Sticks and Stones May Break Your Bones, But Chinese Herbs Can Heal Them: How I Treat Bone, Tendon and Ligament Injuries with Chinese Herbal Medicine
- Sean Dugan
- Feb 17
- 8 min read
Updated: Feb 17
After every major injury patients are told the same thing: wait and see.
Is my broken humerus going to heal well? Wait and see.
Will my ankle ever be the same? Wait and see.
What if my fracture doesn’t heal in 6 to 8 weeks? First wait and see, and then we’ll wait and see some more.
I’ve listened to these stories hundreds of times - because I’m who you come to when ‘wait and see’ didn’t turn out well. But here’s the thing: you don’t have to wait! You don’t have to be the person who comes to me after their fracture didn’t heal well and you’ve been in pain for months without solutions.
You can actively improve your body’s healing of bone, tendon, ligament, and soft tissue injuries. You can cut healing times in half. You can take steps now to make sure you’re not getting bad news at the end of that wait and see period.
How? By taking advantage of the effective bone and soft tissue healing strategies that Chinese herbalists have been using for thousands of years.
Table of Contents
Chinese Herbs for Bone, Tendon and Ligament Injuries: Case Examples
For a few people, just waiting out an injury works great. Unfortunately, most of us assume we are part of that small and privileged group. And why wouldn’t we be? We’ve been given our marching orders, from a medical doctor, no less: Wait and See. Cross your fingers and your toes for good news at the end of the prescribed waiting period.
Doing nothing is easy, but unfortunately it's not very effective at healing your body quickly and well. If it was the only option, sure. But it isn’t. There’s a better way.
I have been using Chinese herbs for healing fractures, injuries, and in post-surgical recovery for the past 12 years of my practice, and over the years I have seen people respond to the treatment in amazing ways.
Susan, age 47, broke her humerus in a skiing accident. She came in to see me right after the injury and started a protocol of Ox Bone Pearls. At her 6 week follow up her surgeon was genuinely shocked at her recovery. He said that her bone had healed so well he couldn’t see where it had been broken.
“I had to check your x-rays twice to make sure I was looking at the right chart,” he told her. “There’s no visible fracture callus. It’s like your bone was never broken.”
Carol had her right knee replaced at age 60 before coming to see me. When she had her left knee replaced at 62 she asked if she could take anything to help with the recovery. I gave her Ox Bone Pearls. She reported that her left knee healed in half the time it took her right knee to heal. Same surgery, same surgeon. Chinese herbs were the only new variable.
Molly was off crutches and back to weight bearing 4 weeks faster than expected after a complex tibia fracture.
I believe this made a real difference in my tibia fracture recovery. I’ve taken it every day for three weeks and was cleared to start putting weight on my leg two weeks earlier than I expected. That was a huge milestone for me, and I’m so grateful for how well my healing has progressed. - K.R.
If you’ve recently suffered a bone or soft tissue injury, I encourage you to come see me sooner rather than later. Don’t wait and see; act now and heal faster.
Click here to get started.
The Martial Artist in All of Us
I mentioned the Ox Bone pearls protocol, so let me tell you a bit more about what that is and how it works.
I first learned about Chinese herbal medicines for trauma and injury when I started training in Jinggui Qigong. Unlike the meditation-based qigong that you might be familiar with, Jinggui or Golden Shield Qigong is a martial arts practice that involves training the body to withstand blows without sustaining injury.
Martial art training involves sparring, or training fights, as well as striking (or being struck by) hard objects like tiles, bricks and bats. This process builds bone density and resilience through increasing levels of physical stress on the body. Eventually, you are able to withstand some serious hits without injury. During the process, however, you might get a little beat up. Also when push comes to shove and you are squaring off with an opponent who means you harm, you could end up with some bruises and broken bones.
Chinese martial artists have been using topical and internal herbal medicines for thousands of years to facilitate injury recovery during training and combat. Topical and internal Chinese herbal formulas can be used to speed up the body’s healing ability so practitioners can get back on the mat faster.
There are many different herbal formulas - both internal and external - for injury recovery. They vary by region, martial arts style, family lineage, or are designed to target different types of injuries.
In our modern lives we don’t often find ourselves breaking bricks with our hands or getting kicked repeatedly (I hope) but we are prone to similar bone and soft tissue injuries through recreational and sporting activities, or by being involved in traumatic accidents.
Ox Bone pearls is the herbal formula I have come to rely on as my primary protocol for bone breaks, fractures, tendon & ligament injuries, and post-surgical recovery.
Ox Bone Pearls: The Alchemy of Bone Healing
I’ve established I love this formula for soft tissue and bone healing. Now, let’s get into why.
There are three essential components that make the magic of stimulating faster bone healing:
The raw materials. Your body needs to have an abundance of calcium and phosphorus in order to generate bone. This is where Ox Bone pearls gets its name; the formula features ox bone and crab shell to provide the building blocks your body needs to lay down new bone.
Niu Gugu - Ox bone
Pang Xie - River crab shell
Circulation. Your body needs excellent circulation of blood to the injury site in order to heal bone. Your blood carries the minerals and other components of tissue healing to the injury site. If you don’t have good circulation, the supplies can’t arrive.
