Always Cold, Cold Hands and Feet? How People with Yang Deficiency Should Regulate — Doctor Luo Dalun: First Tonify Kidney Essence, Then Warm Yang; Protecting Yang Qi Is the Most Important Lesson After the Reopening

After the reopening, many people thought “the war is over.” But as Doctor Luo Dalun watched the news, his heart was heavy — hospitals across the entire north were under enormous strain. Today, he says, he wants to discuss a topic he hesitated over for a long time before deciding to address it: in the climate changes to come, resisting cold evil and protecting yang qi is going to be an extremely important task.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Dear friends, good morning, everyone. Today we continue talking about pandemic protection. Watching the news these past two days has been quite painful — the pressure on hospitals across the north is enormous. A netizen in Liaoning posted a photo: in the emergency room, ambulances kept bringing patients in, the place was full; getting a CT scan meant queuing for two hours — not because the CT was slow, but because lifting these elderly patients in and out is very laborious; they are all immobile, arriving on stretcher trolleys. One lady came alone and had to ask everyone to help lift her. A nurse left a message saying she originally worked in the anorectal department, and now the anorectal department has become an emergency room — three people were lost in one night. A friend said, “You lost three? We lost seventeen.” The whole north really is in a serious state.

Doctor Zhang Zhongjing’s era: also a cold period — that is why the Treatise on Cold Damage and Miscellaneous Diseases exists

Why is the north so badly hit? Doctor Luo takes the discussion back eighteen hundred years: Doctor Zhang Zhongjing’s era was a cold period, and that is why plagues were rampant. How did illnesses arise then? Exactly as today — they came from cold. That is why Doctor Zhang Zhongjing’s book is called the Treatise on Cold Damage and Miscellaneous Diseases (Shang Han Za Bing Lun).

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: The Treatise on Cold Damage takes cold evil as its primary imagined enemy and explains how to resist plague pathogens. We see it clearly today: hot weather does not cause problems on this scale; once the weather turns cold, body functions decline — especially in the elderly, whose bodies are already weak and whose functions are low. Add cold on top of that, and function drops further, opening a window of opportunity for pathogens.

The same plague: why were the south and tropical countries so much milder?

One phenomenon in this plague stands out sharply: the south fared much better, with far less pressure. Doctor Luo is in Sanya; ambulances sound there too, but nothing like the north. Roughly 50% of Sanya’s people have been infected. He asked many recovered patients — some had no fever at all, some had joint pain for two days, some coughed for two days, some ran a slight fever — none had severe symptoms, and the elderly were not hit hard either.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Some say the northern strain is more virulent and everyone in Beijing runs a high fever — not necessarily. Tens of thousands of tourists land in Sanya every day; northern and southern strains all converge there, yet the overall harm really is lighter. Look at the countries that reopened: Japan has gotten heavier wave after wave; Singapore has gotten lighter and lighter. On the whole, tropical countries have done much better — India, which by all logic should have exploded, had nothing major; Thailand is at 25 to 31°C every day now, and in the Pattaya livestreams nobody is wearing a mask, all bare-chested. Sanya’s low is 17°C and high 25°C — so the difference is temperature.

The climate is neither warming nor cooling — it is “turning chaotic”

So why must we guard against cold in the future? Because climate change is becoming more violent. Some people talk about global warming, Doctor Luo says, but when he looks at the meteorological data, what he actually sees is more and more extreme weather — either scorching hot or freezing cold, swinging back and forth, extremely unfriendly to our living environment. Extreme heat we can still cope with; a sudden deep freeze is a much greater test for people.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Sun Yingjie, the climate host on China Central Television, says it is not warming and it is not cooling — it is “turning chaotic.” The climate has been abnormal for years now; we should be in a period of climatic disorder, with the qi of heaven and earth in flux. Was Sanya ever this cold before? Now I wear a jacket every day in winter — and this is already the southernmost city in China. So with abnormal climate ahead, what should we do? Protecting yang qi is an important task for the future.

