By Eric Brand

A few months ago, I found myself in a trade show next to the Yin Care booth. I’d prescribed Yin Care before for patients and I’ve used the original product that inspired it in China, but I had no idea that I would someday find the stuff habit-forming. Daniel, one of the friendly faces behind the operation, innocently gave me a sample of the mouthwash and now that I’ve finished the bottle I can’t go without it.

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Usually when I find some inspirational prepared product I try to duplicate it myself so that I can cheaply make a big batch from scratch. The recipe for Shou Wu Chih (the “wooch”) featured in this past blog is an example of a commercial product that comes out better when it is homemade. However, this time I seem to have acquired a taste for a product that requires way too much sophistication in terms of materials and equipment, and I have no choice but to buy a new bottle from Daniel each and every time. Overlooking the fact that they just hooked me personally for life, the Yin Care phenomenon is fueled by a little stroke of genius that I really admire.

The thing that makes Yin Care brilliant is its simplicity. The mother formula, Jie Er Yin, is an extremely common prepared medicine that can be found in virtually any pharmacy in China. Literally hundreds of millions of bottles of the stuff are sold annually, and it is universally regarded as a very effective product for a wide range of conditions. People use it as general hygiene wash, and it is particularly well-known in China for yeast infections (it also has a reputation as a post-coital wash). In reality, the stuff can be used for virtually anything from fungal infections to itching to damp-heat skin problems in general.

By focusing in on one unique product with proven efficacy, the Yin Care folks made a business move that no other company had really considered. Although it is only one simple product, Jie Er Yin is extremely complex from a manufacturing standpoint because it requires essential oils and other extracts that are hard to duplicate without the right lab setup. Nobody else can easily make a comparable competing product, and the Yin Care folks have nailed the product, the concept, and the distribution so perfectly so that virtually any other company that ever bothered to compete with them would surely show up with too little, too late. Yin Care gets phenomenal reviews from customers so many other companies and distributors carry it (Blue Poppy included). Best of all, no one can duplicate the product and it doesn’t compete with any of the existing products that distributors carry, so the Yin Care folks have a perfect niche all to themselves. From the perspective of medicine and business alike, I admire the thinking that went into their venture.

In my mind, making the mouthwash in addition to the core body/genital wash product was another stroke of genius. After all, damp-heat skin problems only affect a small percentage of the population, but we all have mouths. By removing the Tu Jing Pi, bumping up the mint extract and diluting the concentration down to a dull roar, the same essential recipe can be used as a mouthwash. This allows the Yin Care people to make two totally different products while enjoying the economy of scale that results from a common manufacturing process.

I’ve been really interested in the links that researchers are finding between oral health and systemic health, and I’ve tried a variety of herbal and conventional oral products in both homemade and commercial forms. After finishing the first bottle of Yin Care mouthwash, I find that I can really feel its benefits and I miss it when I’m out. By nature I don’t like to blog about commercial products and I usually prefer to make my own concoctions from scratch, but as I find myself heading downstairs to get another bottle of that mouthwash I thought it wouldn’t be such a bad thing to spread the word. Even from a purely academic and clinical perspective, it is distinctive stuff.