At the beginning of this year, I got a pretty nasty cold that lasted for over a month. To help speed up my recovery, my mom went to the Asian supermarket on Central Ave. and bought me some cough syrup called "Nin Jiom Pei Pa Koa". I've had it before when I was little and I remember it being so thick and cool, like Vicks Vapor Rub meets molasses. It smelled like concentrated herbal tea, specifically oolong tea. Honestly, it wasn't the worst cough syrup I've ever had and it definity beat Nyquil or that typically over-the-counter cherry flavored cough syrup you can get at CVS. I have to say as well that it actually helped my recovery a lot.
Recently, I began to look at the ingredients of this honey/sucrose based syrup to see what kinds of extracts and ingredients they used. Here is the list of them:
- loquat leaf
- fritillary
- balloon flower root
- snake gourd seed
- sand root
- senega root
- tuckahoe
- licorice root
- ginger root
- five flavored seed
-peppermint
One thing that I find really interesting is that fact that there is licorice root in the syrup. If you think about it, I could understand why this would be an ingredient. Licorice is harsh flavor that opens up the one's airways when they consume it (like wasabi). Maybe this helps with congestion in the airways. Peppermint is also very aromatic and could act in the same way as licorice. Ginger root is commonly used for medicine as well, but I usually use it only for stomach aches.
The rest of the ingredients I have never heard of and plan to research more about. Hopefully I can get my hands on other medicines and compare their ingredient lists to see if there are any common ingredients.
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