When cold evil strikes, yang-deficient people fall first

The hospital wards are not all elderly — middle-aged and young people are also being rescued. Doctor Luo says it plainly: this winter, when cold evil arrived, yang-deficient people were the first to fall. The elderly, whose yang grows weaker and weaker, are even more vulnerable. So protecting yang qi comes first — only after that can we talk about nourishing yin for yin deficiency, replenishing fluids for depleted fluids, soothing the liver for constrained liver qi; those are all secondary.

So how do we protect yang qi? First, do not injure it. Doctor Luo lists several things that damage yang qi — check yourself against this list:

Cold-natured food and drink: low-temperature foods, drinks straight from the fridge, and anything with a cold medicinal nature — watermelon, for example, is cold even unrefrigerated; it is the “heaven-born White Tiger Decoction” (a famous heat-clearing formula). Drinking iced beer every day feels great when you are young, but your body is being injured all the while — and everyone gets older eventually.
Dressing too lightly: some people love to look dashing in winter. In Shenyang, minus tens of degrees, a down jacket on top, big boots below, and stockings in between — that is really not knowing how to dress.
Living year-round in a north-facing room, avoiding sunlight: not sunbathing, not seeing the sun. Sun exposure is that critical to us; people who live permanently on the shady side tend toward yang deficiency.
Randomly taking cold-natured medicines: some people take Niu Huang Jie Du Wan (Bezoar Detoxification Pill) every day for a sore throat — overuse of this kind of cold medicine causes yang deficiency.
Bad emotions: pent-up, depressed emotions and yang deficiency are mutually reinforcing — each feeds the other.

The core step in nourishing yang: tonify kidney essence first

What do we do about yang deficiency? Many people jump straight to warming yang: eating gan jiang (dried ginger) with abandon, fu zi (prepared aconite) with abandon — yet they simply cannot “warm up.” Doctor Luo says, do you know why? Because your kidney essence is insufficient. Kidney essence is the root of the body — kidney essence generates kidney qi, kidney qi generates the yin and yang qi within the kidneys, and only then does the whole body’s qi, blood, yin and yang arise. A person with depleted kidney essence — indulging desires daily, staying up late, exhausting the essence through excessive worry — cannot be helped by warming yang alone.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: I always use this analogy — the central heating system in the north: a big boiler boils water and sends hot water to every household, and everyone is warm. Each household is your limbs and trunk; the boiler is your kidney yang and heart yang. Now your kidney essence is depleted — it is as if the boiler has no water, and you light gan jiang and fu zi every day, burning and burning — the boiler is red hot. Can the house get warm? Impossible, because there is nothing in between to carry the heat. Actually this analogy is not quite right either: essence is more like the fuel that lights the boiler. If there is no fuel at all, just holding a flame to it does nothing. So people ask me: why do I eat gan jiang and still not warm up? Because you are essence-deficient — so first tonify kidney essence. That is the most important thing.

Doctor Zhang Zhongjing’s Jin Gui Shen Qi Wan: tonifying kidney essence as the main act, warming yang as the finishing touch

Among the ancient formulas for warming kidney yang, Doctor Zhang Zhongjing’s Jin Gui Shen Qi Wan (Golden Cabinet Kidney Qi Pill — also known as Gui Fu Di Huang Wan or Ba Wei Di Huang Wan, the Eight-Ingredient Rehmannia Pill) is the cleverest. Doctor Luo urges everyone to study its composition: its main herb is shu di huang (prepared rehmannia root), matched with huai shan yao (Huai yam) and shan yu rou (cornus fruit), and only then a small amount of rou gui (cinnamon bark) and fu zi (prepared aconite) to warm yang — and the yang turns out to be more than sufficient. Why? Because it tonifies the root, the kidney essence.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: See how clever it is: shan yu rou nourishes the liver, huai shan yao nourishes the spleen and lungs — all the essence-nourishing herbs work together. Then a little dan pi (tree peony bark) to drain liver fire, fu ling (Poria) to drain dampness, ze xie (Alisma) to drain the dampness of the kidney channel — a small amount of herbs that push turbidity outward. It does not simply warm your yang; it attends to many dimensions at once. So when warming yang, remember to check whether you are yin deficient — if you are, do not warm yang, nourish yin instead. And if your blood is deficient, add blood-nourishing herbs alongside the warming. All of these are good approaches. But for yang-deficient people, warming yang will certainly be a major topic in the years ahead — the climate really is shifting, and yang-deficient people truly suffer for it.

