What to Do When COVID Rebounds and the Epidemic Keeps Coming Back? Doctor Luo Dalun’s Own Prevention Playbook

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Dear friends, good morning. Today let’s continue our conversation about epidemic prevention. The peak of the epidemic passed a while ago — how is everyone’s recovery going? Yesterday I read some material saying that in some places people have already started testing positive again — second infections do happen. Some scholars predict there may be another wave in April or May, because the immunity from before slowly fades, and the external evil starts stirring trouble again. So besides that, we still need to restore our upright qi (zheng qi). Today let’s talk about: how to restore upright qi, and how to protect ourselves.

Opening: People who study Chinese medicine are fine; people who pop random pills suffer

This epidemic gave Doctor Luo Dalun a strong confirmation of one thing — people who usually study Chinese medicine and know how to protect themselves came through with nothing wrong at all; some never got infected, and those who did had it very mildly, over in a day or two.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: What’s really heartbreaking? It’s the people who know no medicine at all — neither Chinese nor Western — who, when infected, grabbed whatever they could. At the time the medicines were sold out, so they took whatever was available: some fever reducers, some ibuprofen. Some of those people really suffered — the illness dragged on for a very long time. When they finally went to hospital, some had severe symptoms, and some elderly people had serious problems. You can see it for yourselves: using Chinese medicine methods to prevent and defend is effective, and it works well.

Doctor Luo himself is a living example — he lives in Sanya, goes out every day and meets all kinds of people, and his mother and sister at home never tested positive; the whole family came through smoothly. How did he protect himself? He summed up his four moves.

Move one: Moxibustion — a little bit every day, opening all the “gates”

The first thing Doctor Luo found most effective is moxibustion. You don’t need to do it for a long time — eight minutes, ten minutes, twenty minutes all work; do it for a while and it does its job.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: I basically do moxibustion almost every day. For my mother, a friend gave her a small box — you stick it on Guanyuan (CV4) and light it. The main points: Guanyuan (CV4) below the navel — this lifts yang qi; Zusanli (ST36) — this regulates the spleen and stomach; and Dazhui (GV14) — whenever I feel the weather turning cool, a bit cold, I moxa Dazhui (GV14). Basically, wherever the body feels cold, wherever the belly feels cold, you can moxa it — this is how you improve your constitution. Sometimes when my lower back feels cold, I moxa my lower back.

Why does moxibustion work? Doctor Luo explains: first, moxibustion genuinely moves the qi and blood — once qi and blood are stirred up, they open up the congestion at those “gates” and get circulating; second, the smoke of moxibustion itself also repels evil — its aromatics drive away filth; the smoke alone can remove turbid, filthy qi.

There is one big pit here that Doctor Luo specifically warns about: when you buy moxa sticks, buy good ones.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: I experimented myself. The brand I always buy — Xin Jie Jia — got sold out because everyone was snapping it up; I ran out of my last two sticks and didn’t have the face to ask for more. So what did I do? I went on Douyin and bought some, and the ads looked great. But when I lit them, the stick was rock hard and dense — at first I thought it was fine. But after it burned, when I touched the ash there was something like sand in it, which means the purity was questionable. A genuinely good moxa stick burns fast, loose and fluffy, with a strong flame; it looks soft when you squeeze it, and when you hold it against the body, the heat pours in continuously — wonderful. A stick that’s packed extremely tight, solid through and through, actually burns weakly — not enough airflow — and the leftover ash even has sand in it. So please buy your moxa from reputable places, and buy good quality: the smoke should be pure, and nothing else should be mixed in. That’s very important.

