.
They are more blood moving than the entire root which is more blood tonifying compared to blood moving.
If you can locate San Leng and E Zhu these two are very strong blood movers. 18 grams of each will be strong.
You can use them to replace Gui Wei.
Hope this helps.
Thanks much Dale.
I can imagine they wanted Rhino Skin as it was thick and strong and they wanted it to do the same thing for a student training their hands.
I would substitute some pig skin.
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That’s sort of what I was thinking. I was leaning towards Donkey but pig skin is widely available too. Does it need to be dried or could you just cut the skin off of a pork belly from the meat market? I actually have a small baggie of pig skin in the freezer. It wasn’t for jow. It’s something my mother-in-law saved for some sort of cooking ingredient. 
Funny that you are having a hard time finding Gui Wei which are the tails of the root. They are easy to find here in the USA.
Do you have any idea how much Wisconsin ginseng is imported into China@!?
If you can locate San Leng and E Zhu these two are very strong blood movers. 18 grams of each will be strong.
Got Chinese characters or maybe latin names for those? For “san leng” I am guessing
“e zhu” = = RHIZOMA CURCUMAE ?
Thanks a bazillion for the suggestion. I had to give up iron palm for a while when I moved from my 1st floor apt. to a 2nd floor flat above a bunch of senior citizens who were very particular about the noise. This past month I moved again, and while I am still not on the 1st floor, the apt seems to be more solid. If I put my bag on top of my weight bench, it doesn’t seem to rattle the apt. when I slap it like it did at my last residence. Been meaning to get back into it but my 2 formulaes have been hard to make. One of them uses a kind of musk called “she xiang” which, by weight, is actually more expensive than gold. The other one, the one I am asking for advice on, is highly toxic so lots of herb shops don’t carry certain parts of it…the poisonous parts. Their afraid someone might drink it or something. Just this afternoon I finally found a shop that could almost make the whole thing for me…minus the rhinocerous skin (which I wouldn’t want anyways for ethical reasons) and the gui wei which is odd. I think since TCM is so popular here a lot of people actually buy stuff on their own and don’t always even get doctors prescriptions so, in their minds, buying gui wei is like a stoner buying a bag of shake. But then again, why do they like the western ginseng so much? It’s milder and less potent.. . which is why it’s good but that’s not how I think they tend to think.
Hi Dale,
what can I substitute for snake, bear bile, bear paw, and opium?
(or, what kind of snakes can be used?)
The rhino skin thing is interesting. I thought rhinos were native to Africa, and never would’ve thought it would be such a common thing in China that martial artists would start putting their skin in their jow. The things I’ve learned via this forum, lol. Now I’ve gotta go google rhinos…
[QUOTE=TenTigers;1096891]Hi Dale,
what can I substitute for snake, bear bile, bear paw, and opium?
(or, what kind of snakes can be used?)[/QUOTE]
You can still get snakes, they are not endangered just hard to located.
I sell them by the gram and the snake.
Opium can be substituted with Yan Hu Suo for pain killing.
Bear paw, you can still get paw bones from people here in the USA.
But I use Deer Tendon for that instead.
No need for bear bile, just leave it out and it will be okay.
Omar, you are correct with the Hanzi for the herbs mentioned.