How do you know whether you need it? Doctor Luo gives the elderly the key indicators: a tongue that is pale, whitish; urinating a lot at night; always feeling cold; cold hands and feet — people like this can try Gui Fu Di Huang Wan. Doctors of the past such as Doctor Xue Lizhai regularly gave it to elderly patients, with excellent results.

How elderly yang-deficient people should supplement: di huang is the irreplaceable leading role

Doctor Luo repeats emphatically: for tonifying kidney essence, the leading role is di huang (rehmannia). It is what Doctor Zhang Zhongjing chose as well — shu di huang in the largest amount, with huai shan yao and shan yu rou as supporting herbs, and a little gou qi zi (wolfberry) also as support. Can other things tonify kidney essence? Sea cucumber has some ability, but the most important, the truly irreplaceable one, is di huang.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Do you know why the great Ming dynasty physician Doctor Zhang Jingyue was nicknamed “Zhang Shu Di” — “Zhang the Prepared Rehmannia”? Because he used shu di huang better than anyone. People with yang deficiency really can take Ba Wei Di Huang Wan (Gui Fu Di Huang Wan) for a period to tonify kidney essence; when nothing is wrong they can also take a little of it — and when stewing soup, put in a large piece of di huang with a small piece of rou gui, working together to tonify kidney essence. On the foundation of tonified kidney essence, then use the yang-warming herbs — gan jiang, fu zi, rou gui — to nurture the body little by little. That is the correct path.

External therapies to match: moxibustion, sunbathing (heavenly moxibustion), foot soaking

On the foundation of tonifying kidney essence and warming yang, adding external therapies works even better. Doctor Luo is a particular advocate of moxibustion — but he stresses: do not do nothing but moxibustion with no supplementation; that is far less effective. Nourish the kidney essence well, add a little blood-nourishing and yang-warming support, and then moxibustion works superbly — the inside and the outside must be matched. Properly combined, moxibustion is a wonderful method for generating yang qi and opening the channels.

And there is something even simpler than moxibustion, and priceless — sunbathing. Doctor Luo says many people now avoid sunlight as if it were arrows: they carry umbrellas when they go out, and stay indoors when the sun comes up. His advice: embrace the sun. Everything in this world is nourished by the sun; the power of sunlight cannot be replaced by any medicine.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Whenever the sun comes out, go sunbathe — sunbath your back. This is called “heavenly moxibustion” (tian jiu) — heaven gives you the moxa. But there is a subtlety: if your kidney essence is insufficient inside and your blood and vessels are depleted, sunbathing can make you feel irritable, unable to bear it. So supplement a little on the inside first — regularly eat a little shu di huang, matched with dang gui (Chinese angelica) and e jiao (donkey-hide gelatin), plus a little rou gui and gan jiang to warm yang — and then go sunbathe; the effect is excellent. Sunbathing opens the channels in a comprehensive way that no single moxa point can match; it is the most priceless and the simplest way to warm yang.

Foot soaking is another good method. Elderly people are often weak; many have never used Chinese medicine, but anyone can soak their feet. Add a little medicinal material to the soak: a touch of shu di huang to nourish essence, a little dang gui to nourish blood, some gan jiang or fresh ginger to warm yang, plus the warming herbs ai ye (mugwort leaf) and ding xiang (cloves) — the medicinal qi is absorbed through the skin and enters the channels, and the yang-warming effect is excellent.

A gift from the ancestors: put Thirteen Spices in your cooking

There is also a treasure in food that most people overlook — Thirteen Spices (Shi San Xiang). Doctor Luo says this pandemic taught him about Thirteen Spices; now he uses it in cooking all the time: even with no meat at all, a little Thirteen Spices makes the food fragrant — a bit like simmering meat soup.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Thirteen Spices is made entirely of yang-warming ingredients, all of them both medicine and food — fennel seed, Sichuan pepper, galangal, black pepper, nutmeg, cinnamon, dried ginger, cloves — all warming, aromatic, pungent herbs. Thirteen Spices comes from Henan, and the ancestors of Henan were genuinely brilliant: in ancient times they too discovered that when it turned cold, people got sick more. What to do? Make food smell delicious and at the same time make the body a little healthier — so they chose exactly these warming spices. That is the ancestors’ gift. Keep a couple of boxes at home, sprinkle a little in whenever you cook; stew some lamb, drink the lamb soup — it warms yang and opens the appetite at once. Wonderful.

