Feeling Better After COVID Doesn’t Mean You’re Safe — Doctor Luo Dalun on Latent Evil Qi (Fu Xie) and Why Strengthening Upright Qi Comes First

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Dear friends, good morning, everyone. Today let’s continue our conversation about the pandemic. Many friends ask me: I’ve tested negative now — I’ve been through it. How long until I’m really safe, completely fine? Or how long until I’m no longer contagious, can’t infect anyone else? Some people say you should be fine after ten days — there’s no firm conclusion. But a recent foreign study has shown something rather worrying.

Part One: A study that tugs at the heart — after turning negative, the virus still hides in the heart and the brain

The study comes from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH). They performed autopsies on more than forty patients who had died, and found that even after these patients had tested negative — with no outward sign of having been infected — the coronavirus was still present in their heart and brain tissue, still carrying out low-level replication. In the longest-surviving case, the patient died 230 days after testing negative — and when they examined him, there were still signs of viral replication in the heart and brain tissue. What did these people die of? Pulmonary embolism, cerebral thrombosis — causes like these.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: When this news came out, everyone was sharing it. People said: this is never going to end? What’s going on? Let me tell you, in Chinese medicine we have a concept called fu xie — “fu” as in latent, “xie” as in evil qi. This concept has existed in Chinese medicine for a very long time.

Part Two: What is fu xie? The Huangdi Neijing explained it long ago

“Fu xie” means evil qi that has gone into hiding. Chinese medicine has talked about this concept from very early on — the Huangdi Neijing (Yellow Emperor’s Inner Canon) contains the famous saying: “Injury by cold in winter will surely produce warmth disease in spring.” If you were injured by cold evil in winter — didn’t protect yourself — then in spring you’re prone to warmth disease. Why does evil contracted in winter only break out in spring? Because evil qi can go into hiding.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: When I was first studying Chinese medicine, this made a deep impression on me. Later generations of warm-disease scholars kept developing and refining the concept of fu xie, explaining it very clearly — I think this is absolutely right.

Where does evil qi hide? Some stays at the surface, some at various deeper levels. The deepest hiding place of all is shaoyin — the foot shaoyin kidney channel — the most hidden, secluded part of the body. What hides on the outside is easy to spot and easy to clear out; what hides at the very core is hard to detect. Then when external conditions change — say the weather suddenly turns hot, or heat arises inside the body — that warm-heat qi starts to flare up, and illness arrives.

Part Three: Fu xie is not mysticism — hepatitis B, HIV, and shingles are all living examples

Doctor Luo emphasizes strongly: fu xie is not some ancient fantasy. Modern medicine is full of such examples.

Hepatitis B: you can be infected with the hepatitis B virus and not necessarily fall ill at the time — it may hide for a very long time and slowly break out later. HIV is the same — it hides in the body for a long time, some cases only erupting months later.

The most famous example is the shingles virus: strictly speaking, many people carry this virus in their bodies — it’s all over the air, you’ve been exposed to it, but when your upright qi is strong, nothing happens. It hides at the base of the spinal nerve root ganglia, and only when your immunity drops, your liver fire flares, and your upright qi is insufficient does it start to erupt, suddenly producing a crop of large blisters on the skin. This illness may not have been contracted at that moment — the virus may have lain dormant in the body for a very long time.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: This is what we call fu xie. I should say, in the future we should study this concept much more — it’s one of the most valuable ideas in Chinese medicine. Looking at it now, external evil really is cunning: it hides inside when your upright qi is deficient and a gap opens up. Some bacteria hide too — for instance, people with chronic pharyngitis who keep getting reinfected: the bacteria lurk in the nose and mouth. Viruses do the same. It’s like winning a battle, but some bad characters have turned into secret agents and quietly gone underground — external evil going into hiding matches perfectly with what this new study found.

Part Four: How did Qing-dynasty doctors treat fu xie? Layer by layer, like fighting a war, driving it out

Can fu xie be treated? Doctor Luo says Chinese medicine has treated fu xie since ancient times, and the core is four characters: support upright qi and expel evil (fu zheng qu xie).