Move two: Astragalus + goji berries steeped as tea — boost both wei and ying qi

The second thing: Doctor Luo drank huang qi (astragalus) and goji berries steeped in water every day. He usually tells everyone to use three grams; this time he deliberately weighed what he actually used during the epidemic on his kitchen scale — because he just grabs a handful: basically 12 g of goji berries and 12 g of raw huang qi, twelve grams each, one handful steeped in a big cup.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: I basically finish this cup by midday, then top it up with hot water; in the afternoon I steep the leftovers again and drink them, and I eat the goji berries — because only part of what’s in the goji berries dissolves, about 30%, and the rest won’t come out in the water, so you eat them. The huang qi dissolves almost completely — its active constituents are water-soluble — so after steeping you just drink the water; no need to boil it again.

What are these two herbs for? Doctor Luo explains it clearly:

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Huang qi tonifies qi, and especially raw huang qi tonifies wei qi — the defensive qi that travels along the surface of the body. The key to keeping evil qi from invading the body surface is right here. What are goji berries for? Goji berries actually restrain it — they nourish kidney essence, liver-kidney essence, and yin. Isn’t huang qi quite warm in nature? Goji berries nourish yin, so it’s like nourishing both the wei qi and the ying qi. If you have herbs that supplement essence and nourish yin, you can fill up yang qi; huang qi and ren shen (ginseng) are the bold, fierce qi tonics that patrol the body surface. When both wei and ying qi are fully nourished, our defenses have real strength.

So during this epidemic Doctor Luo felt deeply the truth of an ancient saying of Chinese medicine — “When upright qi is stored within, evil qi cannot intrude” (zheng qi cun nei, xie bu ke gan). It’s truly remarkable: in the same family, several members caught it, but the one who didn’t catch it was fine; the ones with fever and the one who stayed well — the difference is simply that their upright qi within was not the same.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Actually at the very beginning I was extremely cautious — going out made me very nervous. Later I basically relaxed a lot — I even went out without a mask (that’s not good, I should wear a mask; my mother scolds me about it all the time — I’ve gotten a bit lax, I should wear one, my self-criticism). But I did go everywhere: you have to take your mask off to eat, right? Can you get a haircut wearing a mask? I met these people every day, and I asked each of them, “Have you tested positive?” In the barber shop there were lots of people — some who’d had it, some who were in the middle of it. At Houhai Fishing Village, the place was full of tourists, and I saw it with my own eyes: two shop assistants — one said, “I have a fever, I’m still weak, I break into a sweat just walking,” and the other said, “I’m still coughing” — both of them were actively sick. But still: upright qi within, evil cannot intrude. The ancestors’ words really are true.

Don’t copy the dose: outside an outbreak zone, 3–6 g is enough

Doctor Luo specifically reminds everyone: 12 g was his dose during the heavy period, when he was surrounded by infected people. If you are not in an outbreak zone, not in a place where everyone is contagious, you don’t need 10–12 g — three to six grams is enough, and about six grams is typical.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: For the huang qi and goji berries, I chose the “premium select” grade — I have the privileged position of knowing such companies. Both come from the same farm, both are export-grade, sold to the EU, with standards printed on them and foreign testing marks. Foreigners aren’t stupid — they run all kinds of tests, extremely detailed tests. Which of our Chinese herbs are good, where the good origins are, what the composition is, whether there are pesticides — they know it perfectly well; there are people whose whole job is this. They lease land in China, and that land was forbidden from using pesticides years ago — it has to be rested and nurtured, nurtured for years until it’s healthy, then planted exactly to their requirements, harvested and tested against their standards. Only after passing all those EU testing standards does it get sold abroad.

But here is a particularly counter-intuitive shopping principle, which Doctor Luo repeats over and over:

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Good things like these don’t look good — the huang qi isn’t big, the goji berries are small, completely different from the huge, gorgeous ones. But the huge, gorgeous ones never got exported. Please, never judge by how pretty something looks — absolutely not. “My goji berries are big and red — why are yours so small?” These things are different; we have our standards. Never go by looks.

(He also mentioned that he keeps talking about “Shi Xian Tao” — readers can look into that; it’s the same kind of concern.)

