In Thailand, traditional Chinese medicine is used by millions of people every year to treat everything from headache to stomach ache and liver failure to cancer. Some seem to work wonders while, for other traditional Chinese medicines, there are better more modern remedies out there.
One of the traditional Chinese remedies I sometimes use, though, and absolutely swear by for its efficiency, is a medicine called “Ya-hom”. Roughly translated in English to “Smells Nice Medicine”, Ya-Hom is used in Thailand to treat nausea and stomach ache, as well as for as a pick-me-up if you are tired or feel faint.
I use Ya-Hom if I occasionally wake up with a stomach ache or start to feel nauseous. It works every time.
I even saw Ya-Hom recently work wonders on a Thai friend who was literally projectile vomiting. Within 15 minutes of drinking a cup of Ya-Hom, she had stopped throwing up, and had fallen asleep.
She woke up an hour later feeling completely normal, with no nausea or vomiting from then on.
Ya-Hom can be bought at any Thai pharmacy as well as at pharmacies in just about any Thai supermarket. It is an over-the-counter medicine that is produced by Five Pagoda Pharmacy Co. Ltd. Thailand.
What is even better about Ya-Hom is it is cheap. A typical small box of Ya-Hom is only 12 baht (or 37 cents) in Thailand and it makes around 5 cups of the medicine. As you can take it every 3-4 hours, if you needed more than one cup, which you rarely do, you would get a couple of days supply out of it at least. For 37 cents!
It’s no wonder Thais use so much of it.
To take Ya-Hom, all you do is unscrew the bottle cap and put one level teaspoon in a cup or mug. Add water to make a full-sized drink and stir till the powder has dissolved. Drink it, and that’s that. If you forget, the instructions are in a sheet inside the box and, yes, they are in English as well as Thai and Chinese.
At first, you’ll notice a very strong peppermint smell. It is also an amazing nasal decongestant, which you can tell just by sniffing it, but as the company also says it can be inhaled as well as drunk, that’s not surprising.
What I do know is, as soon as I drink a cup of Ya-Hom, my stomach problems are completely gone in less than 15-30 minutes. So, if you’ve have a dodgy stomach, or are feeling like you want to throw up, it is definitely worth a try.
Ingredients in Ya-Hom : Agastache Herba(Huo Xiang), Lysimachia Herba (Ling xiang cao), Citrus Peel (Chen Pi), Cinnamon Bark (Rou gui), Chinese mint (mentha arvensis)(bo he), Sichuan lovage rhizome (Chuanxiong), Licorice root (gan cao), Clove flower (ding xiang), Agarwood wood (Aquillaria Agallocha)(chen xiang), Southern tsangshu Rhizome (cang zhu), Angelica anomalla Rhizome (bai zhi) and Menthol.
