Latest news with #herbalmedicine
Bloomberg
2 days ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
Herbal Medicine Stock With No Sales Rallies 64,000%
A biotech stock focused on herbal medicine has surged by more than 64,000% so far this year and yet, the company itself has made zero revenue — much less turned a profit. The unbelievable rally has transformed Regencell Bioscience Holdings Limited, a penny stock as recently as April, to one worth more than $20 billion in market value. A year ago, the stock had a market capitalization of just $53 million. This is despite the company having a net loss of $4.4 million for its fiscal year that ended June 2024, a 28% decrease from the previous year.
Telegraph
19-05-2025
- General
- Telegraph
My mum's dead to me: why women are cutting ties with their toxic parent
The last time I spoke to my mother was three and a half years ago. She'd spent 15 minutes yelling at me down the phone. It was so loud and vicious that my two daughters, who are now aged 11 and 14, could hear her every word. It was at that point I told her 'I don't need this', and I haven't heard from her since. For the first 10 years of my life I was raised by my maternal grandmother in Italy, with mum rarely around. She worked away, and when she did come home she tried to force me to behave as she wanted, even though I felt little connection to her. I found her overbearing and her demands were often overwhelming and confusing. Then when I was 12, mum moved from our hometown in Italy to Ireland, and I joined her after I finished college. 'I thought she was my best friend' The disruption meant my childhood was chaotic and messy, and while I didn't look for support then, I think I would have been diagnosed with depression from my early teens if I had. As an adult, to get myself in a better place emotionally, I studied herbal medicine, started practising yoga, and became a reiki master. I met my husband 17 years ago, during a chaotic period in my life which heavily involved my mother, and we went on to have two children. But around six years ago I felt everything in my life was going belly up. Work was stalling, our marriage was going badly, and my relationship with my eldest daughter had become increasingly difficult. Up until that point, my mother had been the world to me. Even though I'd always felt like there was some sort of crazy competition between us, I thought she was my best friend. Despite my fractured childhood relationship with her, we had grown to be super close, although she did interfere in my relationship with my grandmother. Still, I was the only member of my family who didn't fight with her, and believed I was breaking my family's generational curse of mothers and daughters with disastrous relationships. Then, I started to delve deeper into into my emotions and was confronted with some hard truths about my mother, although I still had no idea what maternal narcissism was, and I had no idea what 'no contact' was, either. In early 2022 we were talking on the phone – she had since moved back to Italy – and things got heated. She began yelling at me and calling me names, and something in me clicked. I thought: 'That's it! She does this all the time, and I'm always putting up with it. But I'm not going to do it any more.' I calmly told her I had something else to do and I wouldn't accept her behaviour any more. That was the last time we spoke. 'I am happy with my decision and I am entirely unmovable' The fall-out from my decision made me realise something was seriously 'off' in our relationship. She turned it into a big story about me having hung up on her, being the bad daughter. I was the problem for being too sensitive. Family members tried to get involved and fight my mother's corner, a classic 'flying monkeys' scenario, where a narcissistic person will despatch others to do their dirty work. My grandparents would ask me, 'How can one phone call be the issue?' Every now and again someone will raise the prospect of me talking to my mother again, but I am happy with my decision and I am entirely unmovable. I was never able to say no to her, or to anyone else, and not everyone is comfortable with me now being able to confidently use that word. I have had support from my dad, who has been divorced from my mum for decades. He has been understanding. He could see how enmeshed I was with her, and how that relationship controlled my life emotionally. I do think that the physical distance between us – she lives near Florence – has made going no contact easier in a sense. But it hasn't just been a case of removing myself from my mother's orbit. I've had to do a lot of work on myself, too. 