Six Months Without a Period and a Hard Lump in the Lower Abdomen? Doctor Zhang Xichun’s Sanqi (Panax Notoginseng) Remedy for Amenorrhea Caused by Blood Stasis

Patient search terms: period not coming / no period for months / amenorrhea / hard lump in the lower abdomen / always feeling feverish / sanqi for blood stasis Medical terms for this condition: amenorrhea (blood stasis type) · blood stasis forming a mass (zheng jia) · delayed menstruation

Before we begin: can sanqi help a child grow taller?

Today Doctor Luo Dalun is talking about how Doctor Zhang Xichun used san qi (Panax notoginseng). But before the main case, he answers a question many people have asked: “I heard that giving sanqi to a child helps them grow taller — is that true?” His answer: half true, not entirely accurate. It is not true that any child who takes sanqi will automatically grow taller.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Where does this idea come from? Because, as we discussed in an earlier episode, sanqi can dissolve blood stasis inside the bones. What it actually does is improve the circulation around and within the bone, helping the bone absorb nutrients better. Sanqi is different from other blood-activating herbs — most of them cannot penetrate into the bone, but sanqi has a special bone-penetrating quality. That is why Doctor Zhang Xichun considered it able to dissolve stagnant blood inside the bone. This is sanqi’s unique gift.

A child who is not growing during puberty — how can sanqi help?

So how does sanqi actually help a child grow? Doctor Luo explains it clearly: a child reaches puberty at fourteen, fifteen or sixteen — exactly the age when growth should be happening. But children today do not exercise much. They sit and study all day without moving, their qi and blood circulation is sluggish, the bones cannot absorb enough nourishment, and so the child ends up shorter than their peers.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: In this situation there is a method: take 1 to 2 grams of sanqi powder, together with three to five chicken leg bones, crack the bones open, and simmer them together into a soup. This recipe was originally a remedy for trauma and bone injuries — it is a formula handed down in my own family. But it has a special extra effect: when a child reaches puberty and their growth is lagging, drinking this soup two or three times a week (no need for daily use) may help them grow faster than usual. Why? Sanqi dissolves stagnant blood in the bones, improves bone circulation and nutrient absorption; and if you also get the child exercising and eating well, growth follows naturally.

Doctor Luo has real experience with this recipe:

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: I have seen children who really did get good results. For example, I gave a lecture at a foreign bank, and about six months later one of their managers — a woman — called me and said: “Doctor Luo, thank you so much. My daughter has been drinking it for six months, and she has clearly started to grow taller.” She was overjoyed and called specially to tell me. That manager was from Hong Kong.

Caution: sanqi is not a miracle herb — five years old and thirty-eight years old are both wrong times

That said, Doctor Luo stresses two points. First, some people ask: can a five-year-old take it? No. He is talking about puberty growth — when a child has not kept up with the normal growth rate because of lack of exercise and similar reasons, sanqi helps remove the obstacle and catch up. That is what “growing taller with sanqi” means. Taking sanqi does not make anyone tall — there is no such claim. A five- or six-year-old has not reached the growth spurt stage yet, so do not give them herbs randomly; it would not help anyway.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Others ask: “What if I’m 38 — can I take it?” We are talking about the puberty growth period, when blood stasis developed for some reason, nutrients were not absorbed, and growth lagged. In that situation taking it is useful. But if you are past puberty, why take it? So this is only an adjunct remedy — please do not treat it as a miracle herb. If you notice your child has not grown much recently and lacks exercise, understand that sanqi plays a supporting role — helping activate blood and smooth the flow of qi. At the same time, be sure to make the child exercise — the appearance of blood stasis often signals insufficient movement and poor nutrition. Only when you address everything can the child be in a good state.

The main case: a woman named Hu from the British Concession of Tianjin, six months without a period

With the Q&A done, we come to today’s patient: a woman surnamed Hu from the British Concession in Tianjin. What was wrong? Her period had not come for six months — she was nowhere near menopause age, yet menstruation had stopped for half a year. At the same time, she constantly felt feverish, and she was distended and stifled, unbearably uncomfortable. The family called Doctor Zhang Xichun in.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Notice this — that “always feeling feverish” is actually a classic symptom of blood stasis. Some people with stagnant blood in the body constantly feel heat in one place or another. So when you see this symptom, the possibility of blood stasis should come to mind immediately.

