Why is liquor known as the first of all medicines?

Liquor, known as "the first of hundreds of medicines", is called "decocted medicine" in ancient books, which means the earliest wine. It can be seen that wine itself is a medicine. This is how Chinese medicine interprets wine. It is warm, pungent and bitter, and has the functions of warming blood vessels, dispersing medicine, warming stomach, dispelling cold, strengthening yang and resisting fatigue. There is a treatise on decoction and medicine in Huangdi Neijing, which specifically discusses the way of medication.

"wine is the first of all medicines." Since ancient times, wine and medicine have been inextricably linked. Traditional writing of medicine: "medicine" contains "unitary", and unitary is also wine. Physicians like to use wine, which is the characteristic of using its good drug potential to reach the viscera and limbs. Jiusu is known as "the length of a hundred medicines", which can help medicines to play a better role. Pure grain wine is a good organic solvent. The ancients soaked medicinal materials in wine and made medicinal liquor. In modern medicine, the common method of extracting effective components of traditional Chinese medicine is ethanol extraction.

Wine leads to blood: this is recognized not only by Chinese medicine, but also by western medicine. Now, professional cardiologists will also advise patients to drink some alcohol in moderation to improve the blood supply to the heart. Modern research has found that drinking a small amount of alcohol can increase the content of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (good cholesterol) and reduce the content of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (bad cholesterol) in human blood.

Therefore, the researchers concluded that a small amount of alcohol can reduce the chance of vascular sclerosis and obstruction caused by fat deposition, which also provides a proof that alcohol can treat heart disease.

Wine dissipates moisture: wine is hot, and Tibetan doctors believe that "dampness is yin evil and not warm", so wine has the effect of "dispersing moisture". Many medicated wines have anti-rheumatic effects, and have certain curative effects on rheumatic joint pain, arthritis and muscle strain. For patients with yang deficiency or rheumatic joint pain, drinking some medicine properly can really play a role in strengthening the body, expelling wind and dredging collaterals. Compared with decocting traditional Chinese medicine, wine has the advantages of easy storage and convenient administration.