'Going no contact has given me the space to look deep into myself' Do I have regrets that she's not in my daughters' lives? The short answer is no. I talk about her with them and they know the whole story. Thankfully, their great-grandmother is very present, and that's who they call granny. And, until she passed away two years ago, they also had an amazing grandmother on their dad's side. I used to catch myself repeating the patterns from my own childhood. My behaviour was similar to my mum's and it was impacting my girls' confidence, their capacity to relate to others and their capacity to relate to me. Going no contact has changed that. It has given me the space to look deep into myself and see how I was behaving with my daughters. Now I am much closer to them, and we have a beautiful, open relationship. I can take responsibility and apologise if I say something that's off, and they feel comfortable telling me anything – even if it's to tell me I've said something which has upset them. What I have learnt from my own experience has empowered me to help other women heal their mother wounds. It powers my podcast, Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers, and the group- and one-on-one healing I do with other women who are struggling with the legacy of how they were parented. Find out more about Matilde's work here and listen to Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers on Spotif y. A therapist on how to deal with a narcissistic mother Sally Baker I've had clients who've had incredibly toxic and damaging relationships with their mothers, but unless they have been truly abusive – sexually, or physically – and it has carried on into adulthood, I don't generally advise cutting off contact. Put boundaries in place In some extreme cases, where the now-adult child feels like they've been groomed or are so disempowered in the relationship with their mother that they simply can't put boundaries in place, or come up with any rationale where they can protect themselves, I believe that no contact can be used as a last resort. Instead, what is really useful to explore when trapped in a difficult maternal dynamic is to work on building your resilience. Many women struggle to put boundaries in place, but I believe that learning the skills and building the confidence to do that should be the first step. Putting in boundaries is about placing brackets and scaffolding to structure that relationship in a way that suits you. It can be as simple as reducing a weekly call to a monthly one, or placing a time limit for how long your conversations or meet ups are. Address your inner child People go to great lengths to escape negative parenting, or a really toxic relationship with their parents, but it's possible to get the same sense of relief by doing their own psychological work in therapy. I often do 'two chair' work with clients whose mother has died, or they're not in contact with, where you talk to the absent parent. The pain they feel is as real and as raw as if the mother was still alive or in the room, so just going no contact isn't going to work – you need to focus on emotional healing, too. Until people address their hurting inner child, they may continue to run a pattern in their lives where they choose sexual and romantic partners who play out the same scenario they experienced in childhood. Whether it's spending years in a one-sided relationship with someone who truly won't commit to them, or it can be a scenario where it's someone who puts them down and mistreats them, they'll be caught in a loop of negative scenarios that are playing out and replicate that earlier relationship. No contact is a last resort There's no way I am advocating for women to be open to continued verbal or emotional abuse from their mother, but I just don't feel in most cases that going no contact is the answer. I'm more for doing the work, getting it resolved and released and then, when you have clarity, decide what you want to do. Protecting yourself and holding someone at distance comes with pain, and it comes with emotional fallout, so it's not a decision to be taken lightly.
The Guardian
09-05-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
‘No one's buying anything now': how tariffs are striking a blow to historic Chinatowns
On a balmy afternoon last month, Amy Tran unboxed a delivery at Yue Wa Market, a small grocery and herbal medicine shop in Los Angeles's Chinatown that she opened 17 years ago. The package contained two dozen units of Shou Wu Chih, a Chinese herbal concoction known to rebuild kidney function and promote hair health. The shipment arrived two weeks after the US implemented new tariffs on Chinese imports, so her distributor charged her $115, a $35 markup from her previous order. Tran said she had no choice but to increase the retail price from $6 to $7. It's a steep up-charge for her customers, who are primarily Chinese seniors living off food stamps, some barely able to afford to buy a piece of fresh fruit or vegetable. The tariffs have exacerbated her already dire financial situation. For the past three years, Tran said she had netted no profit, some months not even generating enough sales to cover rent. And she may soon have to raise prices on the dozens of other imported products on her shelves, she said, including an abundance of Asian sauces, dry noodles, ginseng and ointments. But at 58, she sees few other options. 'At my age, it's hard to find work anywhere else,' Tran said in Mandarin. 