DEER ANTLER to Nourish Blood, Bone, and Joints

http://www.itmonline.org/arts/antler.htm

TRADITIONAL MEDICINE COMMENTARIES

The book Ten Lectures on the Use of Medicinals from the Personal Experience of Jiao Shude (12) provides these insights:

Lurong (velvet deer antler): Warm in nature and sweet and salty in flavor, lurong supplements kidney yang, strengthens sinew and bone, boosts sinew and marrow, and nourishes the blood. It is used for patterns of vacuity detriment, such a kidney deficiency and cold limbs, soreness of the limbs, dizzy head and blurred vision, seminal emission, and impotence.

Lujiao (ossified deer antler): Salty in flavor and warm in nature, lujiao supplements kidney yang and boosts essence and blood. It is similar in action to, and can substitute for, lurong, but it is less effective.

Lujiaojiao (deer antler gelatin): Sweet in flavor and warm in nature, lujiaojiao warms and supplements the kidney, supplements yang within yin, frees the blood of the thoroughfare vessel (chongmai), engenders essence and blood, and stanches flooding (excessive uterine bleeding)….It is mostly used for flooding and spotting, vaginal discharge, deficiency bleeding, and yin type flat-abscess (lumps that are not red, swollen, hot, or painful).

Comparisons: Lurong is commonly used as a drastic liver-kidney supplementing medicinal. It has greater supplementing power than lujiao. Lujiao, by contrast, has a moderate liver-kidney supplementing effect, but it quickens the blood, dissipates stasis, and disperses swelling and toxin with greater strength than lurong….Used processed or as a glue (lujiaojiao), it tends to warm and supplement the liver and kidney, enrich and nourish essence-blood. Lujiaojiao is similar in action to lurong, but being slower to supplement, it must be taken over a long period of time to be effective. Lujiaoshuang, which is the dregs left after making lujiaojiao, is less warming and supplementing than either lujiao or lujiaojiao. Lujiaoshuang is used for spleen-stomach deficiency cold, low food intake, and sloppy stool, and it is also used as a substitute for lujiao and lujiaojiao, in which case the dosage must be increased.