Liu Ji Nu (Artemesia)

Chinese Herb Actions

Chinese Herb Dosage

• What is the typical dosage of Liu Ji Nu?

  3–10 g in decoction (Chen & Chen) or 9–15 g (Bensky) — a genuinely wide spread for a single herb, and one the two references do not resolve between. The lower figure starts well below the higher one’s minimum, so the choice of reference materially changes the prescription.

  • Decoction — both recorded ranges are given above; the aerial parts of the plant are used.
  • Topical use — the herb is also recorded here for external application to bleeding, contusions and burns, which is consistent with its reputation as a trauma remedy in folk as well as formal practice.
  • An overdose note applies — excessive amounts are recorded as causing vomiting and diarrhoea, which is a practical reason the lower end of the range is not simply an underdose. See the toxicity section.

  Discrepancy note: the two published ranges held here (3–10 g and 9–15 g) overlap only at 9–10 g. This is reported as recorded rather than reconciled; it appears to reflect a genuine editorial difference between the two references rather than a transcription error, and the herb has no modern dose-finding data to arbitrate it.

  Source: Sacred Lotus sources & references (both recorded reference ranges, the topical-use note and the overdose note, as held on file). Reference only — not a prescription.

Chinese Herb Contraindications & Cautions

• Are there cautions for Liu Ji Nu? Is it safe in pregnancy?

  It is contraindicated in pregnancy, and it should not be used for anything other than excess patterns. Both cautions are recorded on this site, and both follow directly from what the herb does. A forceful blood-breaker that moves the menses is exactly the class of herb the tradition prohibits in pregnancy.

  • Pregnancy — contraindicated. Recorded plainly here. Herbs that break blood stasis and promote menstruation are prohibited in pregnancy across the materia medica, and this one is at the stronger end of that group.
  • Excess patterns only — recorded here as a rule, not a suggestion. It is not to be used in deficiency presentations; a breaking herb given to a depleted patient does harm without doing the work it was chosen for.
  • Heavy or prolonged menstrual bleeding — the general caution for blood-movers, which by their nature can increase bleeding.
  • Trauma is a medical situation. A reference note about the setting rather than the herb: fractures, head injury and significant contusions require conventional assessment. The traditional indications are documented here as reference facts, not as instructions for treating an injury.
  • Excessive dose — recorded as causing vomiting and diarrhoea; see the toxicity note.

  Source: Sacred Lotus sources & references (the recorded pregnancy contraindication, the excess-patterns-only rule and the overdose entry, as held on file); category cautions per materia medica consensus, cross-referenced against multiple online sources. Reference note, not a safety guarantee.

Chinese Herb Toxicity & Overdose

• Is Liu Ji Nu toxic?

  It is not classed among the toxic materia medica, but this record does document a dose-related effect: excessive amounts can cause vomiting and diarrhoea. That is a digestive-irritant effect of overdose rather than organ toxicity, and it is consistent with a bitter, forceful herb.

  • Dose-related, not idiosyncratic — the recorded effects belong to excess intake, not to ordinary use within the reference ranges.
  • Long dietary and medicinal history — the ethnopharmacology review of the species describes more than 1,300 years of medicinal use in China and notes that in some regions the plant is treated as having both medicinal and edible properties.
  • No formal safety evaluation exists. No clinical safety study of this herb could be confirmed in the literature, and the same review calls explicitly for quality-control standards and marker compounds to be established for the species — which is an honest statement of how much is still unstandardised.
  • Species confusion is a safety issue in its own right — because two unrelated plants are sold under this name (see notes), botanical verification of supplied material matters here more than for most herbs.

  Source: Sacred Lotus sources & references (recorded toxicity entry); history of use, edible status and quality-control gap per PMID 37245709, DOI 10.1016/j.jep.2023.116663. Neutral reference facts — not a safety guarantee.

Western / Biomedical Research

Chinese Herb Clinical Studies & Research

Provided as research context — a summary of published biomedical study, not a therapeutic or medical claim.

• Is there modern research on Liu Ji Nu (Artemisia anomala)?

  Yes — a modest but coherent preclinical literature, and one of its main findings lines up neatly with the traditional use. A 2023 review in the ethnopharmacology literature catalogued 125 compounds isolated from the species and summarised the pharmacology as anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, hepatoprotective, antioxidant — and anti-platelet-aggregation, which is about as close as laboratory work gets to “invigorates the blood.” There are no controlled clinical trials.

  • The review in outline — the same paper records more than 1,300 years of use in China for rheumatic complaints, dysmenorrhoea, enteritis, hepatitis, haematuria and burn injury, and notes modern Chinese clinical application in rheumatoid arthritis, dysmenorrhoea, irregular menstruation, traumatic bleeding, hepatitis, soft-tissue contusion, and burns and scalds. The constituent classes are terpenoids, triterpenoids, flavonoids, phenylpropanoids and volatile oils. The authors are candid that mechanism-based evaluation and clinical research remain insufficient.
  • Anti-inflammatory work is the largest strand — an ethyl acetate extract showed potent anti-inflammatory activity in 2014; a 2022 study in bone-marrow-derived macrophages found an ethanolic extract inhibited interleukin-1β release by blocking activation of the NLRP3 inflammasome, and reproduced an anti-inflammatory effect in a colitis model in mice; and a 2021 study reported that the herb reduced atopic-dermatitis-like skin lesions in mice and suppressed pro-inflammatory mediators in stimulated human keratinocytes. Cell and animal work throughout.
  • Chemistry — the species is a productive source of unusual sesquiterpene lactones, including dimeric guaianolides, alongside prostaglandin-like fatty acid derivatives; a 2025 paper described new phytyl and chromomoric acid derivatives with cytotoxic and anti-inflammatory activity in vitro.
  • What has not been studied — there is no modern investigation of the herb’s traditional trauma indication as such: no fracture, contusion or wound-healing model, and no clinical trial for injury or for menstrual pain. The anti-platelet finding is the only laboratory result that speaks to the blood-moving action, and it is a long way from a clinical claim.

