Cow's Milk

Traditional Use

Primary Actions

• Tonifies deficiency and nourishes weakness - Niu Ru is treated in food-medicine tradition as a gentle restorative for fatigue, emaciation, and convalescence when fluids and nutritive substance are depleted.
• Benefits the Lung and Stomach while generating fluids - it is used for dry cough, thirst, regurgitation, and wasting patterns when dryness or lack of fluids affects the upper and middle burner.
• Moistens the intestines and relieves dryness-related constipation - the lubricating quality of milk makes it especially useful when constipation comes from depletion or lack of fluids rather than heat excess.
• Supports Blood and softens deficiency-type irritability - older dietetic traditions treat milk as a nutritive substance that can supplement the weak without requiring a strong herbal formula.

Secondary Actions

• Niu Ru belongs more to food therapy than to ordinary decoction-style materia medica, so preparation and tolerance matter as much as abstract properties.
• Its slightly cold, moistening nature helps dryness and wasting but can burden patients whose main problem is cold-damp, weak digestion, or heavy phlegm accumulation.

Classical References

• Traditional herb and dietetic references describe Niu Ru as sweet and slightly cold, entering the Heart, Lung, and Stomach to tonify deficiency, generate fluids, moisten the intestines, and benefit the weak.
• Food-therapy literature especially values milk for dry constipation, consumptive thirst, and convalescent weakness rather than for aggressive disease-transforming work.
• Its long-standing use as nourishment explains why Niu Ru is treated more like a medicinal food with pattern cautions than like a strongly directional crude drug.