Thick blood(blood clotting) treated with TCM Chinese Pangolin

What is Chinese Pangolin(Chuan Shan Jia)?
Also known as Manis pentadactyla, just as its Chinese name of Chuan Shan Jia implied, it refers to that mammal that is covered with armor-like brown overlapping horny scales and has the ability to dig hole. And it usually feeds on termites and ants. For that reason, it often goes by the name of scaly anteaters. However, looked from the TCM angle, it means only the medicinal part of the pangolin scales, namely squama manitis.

In addition to head, abdomen, and inner side of limbs, the pangolin’s scales have hard, sparse hair too. This scaly pangolin is about 1 meter in length, with small conical head, long snout without teeth, small round eyes, short sturdy limbs, and five toes with strong claws. The male ground pangolin has depression in the rear of the anus and testicles are not exposed. This cute animal is so shy and timid that it loves straying in its burrow, except for finding food and mating. The pangolin habitats are usually moist, including the grass in the foothills or shrubs in hilly place.

Chemical composition of pangolin scales
The pangolin scales contain stearic acid, cholesterol, N-butyl tricosylamide, cyclo (L-seryl-L-tyrosyl), cyclo (D-seryl-L-tyrosyl), and other 18 kinds of microelements like zinc, sodium, titanium, calcium, lead, silicon, phosphorus, iron, manganese, chromium, magnesium, nickel, copper, barium, boron, aluminum, molybdenum, and tin. The aqueous solution includes 16 types of free amino acids, such as aspartic acid, threonine, serine, glutamic acid, glycine, alanine, cysteine, valine, methionine, isoleucine, leucine, tyrosine, phenylalanine, lysine, arginine, and proline. Besides, it also contains volatile oil, water soluble alkaloids, and so on.

Pangolin scales health benefits
As mentioned earlier, the animal pangolin is full of treasures and known for its high medicinal value. So, what is the exact role that pangolin scales are playing?

Modern pharmacological actions
1. Effect of reducing blood viscosity. The experimental results showed that the decoction can significantly extend the clotting time and reduce blood clotting in rats;

2. Anti-inflammatory effect. Experimental results showed that the water extract and alcohol extract have significant anti-inflammatory effects on mice’s ear inflammation induced by croton oil (P <0.01, P <0.05). 3. Effects on mice normobaric hypoxia tolerance. The cyclic dipeptide Ⅵ and Ⅶ contained can increase the normobaric hypoxia tolerance of mice.