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: When Qing-dynasty doctors treated fu xie, they supported upright qi, expelled evil, and kept adjusting. Ancient case records are full of this scene: you support and support, and suddenly the person starts running a fever again — all the symptoms come out! This is a good sign! Why? Because the evil qi is moving outward. You keep taking medicine, and another wave comes — fever again, moving outward again — so you keep clearing. While supplementing the upright, you clear the evil, slowly enduring: the tongue coating turns yellow again, it flares up again, fever again, push forward clearing… until finally the fever subsides and the body recovers. Layer by layer, like fighting a war, you gradually drive that evil qi out — only then is the illness truly cured.

How exactly were the medicines used? For cold invasion, they used warming yang methods — Ma Huang Fu Zi Xi Xin Tang (Ephedra, Aconite and Asarum Decoction) and similar formulas to draw the evil outward; for warm-heat evil, they used herbs like sheng di (raw rehmannia) — tonifying the kidneys and cooling the blood on one side while drawing the evil outward, paired with clearing and resolving herbs (heat-clearing, toxin-resolving medicines) to drive the evil out. This is the ancient Chinese medicine method.

Part Five: The first thing after turning negative — don’t rush to let loose, strengthen upright qi first

After all this, the question everyone cares most about arrives: so we’ve all tested negative — are we really fine? The foreign research says not necessarily — some are still replicating at a low level, still hiding a little. So what should we do?

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Friends, what does this tell us? It tells us we still have to be vigilant. Whether the hidden evil can be cleared out and driven away — what decides it? It’s whether your upright qi is sufficient. You can’t assume that testing negative means it’s all over — right now lots of people are running off to the beaches of Sanya to party, set off fireworks, jump in the surf — on such a cold day I’m wearing a jacket, and they insist on going swimming. Others say: I’ve been through COVID, now I can finally go all out, take back the lost time — one small goal after another this year! Friends, the time is not yet right.

Doctor Luo uses a vivid metaphor: this is called “the embers still glow in the stove” — the fire in the stove looks extinguished, but inside there are still sparks. Don’t think it’s all over.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: This year’s focus — 2023’s focus — is still strengthening upright qi and nurturing the body. The crisis has passed, but the embers remain. At this moment the first thing is to strengthen upright qi persistently: huang qi (astragalus), gou qi zi (goji berries), American ginseng, ren shen (ginseng), shan yao (Chinese yam) — brew what should be brewed, eat what should be eaten. You may not have had this habit before — thinking that soaking goji berries every day is embarrassing, that at middle age you’ve become an oily uncle. I didn’t take it seriously before either. Now? I carry a big cup of it every day and walk around with it. Eat what you should eat, supplement what you should supplement — strengthening upright qi comes first. Whether the residual evil can ultimately be cleared depends entirely on upright qi — once your upright qi is sufficient, your body will gradually clear it away on its own.

Part Six: The second thing — don’t ignore lingering symptoms, let them vent outward

While strengthening upright qi, if you have lingering symptoms, don’t ignore them — you can use a little of the approach that vents evil outward and clears heat.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: For example, if your throat feels a little off, use some jin yin hua (honeysuckle) and lian qiao (forsythia) brewed as tea, to clear outward — supplementing upright qi on one side, clearing outward on the other. If you occasionally feel alternating chills and heat, drink a few packets of Xiao Chai Hu (Minor Bupleurum) granules to let things vent outward — that’s what’s needed.

Doctor Luo also tells a story about a longevity village: there’s a place in Hebei known as a longevity township. Why are the locals long-lived? They pick the tender shoots of the lian qiao plant, stir-fry them into tea, and brew them every day — lian qiao leaves also have a detoxifying effect.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: In the tea you brew every day, you can add a little lian qiao, to let things vent outward. But just a tiny bit is enough — the main thing is still supporting upright qi: first and foremost, strengthen your upright qi.

Part Seven: The third thing — don’t burn yourself out

The second priority is not burning yourself out.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: The goal for 2023 is absolutely not to chase one small goal — it’s not “I finally got through COVID, so I’ll stay up all night every night clubbing, back to the ‘good life’.” No. This is the time to nurture carefully: you must care for your body, don’t over-consume it. Supplementing on one side, not burning out on the other — that’s the perfect combination.