Blood circulation is also a key element for removing inflammatory compounds and damaged tissue. Unfortunately, inflammation has gotten a bad rap in recent years. The truth is inflammation is an essential part of the healing process. Blocking the production of inflammatory compounds with NSAIDS or steroids long term can significantly impair your body’s ability to heal - and it’s a big reason why so many people experience poor healing and chronic pain. The problem isn’t the inflammation, the problem is poor circulation of blood that results in inflammatory compounds not being removed and metabolized in a timely manner. Poor blood circulation is the biggest contributor to poor healing as well as acute and chronic pain.
That is why every Chinese herbal formula for injury healing draws heavily on the category of herbs called Blood Moving herbs. In Ox Bone pearls, this includes:
Dang Gui - Angelica sinsensis
Chuan Xiong - Ligusticum
Hong Hua - Carthamus flower
Mo Yao - Myrrh resin
San Qi - Pseudoginseng
All of these herbs encourage faster tissue healing by increasing the turnover of blood to the injury site.
Better microcirculation of blood means more good stuff in, and more bad stuff out.
San Qi is one of the most famous trauma herbs, gaining modern notoriety in the Vietnam war where it was used to help save many soldiers from gunshot wounds. Mo Yao, or myrrh, has been famous in both Eastern and Western culture for millennia for its ability to speed up tissue repair and injury recovery.
In the nativity story the three wise men bring gold, frankincense, and myrrh to the baby Jesus. They weren’t bringing frankincense and myrrh to burn as incense! They would have been valuable internal herbs for a mother to take postpartum for tissue healing after childbirth.
Essential oils of frankincense and myrrh have become popular in modern times for pain, but a water extraction of Myrrh resin taken internally - as it is prepared in traditional Chinese medicine - is much more effective. Essential oils are NOT safe to take internally.
Osteogenesis. When your body has a bone injury, it will need to grow more bone. So far Ox Bone pearls contains ingredients to provide the mineral resources, or building blocks, for your body to make more bone, as well as herbs to improve blood circulation. The icing on the cake are the herbs that strongly stimulate the body to lay down new bone - better, faster, and stronger. This category includes:
Yin Yang Huo - Epimedium. Also known as “horny goat weed” because of the increased mating behavior observed when goats get into a patch of Epimedium vines. Yin Yang Huo has been shown to stimulate osteogenesis, improve bone strength, and enhance bone repair. It is also used in combination with different herbs to stimulate sex drive.
Gu Sui Bu - Drynaria. This herb stimulates proliferation of osteoblasts (bone building cells) and has been shown to increase the biomechanical strength and enhance the trabecular microarchitecture of bone.
I have focused heavily on how the Ox Bone pearls protocol helps with broken bone recovery. However, this is also my go-to protocol for injuries and post-surgical recovery of all types.
The herbs in Ox Bone pearls that invigorate blood circulation help to speed up tissue repair and decrease healing time in all types of injury and trauma - that includes muscle sprains, strains, and tendon and ligament injuries.
Getting Started
If you would like to get started with the Ox Bone pearls protocol, here are the next steps.
Classical Pearls formulas like Ox Bone are only available through licensed Chinese Medicine practitioners. Though initially this might sound like an arbitrary limitation, there is actually a very good reason for it.
Effective herbal medicine treatment requires two components: choosing the right herbs, and using the right dosage.
Without extensive study in Traditional Chinese Medicine, choosing the right herbs for yourself is hard. Heck, it’s still hard with extensive study.
Classical Pearls are strong formulas. It’s our responsibility as practitioners to make sure you are getting matched up with the right formulas for you so that a) it’s effective and b) you don’t inadvertently choose inappropriate formulas and make yourself feel worse.
Choosing the right dosage is the next essential step, and that requires an experienced practitioner’s guidance to get right.
To get started, please fill out the intake form below. This provides me with the information that I need to evaluate your case and make a recommendation for a protocol and dosage for you. You can then order the herbs in the Folkwise store. If I don’t feel Ox Bone pearls is appropriate for you, I will make other recommendations.
You can also schedule a one-on-one consultation with me for a more in-depth evaluation. This is the most traditional route for Chinese herbal medicine treatment. Choose this option if you would like treatment tailored to your specific case, if you have multiple conditions or a complex condition, or if you are not confident this protocol is a good fit for you.
A Note on Osteoporosis and Osteopenia
If you are dealing with osteopenia and osteoporosis, or know someone who is, you may have read the description of the Ox Bone pearls protocol and thought - it sounds like this could help with osteoporosis and bone density.
You are absolutely right, it can. I am working on a detailed article on how to use Ox Bone pearls for osteopenia and osteoporosis, as well as other formulas that can be combined for hormone related bone density issues. Stay tuned!
Feel free to schedule a consultation with me if osteoporosis or osteopenia is your chief concern.
Thank you for reading! I look forward to hearing from you.
-Sean
Sean Dugan L.Ac. is a licensed and board-certified herbalist and acupuncturist. He holds a Master’s degree in Chinese Medicine from the Oregon College of Oriental Medicine as well as a Diplomate in Chinese Medicine from the NCCAOM. He has studied under many Master Herbalists including Dr. Guohui Liu, Dr. Jimmy Wei-Yin Chang, Dr. Fang Zhang, Dr. Greg Livingston, and Dr. Darren Huckle. Sean’s herbal medicine practice draws from both Traditional Chinese Medicine and Classical Chinese Medicine treatment methods, with a focus on clinical efficacy above all. He has been treating patients with Chinese Herbal Medicine since 2013.
Sean works with clients all over the US through the Folkwise Herbal Clinic. In-person appointments are available at our Boise, Idaho clinic.
