Draining Method

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Botanicals under this category all have in common the ability, energetically speaking, to cause an active discharging or draining effect of one kind or another: hence, they are called drainers.

Drainers check natural physiological responses such as fever, inflammation and nervous tension that have become excessive or chronic and are no longer useful so they are counterproductive to healing. These are called excess conditions involving an internal imbalance with constraint, heat and congestion. Its mainly an energetic response showing itself as undesirably excessive responses. Drainers work directly to limit and discharge these harmful responses, which supports the healing process.

In TCM this principle is called xiao. In Western herbalism the understanding gradually developed that there is a difference between draining and eliminating. Sweating is an eliminating principle for example. Its not a drainer because merely sweating is no guarantee that excessive heat will be cleared. Methods of causing the bowel to move and bloodletting were viewed as both Eliminating and Draining since there was both a substantial (material) and energetic excess removed at the same time.

Draining is especially useful for severe conditions involving heat, Qi constraint or bleeding with a chronic underlay of energetic imbalance. Drainers should not be used for deficient conditions unless these also present some excess. Weigh the strengths of the person's injurious factors relative to their own vitality (the righteous factors).

Certain constitutional types by nature end to excess conditions and for them, the use of drainers can be considered preventative.

Draining herbs should not be confused with Eliminants. Both primarily treat acute symptoms of illness rather than chronic ones; yet drainers remove an internal excess due to an internal response of a more qualitative energetic kind (such as fever and nervous tension), whereas eliminants remove and external excess caused by an obstructed surface waste elimination of a substantial nature (such as toxins, feces, phlegm, menstrual blood). Besides, drainers work in gentle opposition to he body's vital reflexes when these are no longer useful, while eliminants work in conjunction with them. - Holmes