According to traditional Chinese medicine, the common cold is caused by the invasion of pathogenic factors from the natural environment. The body's vital energy (qi) rises up to fight against the pathogenic factors, resulting in a struggle between the body's positive energy and the pathogenic factors. This leads to symptoms such as fever, chills, and headache, which are also known as external symptoms.
Based on the patient's symptoms and the nature of the pathogenic factors, traditional Chinese medicine classifies the common cold into two types: wind-cold type and wind-heat type:
1. Wind-cold type is mainly caused by the invasion of wind-cold pathogenic factors, resulting in the obstruction of lung qi. Patients with this type of cold often experience severe chills, mild fever, no sweating, headache, body aches, stuffy nose with clear nasal discharge, cough, thin white phlegm, and a thin white coating on the tongue.
Traditional Chinese medicine treats wind-cold type cold mainly by using warm and pungent herbs to expel the pathogenic factors. Patients can also be advised to drink hot soup or porridge to induce sweating, which helps with their recovery.
2. Wind-heat type is mainly caused by the invasion of wind-heat pathogenic factors, resulting in disharmony of lung qi. Patients with this type of cold often experience severe fever, headache, sweating, red and swollen throat, cough, sticky or yellow phlegm, stuffy nose with yellow nasal discharge, red tongue, thin white or slightly yellow coating on the tongue. It is not recommended for these patients to drink ginger soup.
This is because ginger has warm and pungent properties, which can induce sweating and expel wind-cold. It is suitable for treating wind-cold type cold. Therefore, when we have wind-cold type cold, drinking a bowl of hot ginger soup or boiling ginger with brown sugar to make ginger syrup can indeed help expel the cold pathogenic factors and alleviate the symptoms.
However, for patients with wind-heat type cold, as they have already been invaded by heat pathogenic factors, if they take ginger or other warm herbs, it will be like adding fuel to the fire and make the condition worse.
Therefore, when treating the common cold, it is important to differentiate the type of cold and apply appropriate treatment, rather than using a one-size-fits-all approach of "drinking ginger soup and sweating."
