Goji Berry Wine

Gugija-ju

한글 구기자주 · Pinyin Gou Qi Zi Jiu

枸杞子酒

Composition 構成

Gugija Gou Qi Zi
枸杞子 구기자 · Goji Berry

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Chief 君

枸杞子五升, 5 seung, ground and kneaded
Ju Jiu
酒 주 · Wine

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Envoy 使

淸酒二斗, 2 mal of clear wine, the steeping medium

Total g per packet (첩) · representative dosage — verify against source texts. Excludes 2 ingredients measured by count or used as a vehicle, shown as —.

Received this formula from your practitioner? Amounts shown here are classical reference values — granule and prepared products differ. Always follow your prescribed dosage and directions.

Actions 效能

Taken as a wine, claimed to supplement and boost

Indications 主治

Pattern-based

Taken over a long time as a tonic

Biomedical correlates

Traditional tonic wine; recorded as a historical preparation

Source text 原文

Donguibogam 東醫寶鑑

枸杞子酒, 能補益. 枸杞子五升, 淸酒二斗. 硏搦浸七日, 取出去滓飮之. 初以三合爲始, 後則任性. 《本草》

Translation

Goji Berry Wine. It is able to supplement and boost. Goji berries, 5 seung; clear wine, 2 mal. Grind and knead them, steep for seven days, then take them out, remove the dregs and drink. Begin with 3 hop, and afterwards as much as you please. — Boncho 本草 (Donguibogam · Japbang)

Clinical commentary 臨床

The simplest of the chapter's wines: goji berries crushed into clear wine and left a week, which is a cold alcoholic extraction and nothing more. Seven days in wine will pull out the berry's carotenoids, its polysaccharides only partly, and a good deal of sugar; the dose given, 3 hop to start and then as much as one likes, is what gives the leaf away. This is where the honest reading of all the tonic wines in this section belongs. The active substance in any of them is ethanol. Goji is a food and is harmless as a food, but no steeped berry makes a wine tonic, and 任性 — drink as you please — is the opposite of a dose. **Ethanol is a group 1 carcinogen with no safe level of intake; it raises the risk of cancers of the mouth, pharynx, oesophagus, liver, colon and breast from the first drink, and the cardiovascular benefit once claimed for moderate drinking has not survived better study.** A medicinal wine is a drink, and it should be counted as one. — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.