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A short line on a granule label can change how a product should be handled. Christine walks you through the written directions for each new bottle at the Lane Cove clinic.

Small words with real meaning

A line on a label telling you to use a particular measure, take a product apart from meals or keep a bottle somewhere cool can look like a footnote. In practice it tells you how that preparation is meant to be handled. Skipping a step because the routine feels familiar can change what you actually take.

Dr Christine Shen, Acupuncturist, prescribes individual herbal medicine at the Lane Cove clinic and can walk you through each instruction, especially the first time you receive a new product.

Granule directions are product-specific

Christine’s herbal medicine is dispensed as granules in containers. Every bottle has written guidance covering preparation, measuring, storage and the use-by date, set for that product and that prescription. A general article, including this one, cannot give you those details for every formula.

You may come across traditional cooking terms, such as instructions to add one ingredient first and another later. Those terms belong to a different way of preparing herbal medicine and should not replace the directions supplied with your granules.

Staying organised

• Keep the written directions with the original labelled bottle.
• Check anything that seems ambiguous before you start.
• Use the measure described for this product, not a quantity remembered from an earlier one.
• Note the use-by date and storage conditions.

Directions from a previous prescription, even one from last month, should not replace the current ones simply because they are easier to remember. Each product is chosen for a particular person at a particular time.

Medicines and new symptoms

Store the product name, directions and review date together. Tell Christine when another medicine is started or stopped. If something unexpected happens and you are not sure whether the granules are involved, get advice instead of changing the dose on your own initiative.

A quick check-in after the first few days

Once you have used a new bottle for a few days, it can help to contact the Lane Cove clinic with any questions while the routine is still fresh. Christine would much rather answer an early question than have a product measured the wrong way.