Feb 26 2010
Treating cold damage
This blog usually features translations, case studies, or clinical observations into the workings of Chinese herbal medicine. Today’s post is a bit different. It is a more personal story; my story of the past 24 hours, and an insight into the interaction of wei and xie qi (衛和邪氣).
It started a couple days ago with a stiff neck and rib pain, a slight feeling of fatigue, irritability and mild headache. I wrote it off as a less than restful night of sleep and the stress of a busy clinic. But, by the next day the headache had not receded and the stiffness in the neck more pronounced. While there was no fever, nor a pronounced feeling being chilled, by mid-afternoon it was obvious something was out to get me. I had a clinic partner give me some acupuncture and then had a little nap in the afternoon. That often will kick out some external pathogen, but not today. Mild chills set in, along with achiness, severe headache that was relieved a bit of pressure along the tài yáng channel, along with listlessness and fatigue. In short, it was a job for Kudzu Decoction (gé gën täng).
The first dose (4 grams concentrated granules) did not seem to do much. It was followed a few hours later by a second dose, and off into an achy restless sleep I went. Somewhere in the next couple hours of restless sleep the aches extended through my entire body and there was an odd sense of distention in my muscles, moreover I felt a heat being generated from deep within my core and could feel the fluids and cold being pushed toward the outside of my body. It seemed to take a long time to break a sweat, and in the process the muscle aches grew worse, and there were increasing waves of nausea.
I had a vague sense that this was the so-called struggle between the wei and xie qi, but it was the first time that I recognized that this battle between the qi’s was the reason that I was feeling worse and worse. It is a rather poetic idea that the defensive and pathogenic “battle”, the actual experience was I thought that at any moment I’m on my want to the bathroom to lose the contents of my stomach.
The defensive qi did win, and the pathogen was dragged to the exterior and expelled. But, it was dragged clawing, kicking and screaming to the exterior. It was a terribly uncomfortable process. But, I awoke the next day feeling 90% better. No trace of headache, body aches or fatigue.
Lessons learned?
1) Use of exterior releasing herbs indeed to active the yang wei qi. It comes from deep within the body and has a sticky quality that drags fluids and cold to the surface.
2) The struggle between the defensive wei and exterior pathogenic qi is uncomfortable and causes a worsening of symptoms as the pathogen is dragged to the surface.
3) Recovery comes quite quickly once the pathogen has been expelled.
