The Method of Warming Up Coldness

Warming up coldness, also known as expelling coldness, is a method designed to tone up yang energy and expel the cold pathogen from the body. It is used to treat the internal coldness syndrome, which is also called the deep coldness syndrome as opposed to the superficial coldness syndrome. Chinese herbal therapy uses warm or hot herbs for warming up coldness. The internal coldness syndrome is mostly due to a yang deficiency that generates coldness within the body or due to an attack of an external cold pathogen. Meridian coldness is mostly due to a blockage of energy and blood within the meridians caused by the accumulation of cold energy. There are different methods of warming up coldness.

One method is to warm the middle region and disperse coldness. This involves treating the spleen-stomach yang deficiency syndrome, which displays symptoms such as cold pain at the pit of the stomach and in the intestine, vomiting, diarrhea, fat tongue with a white and sliding coating, and deep and slow pulse or deep and tight pulse. It also treats the spleen yang deficiency syndrome, with symptoms such as abdominal pain, love of warmth, abdominal swelling, watery stools, and cold limbs, as well as the cold stomach syndrome, with symptoms such as pain at the pit of the stomach that drags on and lessens with warmth or heat, and vomiting of clear water. The spleen-stomach yang deficiency syndrome is the most common in clinical practice because the spleen and the stomach have a yin-yang relationship.

Another method is to restore yang and rescue upsurging. This is used to treat the yang prolapse syndrome, with symptoms such as dislike of cold, lying down with the body curled up, extremely cold limbs, vomiting, and diarrhea, body temperature decreasing, pale complexion, and fine and disappearing pulse or hollow and rapid pulse.

The third method is to warm up meridians and disperse coldness. This is designed to treat the meridian coldness syndrome, with symptoms such as cold pain in the four limbs, poor blood circulation, blue tips of the four limbs, rheumatism with coldness, cold pain in the muscles, and difficulty in flexing and extending the joints.