Chinese Herbal Tea For Period Pain? | Medicine or Myth? | Available On SBS On Demand

Next to front the panel is 27-year-old Joanna with a traditional Chinese medicine remedy. Hello. Hello. My name's Joanna. You can call me Jo. And my home remedy is a traditional Chinese herbal remedy that's been passed down for generations through to my granddad, and it helps with period pain and endometriosis. Hang on a second. From your granddad? Yes, that's correct. OK. Clearly. So my granddad is a well-respected traditional Chinese medicine doctor. Traditional Chinese medicine practitioners are often incredibly well-trained, and people underestimate how well-trained they are. They sometimes do what is equivalent to a university degree. They are often in the field as apprentices for a while before they open up their own practices. And the TCM practitioners that I've been exposed to have been incredibly knowledgeable people. When I experience the period pain and symptoms like diarrhoea and vomiting... Which is classic of endometriosis. I mean, that's exactly... Is it? Absolutely, yeah. Endometriosis is when the endometrium, which is the lining of the uterus, grows outside the interior lining of the uterus. So it can grow on the ovaries, on the tubes, on the bowel, giving a lot of bowel symptoms like diarrhoea. It can be really quite debilitating in terms of pain. And your story is awful. Like, it sounds severe. To get a definitive diagnosis involves surgery. Along with severe pelvic pain, inflammation, irregular menstrual bleeding, scarring, bowel and bladder symptoms, up to 50% of women with endometriosis have difficulty falling pregnant. Have you had the diagnosis of endometriosis made by a Western doctor? No, I haven't. I did tell my symptoms to a few girlfriends that did get diagnosed with endometriosis. And they were so similar? They were so similar, and they suspected it. So then you discussed it with your grandfather, is that right? Yes, that's correct. He said, got three herbs for you. Brew it up and drink it, and you should be cured. Cured? Cured. So this is not a Band-Aid that gets rid of the diarrhoea and the pain. This is something that actually treats the endometrial deposits. Yes. Oh, my goodness. We in Western medicine don't have a cure for endometriosis. Jo, this is really fascinating. I would love to meet your grandfather. My grandfather's actually here today. Right. What? Can we get him in? Yeah, sure. Because I need to know what these herbs are. Yeah, I know. Oh, here he comes. Jo's 80-year-old grandfather has been practising Chinese herbal medicine for the past 60 years. Yeah, this is my granddad. You can call him Dr Yan. Lovely to meet you. How are you? Dr Yan. Lovely to meet you. Nice to meet you. Jo, he speaks English? My granddad doesn't, but I can translate. Can you tell us what's in the concoction? So, with the white peony root, it helps to relieve the spasm, so it cools the blood, so you don't have the spasm, and then that causes the pain. What about the component that actually cures endometriosis? My granddad said it's a combination of the three herbs that's the cure of endometriosis. So, the three herbs are serenity, the white peony root, and the licorice root. However, it's also the proportion of the herbs. Yeah. It would be nice to maybe just try a small amount, just to know what it tastes like. Yeah, I'll do that. Hang on. Make sure it doesn't have any detrimental effect in a male. To a male? I couldn't tell you. It could be very potent. Oh, that smells good. It smells so good. Would you like to share some? This will be the big test to see if he rejects it. Bottoms up. Doesn't taste good as a fruit juice or a coffee. Well, Jo, what we'd like to do now is just, I'm going to ask my fellow panellists if we think that this is worth a clinical trial. What do you think? As a GP with interest in women's health, this is gold for me. I would love to see a trial. The question for me is how could you design something that within the scope of what we're talking, we could actually properly investigate it? With the same reservations as Ash, if we can design the trial, we will absolutely run it. Lovely. I hope this medication could help more girls out there. Definitely. So beautiful, Jo. Thank you. Thank you very much, Jo. Thank you.