Common Cold in Beijing

By Michael Max, LAc

“Bie zhao liang!” Don’t get cold! It is the war cry on everyone’s lips as the season swings into the deep freeze of the Chinese north. Parents scold children about not wearing scarves; wives, lovingly or otherwise, remind husbands to put on a sweater, and the daily text message weather report points out seven times a week that “cold” is dangerous stuff and must be guarded against.

I’m a Chinese doctor, and I agree with these principles and sentiments, especially as I have somewhat of an ephedra constitution—and those of us with that constitution hate cold. However, if even a quarter as much attention was given to those globs of phlegm, which look like some lost exotic jellyfish that polka-dot the street, or if there was an awareness of basic sanitation (soap in the bathrooms) or an effort made to clean plates and bowls, then I suspect that what here in China is referred to as “gan mao,” which we in the West call the common cold, flu, nose full of goo, tired and the achy just don’t want to move seasonal disorder, might not spread so fast. In China they are very clear—this is the result shäng hán; this is damage by cold.

As Zhäng Zhòng-Jîng pointed out 1800 years ago, Ephedrae Herba (má huáng) is the herb around which to build a formula that will take that invasive cold and show it the door. But if you go to any of the local pharmacies here in Beijing, it is quite rare to find a Ephedrae Herba (má huáng) formula that treats “gan mao.” First of all, while the Chinese are rightly proud of their traditional medicine, it tends not to be what they reach for when the sniffles and sore throat first appear. There is a saying here in the middle kingdom “for fast results use Western medicine, for chronic illness use Chinese medicine.” The truth of this is on the pharmacy shelf, where there are a wide variety of Western medicines for “gan mao,” but a limited selection of herbal solutions. The ones that are available are mixes of hot and cold herbs—shotgun solutions for a population that thinks Isatidis/Baphicacanthis Radix (bân lán gën) is always the cure for a sore throat.

This concept in China of zhöng xï jíe hé, the combining of Eastern and Western medicine, may have at one time been well intentioned, but, now the result is that graduates fresh from Chinese medicine schools knowing more about prescribing Western meds than Chinese formulas and a population that is both ignorant of their own traditional medicine and that has a dangerously limited understanding of Western meds, run off for IV antibiotic drips at the first sign of getting sick.

Shäng hán is a real thing. I know because I’ve spent the past three days with a chest frozen with phlegm, chills, and an achiness beyond belief. Ephedrae Herba (má huáng) has been the key to that lock—this along with some fine warming cupping that I picked up from Bruce Bentley last fall. (Check him out at www.healthtraditions.com.au. He is the master of the cupping universe.)

I’m not against the combination of Eastern and Western medicine; one of the cornerstones of Chinese medicine is grasping the gestalt of a patient’s condition and applying whatever is necessary to treat that unique presentation. I do have concerns that both in the China and the West we use the yardstick of Western technology to measure Chinese science; it is like giving a Kalahari bushman a WAIS intelligence test. If we demand that Chinese medicine fit into the form and perspective of Western science we will lose sight of our medicine’s more subtle gifts and end up with “Chinese medicine like” prescriptions that are a mimic of Western drugs, common to what I’ve been finding here in Beijing.

In English we say it well with this phrase, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” and indeed avoiding cold and protecting the body’s yang defensive qi is a good idea. Combining that with basic public health awareness and sanitation is an even better idea. Now there is an application of Eastern and Western medicine that makes sense.