Move three: Luofushan herbal oil — a “protective shield” for the nose

The third thing is a trick for repelling external evil: Doctor Luo used Luofushan herbal oil (Bai Cao You), dabbing a bit on his nose whenever he went out. He says this should have been shared during the epidemic, but he got so used to applying it daily that he forgot to mention it — if the epidemic rebounds, it’s worth preparing some.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: This comes from Luofu Mountain, a traditional medicine of Huizhou — a state-level traditional preparation. It contains many herbs: Liangmianzhen, Xu Changqing, Jiulixiang, Juanbai, Jinbuhuan, Qianliguang, Datouchen, dang gui, Ebushicao, san qi, and more — probably close to a hundred herbs in total. It’s made with the traditional ancient brewing method, then purified, and some aromatic oils are added — eucalyptus oil, menthol, borneol, cinnamon oil and so on — and it smells lovely.

When do you use it? When there are sick people around, put a tiny drop on your nose — put one drop on your finger first, then wipe it on the nose.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: This works through aromatics repelling filth. It’s full of volatile medicinal substances. External evil (viruses) certainly don’t like living in that kind of environment — viruses are tiny, and the fragrant particles you form are enormous relative to a virus. The virus definitely doesn’t like surviving in such an environment; it can’t stand that smell, because many of the herbs in it are aromatic herbs that dispel wind and release the exterior, which external evil hates. You don’t need it every day now; but if there are rebounding cases around you, when external evil is plentiful, a friend taught me a method — dab a little inside the mask. The inside of your mask becomes an environment with aromatic herbal scent. When a virus charges in, it’s miserable in there, it doesn’t want to stay — it’s not an environment where it can multiply en masse. So this stuff works. Whenever someone came to consult me about their health, before going out I’d dab a drop on my nose before seeing them — maybe that’s one reason I never tested positive. The local pharmaceutical factory does have a report — they ran tests showing it genuinely has activity against the new coronavirus; it’s documented, it was tested. This is a bit of hindsight — the peak has already passed. I really do regret it now: if I’d told everyone during the peak, it might have helped a great deal.

Move four: Thirteen Spices — a pinch in every stir-fry, warming yang and dispelling dampness

There’s one more thing Doctor Luo used every single day from the start of the epidemic — Thirteen Spices (Shi San Xiang). He cooks a lot, and every day he’d cut a small corner off the packet and flick a pinch in with his fingers — “kacha kacha” — a little into every dish.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Why could I keep using it? Because my mother thought it made everything delicious. I have to take care of the old lady — she’s 87 by the traditional reckoning this year. I couldn’t let her get infected; once an elderly person gets infected, with a weak body it’s really dangerous. So I was very careful and stocked up the medicine at home. I put Thirteen Spices in my cooking — I’ve talked about Thirteen Spices before; I’d tested it and it worked well. Look at the ingredients: star anise, fennel, Sichuan pepper, galangal, tangerine peel, black pepper, nutmeg, cinnamon, dried ginger, hawthorn, licorice, amomum (sha ren), clove, angelica root — what are they all for? Warming yang — basically all warming yang, aromatic dampness-dispelling, rousing the spleen-stomach qi. This product is from Zhumadian — the “Fragrance of China,” passed down for generations by Xing Long Tang, a China Time-Honored Brand. Remarkable.

Why did the ancients particularly need this kind of “yang-warming” thing? Doctor Luo connects it to the origin of the Shang Han Za Bing Lun (Treatise on Cold Damage and Miscellaneous Diseases):

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: The living conditions of the ancient Chinese weren’t so good — people didn’t necessarily wear that much, so they had many chances to get cold. Getting cold is exactly what Zhang Zhongjing wrote the Shang Han Za Bing Lun about — when cold evil arrives, it dominates; cold weather, common people with little clothing, easily invaded by external evil. You can see that this time the north was clearly hit harder — so many elderly people in hospitals had serious problems, while the south was milder. This cold truly colludes with the epidemic. Thirteen Spices is an old recipe of the Chinese people — what does it do? Warms yang, dispels dampness, rouses the spleen-stomach qi. When I first used it, my mother loved it — “Your soup is wonderful today, the vegetables are so fragrant.” I said I’d added Thirteen Spices, and she said the flavor was great. Throughout the whole epidemic, basically every dish our family stir-fried had Thirteen Spices in it; whenever you flick a small pinch into a dish, the whole dish turns fragrant, and at the same time it rouses the yang of the spleen and stomach — it deserves real credit. So which of these actually built your upright qi and let you resist external evil? Probably all of them together.