'I'm just taking it day by day.' Donald Trump's bruising trade war with China poses an existential threat to immigrant-run businesses in Los Angeles' Chinatown – as well as historic Chinatowns across the country, from New York City to San Francisco – many of which rely heavily on Chinese imports that have few alternatives in the US. As duties on Chinese products rose to 145%, longtime shop owners, who sell everything from jade stones to traditional medicine, say they are bracing for a financial fallout that could compound losses they have been accumulating since the early days of the pandemic. Robert Lee is the third-generation owner of Jin Hing Company, a small jewelry and antiques shop cloistered on Bamboo Lane, a remnant of Old Chinatown. Lee's father and grandfather opened the shop in 1933, selling imported valuables like jade bracelets and rings, and antiques dating back to the Qing dynasty, such as porcelain snuff bottles and clay teapots. Jin Hing imports jewelry from a Chinese supplier once a quarter, and Lee said there was enough inventory for the next few months. But if the current tariffs hold until the fall, Lee said he'll have to start sourcing jewelry elsewhere – which will be more cumbersome and expensive. 'If we didn't own the building, we'd be in a lot of trouble,' he said. The tariffs also affect his business on the export end, as US customers often shop for antiques to bring back to China. Since China retaliated with duties of up to 125% on US goods, Lee said demand has dropped. For Lee, 79, the trade war brought back memories of the store's earlier years. Before President Richard Nixon's historic China trip in 1972, tariffs were high and trade between the two countries had been very limited. 'We couldn't get anything from China then,' he said, adding that his father could import only from Hong Kong. Community-serving businesses like grocery stores and herbal shops are integral to Chinatown, providing basic goods at low prices to its sizable population of families and seniors, said Laureen Hom, the author of The Power of Chinatown, a close study of the politics that shaped the neighborhood in the early 21st century. 'Chinatowns are an ecosystem with a residential, commercial and institutional component that is defined by and serves the Chinese American community,' Hom said. 'When one of those components changes, it has a ripple effect on the others.' The business component has been in decline for much of the past decade, with Chinatown's last full-service grocery store, Ai Hoa Market, shuttering in 2019 after 30 years in operation. The closure of longtime institutions like Empress Pavilion, a banquet hall that drew mammoth lines for its dim sum, drove down foot traffic, which smaller businesses depended on for survival. In addition to a loss of heritage and history, Hom said, the diminishing influence of Chinatown further shrinks housing and employment opportunities for working-class Asian immigrants in LA, an increasingly unaffordable city to live in. 'The tariffs add on to the current uncertainties that Chinatown business owners were already facing for several decades,' Hom said, such as 'suburban growth, gentrification pressures from downtown and neighboring areas, and the economic downturn and anti-Asian sentiment spurred by the pandemic'. Some 12,000 people live in LA's Chinatown, about half of whom are Asian. The median household income is roughly $36,000, less than half the countywide average. The Chinese community, though smaller than some other enclaves around LA like Monterey Park and Alhambra, is disproportionately working class and elderly. At the same time, Chinatown has undergone significant demographic changes in recent years, said Eugene Moy, a community historian and member of the Chinese historical society of southern California. As the neighborhood gentrified, Moy said, more affluent residents have moved in, enticed by market-rate apartments and newer, upscale businesses and restaurants that are largely inaccessible to working-class tenants. 'There will always be lower-income folks whose incomes cannot keep up with this market economic growth,' Moy said. For Mary Lu Wang, owner of the gift shop Jadetime e-Gifts, these broader demographic changes and continued decline in tourism poses a more immediate threat to her business than the tariffs. Wang, 74, said she used to order new products every month from her brother's factory in China, but now does it just once a year due to a lack of business. More than a decade ago, she owned three gift shops in Chinatown. She said her shop carries traditional gift items that can't be found at the dozen other gift shops in Chinatown, like the hand-painted oil paper umbrellas, constructed with bamboo and wood, that are manufactured only at her brother's factory. She sells them at wholesale prices, but still few are buying. Last Tuesday, Wang made $27 off a couple of umbrellas; the following day, she made $58. A few years ago, she said she often pocketed $400 to $500 a day. If the tariffs stay at their current rate when her inventory runs low, she said she'll surely have to raise prices – though she's not losing sleep over it. 'What's the point of fretting about what might happen in the future?' Wang said in Mandarin. 'No one's buying anything now.'
