The Different Types of Thunder God Vine Extracts

Medicinal Thunder God Vine (mTGV) extracts

In the 1970s, Chinese researchers developed new Thunder God Vine root extracts that match both efficacy and safety for internal use (methanol/ chloroform extract).

It’s these extracts that are in use extensively nowadays. Physicians prescribe it as a first line natural DMARD to successfully relieve the symptoms of a number of autoimmune conditions: as a monotherapy or combined with conventional DMARDs.

It’s a standardized herbal medicine widely commercially available in China.

The presentations and dosage are always the same: bottles of 50 to 100 of 10mg tablets / 1 to 1,5mg/kg/day.

These are some commercial brands that I know.

Simple Thunder God Vine root extracts

These extracts are easy to produce and use simple solvents: water and / or alcohol:

Powder of water root extracts (dried extracts from maceration, decoction…),
Powder of ethanol (=alcohol) root extracts (dried extracts from tinctures…).

They are sometimes sold in capsules or powder as supplements, suggesting they can be taken by mouth. Important to note that they have an associated toxicity on the liver and kidney, reason why they never became a popular treatment. Also they are not normalized because they never were medicine.

They may be safe to use externally (poultice).

For example, brewing coffee or tea is to perform a plant extraction.

As a result, on one side, we get an extract: a tea or a coffee. And on the other side a residue of insoluble material: the wet tea leaves/the wet coffee ground.

By removing the solvent from the extract (in that case water) we can obtain instant coffee / tea: a dry extract.

In a word, an extract is the material that a given solvent takes from the original plant matter.

For the purpose of medicinal extraction, things quickly get very complex.

The reason is interesting components are most of the time not soluble in water or ethanol (=alcohol).

Solvents for plant medicinal extraction include methanol, various hexanes, ethyl-acetate, chloroform… sometimes combined. And there actually exist many techniques of extraction (temperature and pressure conditions may vary for example).

For each MO, the resulting extract contains different components.

Each extraction procedure is unique and the resulting components in the extract are specific from the technique.