Doctor Luo’s own “prevention medicines”: licorice and dried ginger decoction, sea cucumber, Yu Ling Gao

Some friends ask: Doctor Luo, didn’t you take any medicine yourself to prevent it? Doctor Luo says at first he used a little yang-warming formula — Gan Cao Gan Jiang Tang (licorice and dried ginger decoction).

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: There’s a Tianjin company that makes Japanese-style kampo products for Japan; they mailed me a few boxes, and I shared them around, thinking it would help with prevention — you can drink it when you’ve been chilled, when it’s cold. I still had a few sachets left, so I made one for myself. Also, sea cucumber that someone gifted last year had been sitting frozen at home, a few of them — I ate those. That might also have been a supporting factor. Anyway, all of these worked together.

But the most central things, Doctor Luo believes, are still Yu Ling Gao (Jade Spirit Paste) plus moxibustion:

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: I did stick with the goji berries and huang qi, and then every night a cup of Yu Ling Gao — everyone watching my livestreams sees me with a cup of it every night. Yu Ling Gao supplements qi and blood; when both qi and blood are filled up, upright qi rises — I think that’s the core. Plus moxibustion, which is also especially effective. This time around, many friends with insufficient qi and blood — qi deficient — were dizzy, exhausted, terribly fatigued; others had blood deficiency, and with blood deficiency you can’t even sweat properly — recovery is very hard. Quite a lot of people have qi and blood deficiency. So if you’ve been regulating and supplementing in advance, you should be fine when the time comes — our upright qi is sufficient, and we drive the evil qi out.

Wrap-up: Act early — bring Chinese medicine into daily life

Doctor Luo concludes: he certainly came into contact with the virus — neighbors all around him tested positive, but his family didn’t, simply because he and his mother drank these things every day, every single day, and his mother was obedient and accepted it, so they passed through smoothly. And all of this experience is made of small things in everyday life:

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: None of it is a big formula — I didn’t take a single one of those “prevention prescriptions.” In daily life you just steep some tea and drink it, do a little moxibustion, put some Thirteen Spices in your cooking to lift the yang qi, get more sun — when the sun comes out, sun your back, and exercise. These things matter. Look — is there any single formula that I took every day that guaranteed the result? Not necessarily. What we’re promoting is the idea of using Chinese medicine in daily life. Promoting what? Acting early — don’t wait until you’re sick to treat it. No matter how well I treat it, how skilled my methods are, the best outcome is that you never get sick; if you do get sick, it’s still unpleasant.

This epidemic is certainly not over — abroad it’s already come in wave after wave, many waves; we just stopped paying attention.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: We raise our upright qi at all times and protect ourselves at all times. And raising upright qi isn’t only for the epidemic — it’s so we live better in ordinary times. When your upright qi is sufficient day to day, your body is naturally better — why live sickly and weak? Many people hear this and never do it, but if you actually do it you’ll feel the difference: it really can make me get sick less, and even if I do get infected, it’s very mild. And after you do it, with your upright qi full, you feel energetic and vigorous — how wonderful would that be? In the end, keeping an optimistic attitude and being happy is what truly keeps the qi and blood flowing smoothly — that’s even better. Tomorrow I’ll continue with how to resist external evil. Dear friends, see you tomorrow!

Compiled from Doctor Luo Dalun’s health lectures (epidemic prevention and upright qi series: prevention experience).