Educational information, not medical advice — ask your doctor or midwife.
Lian Po Yin is a traditional Chinese herbal formula. People take it for short bouts of nausea, vomiting and loose stools. It is also used for a heavy, blocked feeling in the stomach.
It is not a single plant. The name covers one fixed recipe of seven herbs. Another name for it is Coptis and Magnolia Bark Decoction.
In Chinese medicine it is chosen for what practitioners call "damp-heat in the stomach and spleen". In plain words, that pattern looks like this:
nausea, with a greasy coating on the tongue
thirst, but no wish to drink
a burning or full belly
dark urine, and not much of it
It is a short-course formula. It is meant for an active bout, not for daily use.
Evidence verdict: it has a long, well-known place in one tradition. But we could not find good human trials of it. So its effects in people are unproven.
Long traditional use is not proof that something works. That point holds for everything on this page.
No one has shown how this formula works in people. What follows mixes traditional ideas with lab findings.
In traditional terms, the formula pairs a bitter, cooling herb (Coptis) with a warm, drying bark (magnolia). One is said to clear "heat". The other is said to move "dampness" and unblock the middle of the body.
The other herbs are said to settle the stomach and ease a restless mood.
In the lab, berberine from Coptis slows the growth of some gut bacteria. It also changes blood sugar handling in animals. Magnolia bark compounds calm smooth muscle in test tissue.
These are test-tube and animal findings. They do not tell you what happens when a person drinks the tea.
Water decoction (a tea simmered from raw sliced herbs). This is the classic form and the one most practitioners use.
Strong granules that melt in hot water.
Pills or capsules of the dried extract, sold by some makers.
Quality varies a lot between suppliers. Look for a product that lists every herb and its amount. Buy from a firm that tests for heavy metals and pesticides.
The formula comes from Huo Luan Lun ("Discussion of Cholera"). Wang Meng-Ying wrote it in 1862, during China's Qing dynasty. He made it for summer outbreaks of vomiting and diarrhoea.
It became part of the core teaching of Chinese herbal medicine. TCM colleges still teach it as a lead formula for damp-heat in the stomach. Outside East Asian medicine, it is little used.
See a doctor straight away if you have blood in your vomit or stool, a fever above 39C, severe belly pain, or signs of dehydration such as dizziness, a dry mouth and passing almost no urine.
Stop the formula and get urgent care if your skin or the whites of your eyes turn yellow, your urine turns dark, or you get pain under your right ribs — these can be signs of liver trouble.
Stop and call your doctor if you get shaky, sweaty or confused while taking diabetes medicine, or if a rash, swelling or trouble breathing starts after a dose.
Also see a doctor if your symptoms have not clearly improved after about 3 days, or if stomach upset keeps coming back.
Evidence grades and traditional-use labels are explained in our methodology. Nothing here is medical advice.
Reviewed by the HealisticMD editorial team How we grade evidence →
The published evidence for Lian Po Yin is weak or absent. That usually means no controlled trial has tested it, not that a trial found it ineffective — the two are different, and we grade only what has been published.
What it is typically used for, usual dose, cautions, and the study behind it where real trial data exists.
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