BEAT: Hay fever sufferers on quest for that elusive magic root

By LOUIS TEMPLADO, Asahi ShimBun News Service



Pills, sprays, masks, laser surgery, electric negative-ion generators
and
hand-powered nasal suction devices. These are just some of the
newfangled cures and inventions now flooding Japan's lucrative hay
fever market. To a growing number of young allergy victims, though,
relief can come in a more traditional form: small packets of Chinese
herbal medicine.

The best way to fight flowers, to follow the homeopathic reasoning,
is
with other flowers.

At the recently opened Mutsugoro Kampoyaku pharmacy in Tokyo's
trendy Aoyama, the majority of customers are young working women,
many looking for ways to ``make themselves beautiful from the
inside,''
but also to find relief from the seasonal suffering.

With rows and rows of jars and boxes filled with arcanely named plant
parts before them, visitors might believe there's one magic root to
cure
their hay fever. Pharmacist Chie Tomizuka, however, informs them that
there is none.

Herbal medicine, she explains, doesn't tackle specific symptoms.
Instead, practitioners look for subtle clues, such as cold hands,
aversion
to hot water or swollen tongues, to determine what makes the patient
weak. The ultimate cause is usually stress that throws off the body's
autonomous balancing systems, she says.

``The correct prescription can be different for each person,''
Tomizuka
says. ``We ask, `Why does a person have the symptoms?' and
determine how their bodies are unbalanced. We then mix the right
prescription for them.''

The prescribed potions are a mixture of herbs and roots-some as
common as cinnamon and some quite exotic-which sufferers take home
to brew and drink at regular intervals (usually three times) during
the
day.

In general, there are both short-term and long-term approaches to
treatment, Tomizuka explains. Concoctions such as
kakkontokasenkyushinii (kudzu root, cinnamon, raw ginger, Chinese
date and magnolia), she says, work in clearing stuffy heads and noses
in just a few days.

Other potions such as ninjinto (dried ginseng, ginger, yellow day
lily and
atractylodis rhizome), however, are said to fortify the body and have
to
be drunk daily a half year before pollen season.

(02/24)