Educational information, not medical advice — ask your doctor or midwife.
Qu Mai is a dried herb used in Chinese medicine, mostly for hot, painful urine that is hard to pass. It is the dried top part of the fringed pink plant (Dianthus superbus or Dianthus chinensis).
Qu Mai is one herb, not a formula. In practice, it is nearly always mixed with other herbs.
Old texts call Qu Mai bitter and cold. Herb experts use it to "drain damp-heat" from the bladder and to "move blood". In plain words, they reach for it for burning urine and for late or missing periods.
Here is the honest verdict on the evidence. Qu Mai has a long, well-recorded place in Chinese medicine. But almost none of it has been tested in people.
A long history of use is not proof that a herb works. Standing in a tradition and proof of effect are two different things. Nothing on this page is a promise of any result.
No one has shown how Qu Mai works in the body. What follows are ideas, not settled facts.
Lab and animal studies hint at two effects. The plant may raise how much urine you pass. It may also slow the growth of some germs in a dish.
Would either effect happen from a cup of tea? At the amounts a person drinks, no one knows.
The old account is a different kind of thing. Chinese medicine says Qu Mai clears "damp-heat" from the bladder and unblocks stuck blood. Those words describe a tradition, not the chemistry.
Most often, Qu Mai is sold as the cut, dried herb. You simmer it into a decoction, which is a strong boiled tea.
Common forms: - Loose dried tops, simmered in water as your herb expert tells you - Granules or extract powder, stirred into hot water - One herb inside old set formulas, such as Ba Zheng San, sold as pills or granules
Western shops rarely sell it as a capsule on its own. There is also no set extract strength you can count on.
Qu Mai is a very old herb. It shows up in the Shen Nong Ben Cao Jing, the first great Chinese herb book, written about the first to second century CE. It has stayed in use ever since.
It is best known as part of Ba Zheng San ("Eight Herb Powder for Rectification"). That formula for painful urine comes from the Song dynasty book Tai Ping Hui Min He Ji Ju Fang.
Its use spread to Japanese Kampo and to Korean practice. But its home tradition is Chinese.
See a doctor promptly if you have burning urine along with a fever, chills, vomiting, or pain in your back or side. That can mean the infection has reached a kidney.
Go to urgent care or emergency services if you see blood in your urine, cannot pass urine at all, or have severe one-sided back pain that comes in waves.
Stop the herb and call a doctor if you feel dizzy or faint, get muscle cramps or a fluttering heartbeat, notice a rash, or if urinary symptoms have not improved after two or three days.
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 Qu Mai 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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