Today, as an exciting sequel to my video on CHM and infectious illness, I present my experience being on the receiving end of a Wind - Damp - Cold pathology 😅.

Chinese medicine has multiple systems for categorising infectious illness, most of which are very different from the virus / bacterium-based categorisations of Western medicine. Though myself and Katie almost certainly picked up the same initial infection it manifested and progressed very differently for both of us. Not only did this require different herbal formulas for each of us, it actually necessitated using wholly different systems of diagnosis to arrive at these prescriptions.

A broad categorisation would be that I manifested with a Wind Damp Cold pattern and Katie with a Wind Damp Heat pattern. However these are extremely broad categorisations, to narrow things down to a formula required more specificity.

My illness fit neatly into the ‘Taiyang’ categorisation from the ShangHanLun (‘Treatise on Cold Damage’, herbal text from 200CE approx.) and I was able to draw from that.

Katie’s manifestation better matched the ‘Qi’ categorisation from the Wen Bing school (‘Warm Pathogens, herbal text from 1700CE approx.) and I was able to draw from this for her prescription.

Chinese medicine treats the disease as it manifests, and ideally gets ahead of pathogenesis before it happens. Particularly in the case of infectious illnesses they can change by the hour. Having a good understanding of the principles of how the body fights infection, as well as a large ‘toolkit’ of formulas and modifications to draw on, as well as familiarity with key signs and symptoms to guide your formula choice is important for effective treatment.

An interesting exercise in illness that has hopefully led to an interesting video and absolutely was not worth the sub-par meal we suffered through while getting ill