For many people, oyster shells, also known as Concha Ostreae in Latin and Mu Li in mandarin, are just something worthless that is to be disposed of. What they care about is the oyster meat since this is a seafood delicacy with tons of health benefits on digestion improvement, calcium intake, detox function, liver care, beauty, skin care, yin nourishing, sex drive and libido boost, etc. However, don’t simply trash its shell either. The reason for doing so is twofold: oyster shell recycling is crucial to marine ecosystems, plus it is of high medicinal value. Medicinally it is commonly used in combination with Long Gu (Dragon Bones) for the treatment of Anxiety, Insomnia, Epilepsy, Migraine, stroke, palpitations, night emission, and so on. As you can see now, oyster shell has comparable or better medicinal uses.

Oyster shell health benefits
Modern medicine tends to believe that oysters contain a variety of nutrients that is necessary to the body. Clinically it is often combined with dragon bone since they has similar functions – tranquilization and liver-calming if used raw and astringency in the calcined form. More importantly, they supplement each other since oysters can also resolve hard lump while dragon bone has a better sedative action.

To better illustrate how it works, here we take its insomnia-healing property as an example. So, what is the difference between this herb and sleeping pills since both of them can help sleep disorder? To begin with, the former is a concept from traditional Chinese medicine while the latter comes from western medicine. And it doesn’t make any sense to compare them; then, they act at different mechanism – the source of the former’s healing power is its heavy nature, which traditionally is believed to calm agitated heart and spirit and get rid of timidity. And sleeping pills directly act on the nerve center to help sleep; furthermore, mineral and shell drugs have a wider range of application. But sleep pill only applies to temporary Insomnia caused by cute psychological Stress and physical illness or sleep disorders due to severe mental illness; finally, shell drugs work slowly and steadily, with no apparent side effects or addictive qualities. It can be tailored according to the needs of the individuals. Generally it is used as an assistance drug. Sleeping pills have definite and immediate curative effect.