Affiliate disclosure

What a paid link is

Some formula pages include a link to buy a ready-made product. Those are paid links. If you buy through one, we earn a small commission.

You pay the same price either way. The commission comes out of Amazon's side, not yours.

Amazon is the only affiliate program we use right now.

What it pays for

Field Guide is free to read, and commissions are how we keep it that way. We do not make or sell any of these products.

What it does not change

A paid link never decides what we cover or what we tell you.

• We pick formulas based on what people are actually looking for, not on what earns.
• We match each formula to one product. If we cannot verify that the product is the formula, we leave it unlinked.
• We publish the reasons a formula might not fit you. The “Signs it isn't” and “Safety” sections cost us sales, and they stay.
• We point you to the product label over our own numbers, and to a practitioner when a question is bigger than a page.

Amazon is the retailer. They are not our source for formula information, dosage, or safety guidance. That comes from the classical texts and reference works we cite, and from the manufacturer's label.

If you would rather not use our links

Search the product name at a TCM pharmacy or any online retailer. You will get the same bottle. Nothing here is locked behind a purchase.

How we pick the product

Every formula page links to one product, never a list. We match it to the classical formula first, checking the English name, the Chinese name, the form, and the label dose. If we cannot confirm the product is the formula, we leave the page unlinked.

Why we default to Plum Flower

Contamination is a real problem in this category. The NIH notes that some Chinese herbal products have been found to contain heavy metals, pesticides, and compounds that were never on the label. The brand matters as much as the formula does.

Plum Flower publishes what they test for, and they test every batch. For teapills, that covers:

• Active ingredient constituents
• Moisture content and disintegration time
• Heavy metals, meaning lead, arsenic, mercury, and cadmium
• Microbial contamination

After that in-house testing, random batches go to independent accredited labs to confirm the heavy metal results. Their standards follow the Pharmacopoeia of the People's Republic of China.

Raw materials are species-verified before anything is made from them. That step matters, because a substituted botanical can be harmful.

You do not have to take our word for any of this. Read Mayway's manufacturing and testing process.

Plum Flower does not pay us and we have no relationship with them. They are our default because they publish more than most, and because you can check what they publish.

Questions

Questions about this disclosure? Reach us at hello@fieldguide.online.