Are you kidding? NO WATER IN JAO! Who is teaching you guys? And do think you learn about TCM in a modern school? Gimme a break.
I’m not sure who you guys are, but you need to stop giving blatently wrong advise regarding chinese medicine.
I spent half my life with an incredible KF man, and a reputable doctor of TCM. I have also met many other doctors who were part of the same TCM association in NYC’s Chinatown. I learned to speak Cantonese and I’ve forgotten more about chinese medicine in my life than most Americans will ever learn.
And I don’t claim to be a doctor or even close to an expert in TCM. But my Sifu was an expert. I will listen to his teachings.
Don’t want to take my word for it? Do yourselves a favor. Go see a Chinese doctor and ask him about these questions. Don’t use water and don’t break up the herbs for Jao. Case closed.
Well, with all due respect, everyone IS entitled to their own opinions!
Everyone thinks their sifu is the best… and they should!
LPS, what do you use for your jow? Vodka, wine, grain alcohol? And why is it so important NOT to break the herbs - and how is it different than slicing, chopping, etc.? Please enlighten our humble minds…
Thank you, herb ox, for raising some very valuable points. BTW, its plumdragon
LPS, I think you need to remove your “wall” of close-mindedness and start thinking for yourself…As if it wasnt blatenly obvious that anything less than 100% ethanol is hydrous (contains water!), you cant even buy that stuff in the stores. Your basic vodka, gin, even everclear contains water (up to 60% of it!) as well as a variety of ancillar chemicals which give the ethanol taste.
Even though you ALREADY use probably 60% water in your jow, I challenge you to offer real evidence (not just hearsay) that water is bad for jow, and Ill show you real evidence that water in jow works well, and 75 research studies talking about the solvency power of water, the lubricating capabilities of water, and the solubility of water with alcohol and many other substances. All good traits for use in jow. Not to mention that there are jows based solely on water (or any of the other TCM remedies made with water), some based solely on oils, some on vinegar…
Go out there and do some research man! Spend some time being intuitive and stop regurgitating things youve heard. Be willing to learn beyond what you know…
As for breaking the herbs up, there are some herbs that should only be broken up or otherwise processed right before making the jow for the ske of freshness; tao ren (peach kernel) is a good example…But, once again, herb ox is right: Breaking up the herbs increases the surface area and enhances the ability of the solvent (WATER and alcohol in this case) to do its job. Once again I challenge you to come up with the tineist shred of real-world evidence that there is actually a problem with “breaking apart herbs” and will most certainly consider your evidence with an open mind, as I wish you would do. Ill even go out do do my own research on your behalf to clarify the truth if you can in fact offer anything up…But until then, the burdeon of proof is on you. So please, offer some evidece, or kindly stop offering advice on the topic.
Grinding, I dont usually grind finely because I dont want to even get close to dealing with the herbs on a molecular level…But again, it makes no difference because even extremely fine grain grinds are much bigger than that. I just dont trifle with it.
Are you two suggesting that we should develop or come up with our own ideas on Chinese medicine? I need an answer to this before I can go much further.
As for your backgrounds…who are you? Are you practicing martial artists? Where have you studied? Who has taught you your chinese medicine? Again, a few brief answers here would be great.
And how are you going to show me evidence that water is better/works? Yes, we all know that water is in alcholol. It’s not the same thing. If it were, we wouldn’t get dehydrated from drinking it.
And breaking and grinding are two different things. Breaking big pieces up is okay. Some ingredients may not fit in the mouth of your jar. It’s okay to break them up a bit.
I have learned this information from my Sifu (we know who mine, who is yours) and other CHINESE doctors.
And as far a being ‘intuitive’ vs. ‘reguritation’, I’m all for thinking out of the box. I am forward thinking in my martial arts, my schools and my life. But if you think I’m going to second guess every technique I’ve ever been taught, what is the point of having a teacher? I learn about things from people who know more than me.
I’m actually curious to know HOW you would know good jao from bad? You see, I don’t know about any of your experiences yet. I hope you share them.
Oh, by the way, if you understand anything about TCM, you would know that most AMERICAN doctors who practice CM, wouldn’t know how to make the kind of Jao that the old school teachers/doctors do/did. The knowledge is more specialized than you know. Most Modern Chinese Doctors would not even understand how real Dit Da Jao works. I think you guys have been hanging out with Brian Grey too long.
