Geng Nian An. Try saying it out loud. Go on, nobody's listening.
Something like "gung nyen an" gets you close enough. Hard to say the first time. By the third go you've got it, and once you know what the words actually mean, the bottle stops looking quite so mysterious.
It's a traditional Chinese herbal formula. Twelve herbs, made into a tablet. That's the short version. But the same two questions keep landing in our inbox (what are the twelve, and how do I take it?) so here's the long one.
The name, then
Three Chinese words.
Geng means change. Nian is year, or years. Put them side by side, tack qi on the end, and geng nian qi is the everyday Chinese word for the menopause. Changing years. More or less.
That made me laugh a bit when I first found out, because plenty of British nans just call it "the change". Same idea. Opposite ends of the world.
Then there's an, the last bit. Peace. Or safe. Or settled. Ask three people to translate it and you'll get all three. It's the same an that's in Tiananmen, by the way (gate of heavenly peace). Pub quiz fact for you.
But it's a name. Lots of old Chinese formulas have names that sound a bit poetic, and I'm not going to turn this one into a promise. What I can do is tell you what's in the bottle.
Hang on, it's a tablet?
Yep.
A lot of Chinese formulas were traditionally made the long way. Dried herbs in a pot of water, simmered for ages, liquid drunk warm. Some families still do it. (Anyone who's had a relative do this in a small flat knows. You can smell it from the stairs.)
This one skips the pot entirely. The herbs are concentrated and pressed into tablets, and the product page says each bottle has 180g of raw herbs in it, at a 5:1 ratio. 5:1 just means five parts raw herb went in for every one part of finished extract. That's the long and short of it.
The tablets also contain a few things that aren't herbs. Hypromellose, magnesium stearate, sodium silicate and polyethylene glycol. They're there so a tablet holds together like a tablet. Not thrilling!
For the label readers: it's vegan, gluten free and non-GMO, the herbs aren't sulphur treated, and the bottle can be recycled.
Right, what's actually in it?
Twelve herbs. Label goes biggest amount first. I'll roughly follow it and keep each one short. Promise.
Rehmannia (sheng di huang)
The biggest single amount in the whole formula. You'll see it sold as Chinese foxglove, which caused a small wobble in our office. It's not the purple foxglove from British hedgerows, before anyone panics. Different plant entirely. Di huang means something close to "earth yellow" and sheng means raw. What you're getting is the root, dug up and dried until it's dark and wrinkly.
Poria (fu ling)
Not a plant. It's a fungus that grows underground on the roots of pine trees, and it gets cut into chalky white chunks. In Beijing there's even a thin wafer snack made with it, called fu ling bing. Odd thing to find in a tablet next to a load of roots and vines? Maybe. It turns up in plenty of Chinese soups, though.
Uncaria vine (gou teng)
Gou means hook. Pick up a few of the dried stems and you'll see why straight away, because they have little curved hooks along them. Like something you'd find rattling round the bottom of a tackle box.
Polygonum vine and knotweed (shou wu teng and he shou wu)
These two get their own lines on the label. Same plant, though! He shou wu is the root and shou wu teng is the stem. And yes, it's a relative of the Japanese knotweed that makes estate agents go pale. A different plant, mind. Nobody's digging this one out of your patio.
Plantain rhizome (ze xie)
Not the plantain you fry with rice and peas. Not the weed on your lawn either. Ze xie comes from water plantain, which grows in shallow water around the edges of ponds. The rhizome is the chunky bit under the mud that the leaves shoot up from.
Magnolia vine fruit (wu wei zi)
You'll also see it called schisandra. Wu wei zi translates as "five flavour fruit", the idea being that one small red berry is sweet, sour, salty, bitter and pungent all at once. I chewed a dried one once out of nosiness. Sour, mostly, with something strange happening at the end that I still can't name.
Lily-turf root (mai dong)
Gardeners will know lily-turf. It's that grassy stuff people plant along the edge of a border, and the black mondo grass you see in posh front gardens is a relative. Mai dong is the little tuber that grows on its roots. Pale, plump, about as long as the top of your little finger.
Peony root bark (mu dan pi)
Mu dan is the tree peony. In China it's a big deal, a flower you'll see painted on everything from rice bowls to wedding gifts. The bark gets peeled off the root and dried into small curled tubes. Smallest amount on the label, this one.
And the other three
Morinda root, figwort root and glutinous rice root. They're all on the label as well. I'm keeping these three short on purpose, so have a read of the bottle for the details.
How do you take it?
The pack says six tablets a day. Three in the morning, three in the evening. It's usually taken with warm water after a meal, and if a practitioner has given you their own instructions, go with theirs.
Quick bit of maths. There are 60 tablets in a bottle, so at six a day one bottle lasts ten days. Which is why there's also a pack of six bottles, if you'd rather not be reordering every week and a half.
What actually works for me with anything twice a day is tying it to something I already do. Breakfast, and then tea in the evening. Some people use one of those days-of-the-week pill boxes from the chemist. Others set a reminder on their phone. Whatever stops you standing in the kitchen at 9pm going "did I, or didn't I?"
Do read the pack, though, not just this post. Labels get updated now and then, and what's printed on your bottle is the one that counts. If anything on it doesn't match what I've written here, believe the bottle.
Who should check with a doctor first?
Please don't skip this bit.
If you've got a health condition that's ongoing, your doctor needs to hear about this before you start. Same if you're on medication, or you already take other supplements or herbs. Your GP or a qualified practitioner can check nothing clashes. Five minute conversation.
It's sold for adult women. Not one for the kids.
Supplements aren't a stand-in for a varied diet and a decent lifestyle either. The page says that, and I agree with it.
And if the change itself is giving you a rough time, that's a conversation for your GP, not a blog post. Seriously. Book the appointment.
Worth knowing about?
Next time someone sees the bottle on your shelf and asks what on earth Geng Nian An is, you can tell them. A name about the changing years, a formula from Chinese tradition, and twelve herbs (one of which is a fungus, one of which has hooks) squashed into a tablet. Read the label first. If you're on anything at all, ask before you start.
Aura Nutrition sells Geng Nian An in bottles of 60 tablets and in packs of six bottles.
