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Postpartum nutrition · 产后营养 · 11 min read

Is dang gui safe while breastfeeding?

当归 dāng guī · Chinese angelica root

Short answer · 简答

Dang gui is widely used in Chinese postpartum food from day 8 onwards (week 2), simmered in soups in small amounts (10-15 g per serving). The modern lactation database LactMed classifies it as “limited data, possibly compatible.” Avoid in week 1 (active bleeding phase). Skip entirely if you have a clotting disorder, take warfarin or hormonal contraceptives, or your midwife has asked you to monitor lochia closely.

1 · What dang gui actually is

Dang gui (当归, Angelica sinensis) is a root from the celery family, native to high-altitude regions of Gansu and Yunnan. Sliced and dried, it has a warm, slightly sweet, faintly medicinal smell. In Western herbal practice it is sometimes called “female ginseng,” though the comparison is loose. Its Chinese name translates to “return home,” reflecting its traditional role in restoring what the body has lost.

The pharmacology that researchers care about: ferulic acid, ligustilide, and several polysaccharides. The ones a TCM practitioner cares about: it is classified as warming, sweet, and slightly bitter, with affinity for the Heart, Liver, and Spleen channels. It is one of the four core blood-building herbs (补血四物: dang gui, shu di huang, bai shao, chuan xiong), all of which appear together in the classical formula Si Wu Tang (四物汤), the cornerstone TCM blood tonic.

In Chinese postpartum food, you most commonly see it as a few slices in a slow-simmered chicken soup, or in a herbal pack alongside huang qi and red dates.

2 · The TCM timing: why dang gui waits until week 2

The forty days of confinement are not one phase. Most diaspora mothers we’ve spoken with assume the whole programme is interchangeable. It is not. The TCM model splits the arc into four phases, and dang gui sits squarely in the second.

Week 1 · Recovery (排恶露 · pái è lù) · days 1-7. The body is still clearing lochia. The classical formula here is Sheng Hua Tang (生化汤), which contains dang gui but in a very specific bleeding-management formulation, used for a short window only and discontinued the moment lochia slows. Dang gui as a daily soup ingredient is not yet in the kitchen.

Week 2-3 · Rebuild (调补气血 · tiáo bǔ qì xuè) · days 8-21. The bleeding has slowed. Now the work is to rebuild blood. This is where dang gui enters as a daily-soup herb, simmered with chicken, pork ribs, or fish in small amounts.

Week 4 · Tonify (强身大补 · qiáng shēn dà bǔ) · days 22-28. The richest phase. Dang gui continues, often alongside the ten-herb tonic pack (十全大补汤).

Week 5-6 · Restore (缓补 · huǎn bǔ) · days 29-40. Dang gui appears less frequently. Food shifts towards more variety as the mother begins to re-enter normal life.

The reason for the week-1 wait is not arbitrary. Dang gui has a known mild blood-moving (活血) effect. During active lochia, the TCM concern is that blood-movers may prolong bleeding rather than help it close. The modern parallel is in the next section.

3 · What the modern evidence actually says about breastfeeding

Honest summary: the data is limited. Dang gui has not been extensively studied in lactating women in the way an FDA-licensed drug would be. What we have is what most postpartum-relevant herbal evidence looks like, traditional use plus targeted modern observation.

The most-cited modern reference is the US National Library of Medicine’s LactMed database (now hosted within the Drugs and Lactation Database). Its classification of dang gui notes:

MotherToBaby (US-based teratology service) gives a similar rating: limited human data, no clear evidence of harm at culinary doses, exercise caution with concurrent prescription medications.

Yue’s position is simple: at the quantities Chinese postpartum cuisine uses (10-15 g per pot of soup, drunk over multiple servings), and starting after week 1, dang gui has a 1,000-year safety record in lactating Han Chinese women. We treat it as compatible with breastfeeding in this context, while flagging the specific contraindications in section 5.

Yue is not a medical service. If you take any prescription medication or have any complication, run your dang gui plan past your midwife or GP before week 2. Most will be unfamiliar with the herb; printing this article and bringing it to the appointment is a reasonable shortcut.

4 · Safe quantities and how it shows up in real recipes

The Chinese pharmacopoeia (中华人民共和国药典) prescribes a daily medicinal dose of 6-12 g. Culinary use in postpartum food typically falls below that, because the herb is shared across a pot of soup that you eat from over two or three meals. Most home recipes use 10-15 g per pot, yielding around 4-5 g per serving.

To make that concrete, three recipes from the Yue plan that use dang gui:

Dang gui chicken soup (当归鸡汤) · week 2 onwards
Half a chicken · 15 g dang gui · 10 red dates · 6 g goji · ginger · 2 L water · 1.5 hr simmer.

Dang gui pork rib soup (当归排骨汤) · week 2-3
500 g pork ribs · 12 g dang gui · 8 g huang qi · ginger · 1.5 L water · 2 hr simmer.

Ten-herb tonic soup (十全大补汤) · week 4
Pre-packaged herb pouch typically contains 8 g dang gui among ten herbs · simmered with a whole chicken or pork ribs · 2 hr.

You are not drinking dang gui by the cup like a medicinal decoction. You are sharing 12-15 g with a pot of food across two or three days.

5 · When to skip dang gui entirely

These are the situations where the modern evidence makes us conservative. Each is a hard skip, not a “reduce the dose.”

6 · Where to buy dang gui in the UK and Netherlands

Most diaspora mothers don’t live next door to a Chinese apothecary. Here is what actually exists, with rough prices as of May 2026.

United Kingdom

Netherlands

A 30 g pack lasts about two weeks at the soup frequency above. If you are doing the full forty days, plan to buy 50-100 g across the arc.

7 · How Yue paces dang gui across your forty days

The trade-off this article describes (week 1 wait · week 2-3 daily soup · taper in week 4-6) is the trade-off Yue paces for you. Concretely:

The contraindication list in section 5 still holds. If any of those apply to you, Yue will not override your judgement; the recipe stays in the library but you can opt out of it for your whole forty days from the recipe page.

Yue is the forty-day companion that paces dang gui (and the other 70 ingredients) for you, day by day, with the cultural notes my po po would have given me. First week complimentary, then £29 in the UK or €35 in the Netherlands. One time, no subscription.

Begin your forty days →

Written by

Roselind Gan

Founder of Yue. Singaporean, married to a Dutch husband, in the Netherlands and expecting their first child. Her family cannot fly over for the forty days, so she is building this for herself. Yue is currently in active use by four other diaspora mothers in the Netherlands, Singapore, and Australia, all of whom love it.

Further reading

Last reviewed 11 May 2026. We update guides when the underlying evidence changes or when a reader flags a gap. Write to hello@yuesaozi.com.

Yue shares cultural and informational content rooted in Chinese postpartum tradition (坐月子). It is not a medical service and does not replace your midwife, GP, or obstetrician. We make no health, nutrition, or therapeutic claims about any food, drink, or herb featured here.