Er, sorry about the name mixup, PlumDragon… my brain has been a bit wiped out from all the studying.. frankly I’ve been plumb draggin
I was thinking about a jow made with Di Gu Pi - wolfberry bark - it’s only made with hot water, but is used as a hand soak prior and post iron palm workout… just something to add to the flames.
No problem herb ox. =) And once again, good point and example…
Certainly not.
What I am suggesting is that we should use the same emperical and intuitive mindset in our paths as those before us, those who teach us, and those who are key in expanding the frontier of our knowledge base.
One important aspect of the hard sciences that can be useful in the field of medicine is scrutiny of ideas, and an open mind in learning more about what we already know. And for that reason I invite your argument.
Is that rhetorical? How do I answer who I am? My name is Josh. yes I am a practicing martial artist. Ive studied under many people of merit, som of the more familiar might be: Sifu Dr. Timothy Sheehan (who holds 4 doctorate level degrees in various types of Alternative medicine), sifu Mark Dill (who trained under Galiano), and Master Michael Chang in AL.
By using it.
Yes, it IS the same thing. Water is easily dispersed in alcohol and they form quite easily to make a solution. Theres nothing profound or nontrivial about the water that is already in the alcohol when you buy it. Do a simple experiment: take some alcohol and pour in some water. It will only take a second and a bit of stirring to see that it forms a mixture. Do the sme thign with oil and water (one is polar, one is not) and see the obvious difference.
Getting dehydrated: When you drink something low proof like wine coolers or beer, its quite unnecessary to drink water with it because it is already so hydrated that you get enough water to not lower what your body already has significantly. But it takes more than 1 molecule of water to fully digest and metabolize 1 molecule of alcohol. Thats why you get significantly dehydrated if you take shots all night, because youre not taking in enough water to metabolize the alcohol.
While I dont grind for the reason I stated above, I contend that grinding is not adverse to the quality fo the jow as logn as the grinding is done right before use. I highly doubt you can offer evidence otherwise.
I didnt ask you to 2nd guess everything you have learned. I didnt ask you to “second guess” anything. Im asking you to take the least bit of an open stance on a SINGLE topic. And, the second you can show me some reason I should believe what you say, some shred of emperical or induced information further than “this person said so”, I will embrace it with open arms. I am a man of science. Hard science. I sit at my desk and test, research, verify and validate, design, test again, and implement all day long. I need real evidence, something more than, “One rainy day back in August of 1987, I recall my sifu saying something alogn these lines:_______”. A reference from a text book, a research study (believe it or not, TCM has been researched and tested in plenty of scientifically set labs over the past 50 years ad nauseum), anything…
Well aside from the fact that I curently have ~12 gallons of jow sitting in a climate controlled environment (the newest gallon of which is approaching 3 months in age, the oldest approaching 6 years) and that Ive gone through that much more in the past experimenting with subtle changes, Id say I have a pretty decent idea what is bad. Ive used terrible, excellent, and everything in between.
Ive talked to American doctors about jow (my mother is an RN, and a psychiatric nurse. Her, and part of her staff uses my jow on a normal basis). My recipes came from my martial arts teachers, but tat didnt stop me from researching each ingredient and each interacton until I was blue in the face.
I know nothing about Brian Gray except for what Ive heard from friends here on this forum–and from that, the opinion is not good lol.
Id like to close this by saying the following:
I certainly dont want to get this fire burning too bright. Were all here for the same thing (to learn right?). I have, and will continue to make sure that this conversation, from my end, stays entirely civil and friendly.
In the end, I jsut want to know truth, and Im sure you do. And if we have to agree to disagree, Im sure that well both find that each of our methods work just as well after the argument, as they did before! But will you feel as sound with your methods as I do mine, knowing that I have researching, testing, and emperical info behind mine and that you dont?
This does not aplly to jow, but… what do you use to grind herbs? I have herbs to make san huang san which is mixed with vasaline and is used instead of ice. Some of the things are bark and I’m afraid they will break my spice grinder thing.
Yeah, I totally destroyed my coffee grinder just trying to grind some san qi for a blood clot powder formula I was working on. The real herb grinders cost about 200 bucks and are really, really loud. You can usually get your local herb supplier to grind stuff for you - hopefully for free, but it may incur a small fee.