  All of the above is laboratory, cell and animal evidence, reported as context. None of it demonstrates clinical efficacy and none of it is a treatment claim.

  Sources: PMID 37245709, DOI 10.1016/j.jep.2023.116663 (botany, traditional uses, phytochemistry, pharmacology and quality control review; 125 compounds; anti-platelet aggregation); PMID 35597027, DOI 10.1016/j.phymed.2022.154163 (NLRP3 inflammasome inhibition in macrophages and a murine colitis model); PMID 24744815, PMC 3972921, DOI 10.1155/2014/681352 (ethyl acetate extract, anti-inflammatory effect); PMID 34500860, PMC 8433842, DOI 10.3390/molecules26175427 (atopic-dermatitis-like lesions in mice; pro-inflammatory mediators in keratinocytes); PMID 22296150, DOI 10.1080/10286020.2011.634802 (new guaianolides); PMID 20552489 (prostaglandin-like fatty acid derivatives); PMID 40885214, DOI 10.1016/j.fitote.2025.106847 (new phytyl melilotic acid ester and chromomoric acid derivatives, cytotoxic and anti-inflammatory activity). Research context, not a therapeutic claim.

Chinese Herb Notes

• Are there two different plants called Liu Ji Nu?

  Yes, and this is the single most important thing to know about the herb. Two unrelated plants are sold under the name, distinguished in Chinese by a compass point:

  • Nan Liu Ji Nu (南刘寄奴, “southern”) — Artemisia anomala S. Moore, family Asteraceae. This is what the pharmaceutical Latin held on this record, Herba Artemisiae Anomalae, specifies, and it is the plant this entry describes.
  • Bei Liu Ji Nu (北刘寄奴, “northern”) — Siphonostegia chinensis Benth., family Orobanchaceae. A completely different plant in a completely different family, used mainly for jaundice and damp-heat rather than for trauma. Its documented constituents include verbascoside and dicaffeoylquinic acids, chemistry that has nothing in common with the sesquiterpene-lactone-rich Artemisia.

  Both names appear in the modern research literature, explicitly labelled. If a supplier or a study says “Liu Ji Nu” without a qualifier, the botanical name is the only reliable guide.

  What is the difference between Liu Ji Nu, Yin Chen, Qing Hao and Ai Ye?

  Four Artemisia species held here, four completely different medicines. The genus name on a label tells you almost nothing — and Liu Ji Nu is the outlier of the four, because it is the only blood-mover among them.

  • Liu Ji Nu (this herb) — Artemisia anomala. Bitter, warm; Heart, Spleen. Breaks blood stasis; the trauma and amenorrhoea herb. Filed under herbs that invigorate the blood, not under heat-clearing herbs at all.
  • Yin Chen — Artemisia capillaris. Bitter, spicy, cool; Liver, Spleen, Gallbladder, Stomach. The principal jaundice and damp-heat herb; young spring shoots.
  • Qing Hao — bitter, cold; Kidney, Liver, Gallbladder. For deficiency heat and the alternating fever of malarial disorders; the plant from which artemisinin was isolated.
  • Ai Ye — Artemisia argyi, mugwort leaf. Bitter, spicy, warm; Spleen, Liver, Kidney. Warms the channels and stops bleeding, and is the plant moxa is made from.

  The pattern worth remembering: two of the four are heat-clearers (Yin Chen and Qing Hao), one is a warming, bleeding-stopping moxa plant (Ai Ye), and one — this one — is a warm blood-breaker for injury. Only Liu Ji Nu is filed outside the heat-clearing and blood-stopping groups entirely.

  What is Liu Ji Nu combined with?

  Traditionally it is paired with other trauma and blood-moving herbs rather than used alone — with Ru Xiang and Mo Yao for the pain of contusion and sprain, with Dang Gui and Chuan Xiong where the pattern is menstrual, and with digestive herbs such as Shan Zha where the food-stasis indication is being used. This site holds no formula containing it, which is a fair reflection of how much more often it appears in trauma liniments and folk practice than in the classical formula canon. (Traditional combination context, not treatment advice.)

  Identity note flagged, not corrected: the Chinese characters held on this record read 刘寄 (two characters) and the tone-marked pinyin reads “Liú jì” — both appear to be truncated by one syllable relative to the three-character name Liu Ji Nu that the record’s own pinyin, English name and translation all use. These identity fields have been left exactly as held and are flagged here for review rather than changed.

  Source: Sacred Lotus sources & references (the herb records for Liu Ji Nu, Yin Chen, Qing Hao and Ai Ye — Latin, nature, flavour, channels and category — as held on file); cross-referenced against multiple online sources and materia medica consensus; the Nan / Bei distinction per PMID 35597027, DOI 10.1016/j.phymed.2022.154163 (Artemisia anomala as “Nan-Liu-Ji-Nu”) and PMID 42040628, PMC 13107242, DOI 10.3389/fchem.2026.1790228 (Siphonostegia chinensis as “Bei Liu Ji Nu”, with its verbascoside and dicaffeoylquinic acid constituents).