Building tolerance to herbs / supplements

Comment by Chad J. Dupuis, L.Ac.

There is no real way to give a recommendation unless you know exactly what you are trying to treat symptoms wise - but more particularly in Chinese Medicine diagnostic terms with supporting signs and symptoms. I’ll say two general things, however.

First, within Chinese Medicine individual herbs are rarely if ever used by most practitioners. Instead formulas are used which are generally far more effective, more directed, and less likely to cause other issues including tolerance.

Second, on the issue of tolerance, there is a point where either you have resolved the issues and you simply don’t need treatment any longer (people many times take things just out of habit, long after when they actually need them). More likely, however, the less precise your herbal treatment is (again in Chinese Medicine terms) the less completely you will resolve the issues at hand leading to eventual “tolerance”.

In this case tolerance isn’t really tolerance per se, but you have literally only worked on the surface of what your causal factors are so that’s as far as things will progress/resolve (hence the importance of good diagnosis before beginning treatment).

Comment by Archived User

ok, thank you. Makes sense.

From what I’ve been diagnosed, I am treating stomach and spleen yin deficiency.

From the past couple days, I’ve noticed again a few things relating this.
I’ve started taking oyster mushroom supplement (used to take it in the past) and it looks like it’s helping with the dry mouth and nose and the fur on the tongue. I need to find out why…

When I started taking it roughly a year ago, it had the same beneficial effect… but was getting less and less effective. Now as I took a break, it’s ‘working’ again…

Comment by Archived User

Thanks for your info. I am going to show your comments to someone I know who can’t stop himself from taking the same herbs over and over again. I don’t think it is a good idea.

I think I recall Robert Grey (Holistic Horizons products) saying that you become immune to any positive effects of herbs or herb formulas after 9 months. They become useless. However, some folks, you can show them expert opinion from here and there and it does no good.

So, maybe mental attitude is the base of our problems. I do recall an acupuncture Dr. saying this - emotions come first, everything follows - and he got into some hot water from his fellow Doctors for saying this. They did not want to discuss emotions.

If you ask me, the emotions and physical manifestations are all wrapped up like the two parts of an omelette which can’t be unscrambled and whose origin is lost in the mists of time (Creation). Just saying. FWIW. Thanks.