Traditional Chinese Medicine for Common Cold
From the perspective of traditional Chinese medicine, common cold is caused by external or environment factors. In TCM theory, there are six external forces invade the human body to cause diseases. They are called the six external pathogens, namely wind, heat, dampness, fire, dryness and cold.
The most common types of common cold in Chinese medicine are wind cold and wind heat. For wind cold type, it mostly occurs during winter or in a cold environment. Main symptoms include body aches, chills, clear nasal discharge, congestion, headache, mild-fever, no sweating, sneezing and stiff neck. For wind heat type, it mostly occurs during spring and summer or in a hot environment. Main symptoms include cough, body aches, headache, high fever, sore throat and yellow nasal discharge.
Chinese Herbs for Common Cold
Chinese herbal medicine can be very helpful to ease common cold symptoms. Many Chinese herbs to improve symptom management for common cold are foods and plants that are very easy to buy in supermarket or you may have them at home such as cinnamon, coriander, garlic, ginger, green onion, peppermint, soybean and spinach. For wind cold, you need to have foods such as ginger, garlic. For wind heat, you need to have foods such as spinach, peppermint.
Drinking a hot ginger garlic soup, then going to bed under thick quilts will promote sweating. It is one of the common methods to relieve common cold symptoms in traditional Chinese medicine, especially fever.
Chinese Ginger Garlic Soup for Common Cold
1 to 2 inch piece of fresh ginger cut into slices
4 green onions (use only the white part) cut into several pieces
2 to 3 cloves of garlic, cut into slices
6 cups chicken bone broth
How to cook: Put all ingredients into a pot and boil it for 10 minutes. Drink the soup while it is warm or hot.
Prevention of Common Cold
Tonic herbs like such as Dong Chong Xia Cao, Ling Zhi and Yun Zhi can promote a healthy body environment. Tonic herbs may be taken as foods or general health supplements. You can take them for prevention purpose during cold season.
Acupressure for Common Cold
Most people won’t go to doctor for common cold when it is not very serious. They will just ignore it and hopefully it will be gone within few days. Common cold symptoms can get suddenly worse which leads to increasing in body temperature or infections of other diseases when body get in worse condition. Besides taking Chinese herbs, acupressure is also very useful to ease common cold symptoms, and also encourage the body to fight diseases. You can try stimulating acupressure points for common cold on your own.
Chinese remedies for common cold that you can easily make at home
