This article is From Marie Claire Magazine
October 2007

CHINESE HERBS ARE more effective at battling period pain than conventional drugs, claim researchers.

A group in Australia has discovered that herbal mixtures, including liquorice root, cinnamon bark and fennel fruit, will relieve painful cramps far better than anti-inflammatories or the Pill.

More than 3,5000 women took part in 39 individual trials across four countries to test the different forms of pain relief.

“All available measures of effectiveness confirmed the overall superiority of Chinese herbal medicine to placebo, no treatment, anti-inflammatory drugs, the contraceptive pill, acupuncture and heat compression,” said the lead author of the report, Xiao Shu Zhu, from the University of Western Sydney’s Centre for Complementary Medicine Research.

In my Chicago practice I often use Acupuncture and Chinese herbs to ease PMS with great success.