Cough Due To Wind-Heat Attack
Cough is a common symptom of the respiratory tract, usually caused by inflammation, foreign body, physical or chemical irritation of the trachea, bronchial mucosa, or pleura. Simply put, cough is just a stress response that helps the body expel irritating foreign bodies. However, if the root cause of the cough is not resolved, it is useless to stop coughing alone, which is why it is generally difficult to heal quickly from a cough.
According to Traditional Chinese Medicine, cough is divided into two categories: exogenous cough (wind-cold, wind-heat, wind-dryness) and internal injury cough (phlegm dampness, phlegm heat, liver fire, lung yin deficiency). For different types of coughs, we choose different Chinese herbs (formula) and acupoints.
It is summer in Australia. People especially easily suffer from cough due to hot weather and getting exterior wind-heat attacks. Today, we will talk about this syndrome in TCM.
Signs and Symptoms: mild fever, slightly aversion to cold and wind, sore throat, headache and nasal congestion, thirst, dry throat, floating and rapid pulse.
Pathogenesis Analysis of Wind-Heat Cough
As the external evils in TCM, wind and heat invade the lung, the lung is depleted, and the body fluid becomes phlegm due to heat damage and solidifying. Patients have signs and symptoms including cough with sticky and yellow sputum, yellow nasal discharge, thirst, and a thin, yellow tongue coating. The evil of wind-heat invades the muscle surface, Protective Yang(卫阳) is restrained, evil and righteous Qi fight, so the body is hot. This causes patients to have an aversion to wind and a slight aversion to cold. The wind governs soothing and dispersing, wind-heat offends the surface, and the skin is open, causing sweating to occur. From here, wind-heat is up-disturbed and invades the throat, so headache and sore throat happened. The organ involved is Lung. The involved channel is the lung channel and its paired large intestine channel.
TCM Diagnosis: Cough
Pattern Identification: External wind-heat attack (Early stage of wind-warm syndrome)
Treatment principle: Dispelling wind, clearing away heat, Dispersing and descending lung Qi and relieving cough.
Treatment choices:
In TCM, clients usually accept Chinese medicine which can disperse exterior wind‐heat with acrid and cold nature, such as Yin Qiao San to treat the cough. and they also accept acupuncture, such as LU-7, LI-11, GB-20, it also has a good effect on relieving the symptoms.
Recommendations:
1. Food should be light, avoid eating spicy and heat food, such as lamb, beef, shrimp, fish, chicken, chilly, lychee, and mango. Eating watermelon, lotus, green beans for clear heat, relieve toxins, disperse fire and heat.
2. Herbal Tea: Drinking Jin Yin Hua (honeysuckle) herb tea which is good for dispelling inner heat, reducing toxins. Cover 10 gram Jin Yin Hua with boiling water and leave for three minutes.
3. Pear & Chuan Bei (Fritillaria) stewed with rock sugar. Peel a pear, cut it into two and remove the kernel; put the pear into a small bowl and put some rock sugar onto the pear; put the bowl in a pot and add some water in the pot. (No need to add water into the bowl.) Eat the pear when sugar is melted and the pear is soft and pear flesh is transparent.
