A working order for people who actually prescribe blends
In this medicine you rarely hand someone one leaf and walk away. You match a formula to a person, then you change it. The house blends on this site — the formula index — are starting points, not commandments.
1. Diagnosis before the jar
Main complaint, then the terrain: food, sleep, infections, grief, a liver that has been working for two decades of beer. “Urinary trouble” is not a diagnosis. “Stones, scant water, chili every night, and a job that never ends” is closer.
2. Category — by function, not by ICD code
- Calm and sleep
- Women’s cycles (see Susurro del Inia)
- Vitality (Corazón del Puma)
- Digestion (Tapir Verde)
- Urinary and kidney (Espíritu del Lago)
- Metabolic / sugar terrain (Elixir del Quetzal — support, not a diabetes drug)
- Immune tone (Mezcla Jaguar)
- Deep cleanse / Lluvia Sagrada
- Long illness accompaniment (Esencia de Mariposa Azul) — accompaniment. Not “the cancer formula.”
3. The four combination rules
Proven pairs first. Synergy second. Overlapping actions third. Treat the illness and the person fourth. I unpack the rules with plants in How to combine plants. I argue why blends beat isolates in Why use herbal formulas.
4. Dose, time, then change it
Decoction or whole powder, weeks not days, look again every two to four weeks. Start cleanse, then tonic — that sequence is older than our brand names. If nothing moves, the formula is wrong or the dieta is missing. Read the dieta essay.
When to use a single plant instead, and when to refuse a blend, is a different essay: When to use herbal formulas.
