Oriental medicine in Japan

Traditional Herb Medicine(Kampo) has a long history and has been widely used in Japan for the therapeutic purpose for various disorders. A survey of the use of Kampo resulted in 67'$ of the gynecologists were prescribing Kampo, mainly for menopausal syndrome. Kampo medicine has an unique conceptrual system for diagnosis and treatment which called SHO. The climacteric symptoms improved in many cases, especially in those perimenopausal women who complained of depression and who were not responded to HRT. A significant improvement of SDS, STAI score was noticed. In animal studies, some of the Kampo formulae showed the effectiveness on freezing behavior and sleeping time induced by conditioned-fear stress, indicating that Kampo has an anti-anxiety effect.