So… what’s the san huang san? is it san qi and huang bai?
OK… thought I’d put in my two cents and share as well.
First, a bit about my background:
Chinese doctor from Southern China, Cantonese speaking, working with Dit Da for over 30 years, and a southern style kung fu practitioner
My dit da training over the years come from several locally well-known Dit Da doctors - some purists and one from the Southern Dragon kung fu family, in addition to knowledge passed on from my own family
Regarding using water:
I use rice wine for my jow, but I also know other Dit Da doctors (though very few) use water, and I have seen their jow work as well. There are also others who use either vodka or even vinegar. I prefer to use good quality rice wine because of its strong property of invigorating and moving blood, hence its ability to work on blood stasis.
From my own perspective, I feel that because of its blood-related properties, dit da jow made with rice wine would be much more effective than that made from water which from a Chinese Medicine perspective, does not have the same blood-related properties.
Regarding grinding into powder:
I usually just soak mine whole, but mainly because some of the herbs are not easily ground into powder especially if you don’t have the right equipment, which I don’t
I have, at the same time, also made jow using herbs that have been ground, and it seems to work just as well
I am not aware of any strong basis on why these herbs should not be ground into powder, and would love to find out more about why this is a detriment
And thanks to you all for sharing your information.
NTC, thanks for your informative and very diplomatice post.
I too have heard of people, escpecially on this forum, use water in the formulas. I see, as a chinese doctor, you do not.
Look, as far as grinding up the herbs, I was just told not to. But my Sifu could have easily meant that it was not necessary to. I don’t know if it would actually be bad to do so, It would make sense that you would cover more surface area. That being said;
Back to water. It’s called Dit Da Jao, remember? Not Dit Da Soy.
I have a few formulae that use a large amount of aconite, others have snakes, roaches, and other herbs that are termed toxic in materia medica.
Anyone notice the big difference with jows that have these poisons and those that do not. I notice the poison jows tend to be very warming, where as the non toxic jows seem to be a little on the cooling side compared.
What kind of jows would use these toxic herbs? Wu Ling Zhi and aconite are the ones I’ve heard of most in iron palm formulae. As for the ****roach - I assume you’re referring to Tu Bie Chong? That is salty and cold and is a strong blood mover. So, when you say ‘warming’, are you referring specifically to a warming sensation? It may be due to the strong blood moving qualities of the herbs, and not so much the ‘qi’ of the herb (i.e. warm, cool, etc)…
Could someone explain the difference between Iron Palm Liniment and Dit Da Jow? Is it a Jow specifically made for Iron Palm training to restore and build bone/connective tissue?
I will be receiving my herbs soon. I am told to expect 2 gallons from this batch. My question, can anyone give me a headsup on where/what kind of container to look for? All I can find are these 1 gallon sizes. I apologize if this has been spoke about here already, I do not have time to research. Any tips will be greatly appreciated, many respects to all here.
I’ve heard of a method using a gallon container that ultimately yields 2 gallons (no, this is not like asking for a large cola in a small cup at the local drive thru :rolleyes: )
Place herbs in container
Fill with vodka or whatever solvent you prefer
Let it sit for 30-60 days
Pour off half of the contents into a fresh container (minus the herbs)
Top off the container with the herbs still in it
Wait another 30 days
Pour off half again - now you have your first gallon of jow
Top off the jar with the herbs - let sit for 60 days
Strain and enjoy neat or on the rocks
I’ve used this method with reasonable results, although I can’t be certain the potency of the first batch is equal to the second, but both batches worked just fine for me.
hey would someone mind posting how to make DDJ here please. The one I buy is really expensive and its got a thousand weird and wonderfull things in it that I can never get hold of.
You already answred your own question It is indeed. But as there are so many different recipies for ‘regular’ Dit Da Jow, there as as many different ‘iron palm’ Jow’s as well.. Some of them for example counteract the effects of iron in the later stages of IP. Also, IP Jow’s are often a bit more warming then Jow’s made to treat bruises etc.
Do a search on iron palm on Google and you will find many shops offering herb packages for iron palm training. There you’ll also see they have been made for slightly different purposes. You could email the shops for explanation on their specific Jow so you could pick any that best matches your needs. I’m sure there is more information to be found on this forum if you use the search function well.