But Doctor Luo immediately adds an important warning: do not warm yang alone. If you eat Thirteen Spices at every meal and nothing else, and your essence is insufficient, then you are “overdoing it” — the ancients stressed that one must not be too “aromatic-drying”; too much fragrance and dryness is more than the body can take. You must first build up the essence, and only then warm yang, so that things develop in the right direction: put a large piece of shu di huang in the stew with just a little Thirteen Spices — that is the truly correct pairing.

If conditions allow, let the elderly winter in the south — Doctor Luo’s own experience

At the end, Doctor Luo says there are some things he cannot say too forcefully, because not every family has comfortable means — he has been speaking about methods for everyone. But for friends who truly have the means, his suggestion is: elderly people really may choose to retire in the south.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: With the climate changing like this and the pandemic coming in waves, who knows whether this wave is the last? The southern climate is extraordinarily kind to the elderly. This has long been my advocacy — back when I was looking after my own father, I discovered how cruel northern cold evil is to the elderly: an old person lies in bed, someone opens the door, a cold wind rushes in, and the old person may catch a cold — which turns into pneumonia — and then it is winter after winter of wrapping up in blankets, going to the hospital for CT scans, running back and forth. I saw too much of this in nursing homes, which is why back then I resolutely moved to Sanya. Sanya has inexpensive options too: 1,000 to 3,000 yuan a month, meals included — 2,000 yuan a month and the food is actually very good; all around Sanya there are many such pension apartments. A few days ago I also saw that Thailand has a retirement visa — 25 to 31 degrees, and European foreigners come in droves to retire there. Winters in Europe are cold, diesel heating is terribly expensive, so they all run off to Thailand. The south really should build more retirement bases, so that people of every income level can come and experience it.

In any case, nourishing yang qi is an important matter. Doctor Luo says: this pandemic has made us see clearly just how important the protection of yang qi is. Sum up the lessons, keep learning, keep regulating, and let our yang qi grow fuller and fuller — this is the lesson we most need to learn after the reopening.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Keep going, everyone! Thank you for listening. Tomorrow we will continue talking about pandemic-related topics. Dear friends, see you tomorrow.

Compiled from Doctor Luo Dalun’s pandemic-recovery lecture series (special topic: protecting yang qi after the reopening).

What to take away: Cold evil attacks yang-deficient people first, and the elderly are the most vulnerable — protecting yang qi is the most important task ahead. Avoid what injures yang: cold-natured food and drink (iced drinks, iced beer, watermelon as the “heaven-born White Tiger Decoction”), underdressing in winter, living on the shady side without sun, overusing cold medicines like Niu Huang Jie Du Wan, and pent-up emotions. To nourish yang, first tonify kidney essence — the boiler needs water and fuel before a flame does any good. Doctor Zhang Zhongjing’s Jin Gui Shen Qi Wan (Gui Fu Di Huang Wan) shows the way: shu di huang as the main herb to tonify essence, with huai shan yao and shan yu rou, a little rou gui and fu zi to warm yang, and dan pi / fu ling / ze xie to drain turbidity. If your tongue is pale, you urinate often at night, and you are always cold with cold hands and feet, Gui Fu Di Huang Wan is worth trying — the medicine Doctor Xue Lizhai gave the elderly. Pair it with external methods: moxibustion (after tonifying essence and blood), sunbathing the back (“heavenly moxibustion”), and foot soaking with shu di huang, dang gui, gan jiang, ai ye and ding xiang. In the kitchen, use Thirteen Spices — all warming, medicine-and-food aromatics from Henan — for lamb stews, but never warm yang alone: put a large piece of shu di huang in the pot with only a little spice. And if you can, let the elderly winter in the warm south — cold evil in the north is merciless to them. Protect yang qi: it is the lesson this pandemic has taught us.