First prescription: the blood-activating formula worked — but only a little

When Doctor Zhang Xichun arrived, he first prescribed some blood-activating, meridian-opening, period-regulating herbs. After taking it, it did — to be fair — show some effect: the period came down a little, it opened somewhat.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: But this was not a complete success, because only a trickle came — the period had not fully resumed. At this point the patient told Doctor Zhang Xichun another important symptom: “I always feel a hard lump in my lower abdomen, and it has never gone away.” As long as the lump remained, the illness was not truly cured.

The turning point: sanqi already sitting in the house made the formula

The lump would not dissolve — what to do? As Doctor Zhang Xichun was pondering this, he suddenly noticed that this family had sanqi in the house, and plenty of it — probably a gift someone had brought. So he said: “You don’t know how to use it — that’s fine, I’ll tell you.”

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: He told her to grind the sanqi into powder and take how much per day? Four to five qian, which is 12 to 15 grams — a fairly large dose. How to take it? Do not take it all at once; divide it into several portions, take a little each time, and let it work gradually.

After about 90 grams: the period suddenly returned, and the lump dissolved

The family followed Doctor Zhang Xichun’s instructions and simply kept taking the sanqi powder. When they had used roughly three liang (about 90 grams) — and three liang is no small amount — the miracle happened: the period suddenly came, with a heavy flow. And when they felt the lower abdomen again, the hard lump had dissolved too.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Doctor Zhang Xichun found this case enormously inspiring. Look — where does the effectiveness of a Chinese herb come from? It comes from physicians figuring it out bit by bit: first through practice, then checking the theory, then researching further. Sanqi did not have nearly so many uses in the past. Doctor Zhang Xichun greatly advanced the application of sanqi — he kept exploring what it could do and putting it into practice, and in one stroke he vastly expanded its range of uses. That is why some TCM scholars say: “Sanqi did not seem that useful before — why does everyone talk about taking sanqi now?” Part of the credit belongs to Zhang Xichun: during the Republican era, he greatly broadened the clinical applications of sanqi.

From then on: whenever he met a blood-stasis mass, Doctor Zhang Xichun dissolved it slowly with sanqi

After this case, whenever Doctor Zhang Xichun encountered a patient with a hard, stubborn mass of stagnant blood in the abdomen — or a woman whose lochia had not drained completely after childbirth and had formed a lump — he would use sanqi to slowly dissolve it.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: This is not something you can dissolve in one go. You take it gradually, a little at a time, and eventually it melts away. In this way Zhang Xichun accumulated a great deal of experience using sanqi in gynecology, and pushed its clinical applications much further.

What today’s case teaches us: when blood stasis is the problem, sanqi has a special gift for dissolving masses

So what is the lesson of today’s case?

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Sanqi’s ability to resolve blood stasis is beyond question. When we judge that a patient truly has blood stasis at work, we can use sanqi to dissolve it a little at a time. Especially in the way Zhang Xichun used it in gynecology — women are especially prone to blood stasis, and although there are many herbs that activate blood and regulate the period, when it comes to dissolving hard masses, sanqi often has a unique effect. This is the experience Zhang Xichun left us. Of course, these experiences still need to be researched and deepened, and its precise indications defined — that is work for the future.

So remember this: when the period has not come for months, there is a hard lump in the lower abdomen, and the body always feels feverish — think of blood stasis. And sanqi is the fine herb Doctor Zhang Xichun left us for dissolving blood clots and restoring menstruation. Today, understanding that sanqi can dissolve clumped stagnant blood — that is the purpose of our study.

What to take away

• “Always feeling hot” can be a blood-stasis sign. When someone feels local or general heat for no clear reason, stagnant blood is one of the first possibilities to consider.
• Sanqi dissolves stubborn masses. Unlike ordinary blood-activating herbs, sanqi can penetrate deep into the bone and dissolve clotted blood there — and the same power dissolves hard lumps of stagnant blood in the abdomen.
• A practical home remedy for a child lagging in growth during puberty: 1–2 g of sanqi powder with 3–5 cracked chicken leg bones simmered into a soup, taken two or three times a week — combined with real exercise and good nutrition. It is an adjunct, not a miracle cure: five-year-olds and adults past puberty need not take it.
• For gynecology: missed periods with a lower-abdominal lump point to blood stasis; Doctor Zhang Xichun dissolved such masses slowly with sanqi powder in divided daily doses (about 12–15 g per day), and the period returned once the stasis cleared.

This article is based on Doctor Luo Dalun’s commentary on a case from Doctor Zhang Xichun’s Records of Chinese Medicine with Western Reference (《医学衷中参西录》).