Treating Common Cold & Flu with Chinese Medicine

Common Cold, or Flu, refers to a variety of disorders characterized by symptoms like headache, body ache, nasal congestion, sneezing, sore throat, fever, and chills. In some varieties acute nausea, vomiting and diarrhea occur. In healthy individuals, they are generally mild and self-limiting. Therefore, most people only experience it once or twice a year.

Chinese Medicine believes common cold/flu is caused by the invasion of superficial layers of a body by Pathogenic Wind, accompanied by Cold, Heat, Dampness, or Dryness. In susceptible individuals the pathogen may penetrate into deeper levels of the body, affecting the internal organs. The degree of penetration from an external pathogen largely depends on relative strength of the pathogen as well as the strength/weakness of the body’s resistance.

In ancient China, a great deal of attention was given to these seemingly mild conditions, with an emphasis on prompt treatment. The reason for this was that, in the early stage, common cold or Flu resembles their more serious counterparts, infectious warm febrile conditions.

Common Cold/Flu are generally predictable in their outcome, and resolve quickly with correct treatment. The key to success is timing – the earlier the intervention the faster the resolution. However, if the incorrect treatment applied or if the patient is frail or chooses to ignore the body’s signal through illness, the pathogen may progress further into the body and lodge in the internal organs, which leads to migraine headache, sinusitis, ear infection, acute bronchitis or pneumonia, or experience as the “cold never really went away”.

The way Chinese Medicine diagnoses and treats common cold or Flu is based on the differentiation with specific clinical features.

1. Wind Cold Pathogen:
• Acute simultaneous fever and chills with the chills more prominent that the fever
• Occipital headache
• No sweating
• Muscle aches, neck stiffness
• Nasal obstruction or runny nose with thin watery discharge
• Sneezing, cough or wheezing with watery mucus

Herbal Formula: Ginseng Powder to Overcome Pathogenic Influences

Folk remedies: Fresh Ginger Tea, Scallion soup, and Perillae leaf tea could warm the body and expel the cold pathogen.

2. Wind Heat Pathogen:
• Fever with mild chills or no chills, mild sweating
• Sore, dry or scratchy throat
• Headache
• Cough with thick or sticky mucus
• Nasal congestion, or nasal discharge which is thick and yellow

Herbal Formulas: Honeysuckle and Forsythia Pill or Mulberry leaf and Mum flower Pill

Folk Remedies: Mentha tea, Echinacea tea, Mulberry leaf tea, Cilantro soup, fresh pear, grapefruit, and ECT. those herbs could help the body to cool the heat and reduce the toxicity of virus and bacteria.

3. Wind Damp Pathogen:
• Fever with chills
• Headache and body ache with heaviness sensation
• Stomach pain
• Nausea and vomiting
• Stomach ache with diarrhea

Herbal Formula: Agastache Powder to Rectify the Chi

Folk Remedies: Orange peel tea with fresh ginger, miso noodle soup, dried prune tea with fresh ginger. For severe diarrhea brewing sliced fresh apple with green tea is effect to stop the watery diarrhea.

4. Wind Dry Pathogen:
• Dryness is the main feature, particularly in the nose, lips, mouth and throat
• Cracked lips
• Nose bleeding
• Headache
• Dry cough with little or no mucus
• Often occur during the Autumn and early Winter

Herbal Formula: Mulberry Leaf and Apricot Kernel Decoction

Folk Remedies: Steamed fresh pear with honey, lotus root juice, fresh water chest nut with sugar cane, dried persimmon with mulberry leaf soup, white tremellae mushroom with rock sugar… to moist the dryness and strengthen the Lung function.

Above descriptions are common types of clinic pattern one’s experience. Therefore, the earlier the diagnosis and treatment, the less the possibility of illness. Any treatment is recommended being under a Chinese medical practitioner’s advice.

- K.J. Clinic, 2006