Part Eight: The fourth thing (the most important of all) — take blood stasis seriously

Finally, Doctor Luo stresses something he has been talking about for a long time — taking blood stasis seriously.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: I’ve been reading a lot of research material recently. The Singapore research conclusion I mentioned before: COVID causes blood stasis — blockage of the capillaries. And now indeed, abroad they’ve found it too — in some places overseas they use aspirin as additional treatment; once the blood vessels open up, symptoms clearly lessen.

Why do so many people feel “terribly cold” after COVID? Doctor Luo explains: the capillaries are all blocked, blood can’t get through, so of course the skin is icy — blood can’t reach it, can’t bring warmth. This kind of cold cannot be solved by warming yang alone: if everything is blocked inside, just warming yang won’t work — you need to warm AND unblock.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Yesterday I was chatting with my good friend, Doctor Wu Guozhong, and he said the same thing: I really find that a huge number of people have a lot of blood stasis inside. That lingering cough after an external invasion — for many people, you can see blood stasis signs at a glance. What to do? He uses Xue Fu Zhu Yu (Drive Out Stasis in the Mansion of Blood) to regulate it, with very good results — after taking Xue Fu Zhu Yu, the cough stops. This is cough caused by blood stasis.

And look at that American study again: those patients who died — cerebral hemorrhage, cerebrovascular problems, pulmonary embolism, lung blockage — these diseases, in the end, all relate to blood stasis.

Part Nine: How do you tell if you have blood stasis? Remember these signals

How do you judge blood stasis? Doctor Luo gives a string of extremely practical signals:

Tongue signs: the sublingual veins become thick and dark; the tongue body turns dark and purple; ecchymosis (bruise-like spots) appears along the tongue edges; some people develop dark eye orbits.
Hands and feet: cold hands and feet in winter, fear of cold — qi and blood circulation is poor, blood can’t reach the extremities.
Memory: memory is especially bad, always forgetting things (shan wang) — Doctor Luo says, yesterday I saw the news: an old man in Zhejiang drove the wrong way down the highway. Why? His mind was muddled — he’d even forgotten how he got onto the highway. Poor memory is an important sign of blood stasis.
Throat: the throat feels dry, you keep wanting water — but you only want to moisten it, you’re not truly thirsty.
Pain: fixed, unmoving pain somewhere in the body, lighter in the daytime, heavier at night; some people get stabbing chest pain, sometimes point-like pain between the ribs.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: All these symptoms after COVID — some people still carry them: fixed unmoving pain, poor memory, cold hands and feet, fear of cold… these are all signs of blood stasis. Blood stasis is something you must take seriously — it can quietly cause harm in the body over time.

Part Ten: How to regulate? Strengthen upright qi as the foundation, and use stasis-resolving herbs this way

If you have blood stasis symptoms, what should you do? Doctor Luo’s plan: resolve stasis on a foundation of strengthening upright qi.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: For tonifying qi use huang qi, for tonifying yin use gou qi zi, you can add a little American ginseng; eating two slices of ren shen a day also works, eat some shan yao to tonify the spleen; then add some longan meat, Yu Ling Gao (Jade Spirit Paste) — to nourish the blood. Mix and match as you like. If blood stasis symptoms appear on top of the tonifying foundation, take a little Xue Fu Zhu Yu — capsules or granules both work, no need for the full dose: severe stasis takes the full dose, mild cases take less daily — half a dose or a third is enough. Xue Fu Zhu Yu moves qi, regulates qi, and resolves stasis.

What about people with obvious heart symptoms? Doctor Luo tells a real story: he asked a restaurant server how he felt after COVID, and the server said, “If I could avoid getting it, I would” — why? His heart ached after COVID.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: That’s heart blood stasis. For heart blood stasis take a little Tong Xin Luo (Unblock the Heart Collaterals) capsules; Buchang Nao Xin Tong also works — Tong Xin Luo capsules, Buchang Nao Xin Tong, and Xue Fu Zhu Yu can be combined, just pick one. If the problem is concentrated in the heart, use Tong Xin Luo (protects the cardiovascular system); if pain is scattered all over the body, pairing with Xue Fu Zhu Yu (moves qi and frees the collaterals) works better. Buchang Nao Xin Tong is huang qi plus di long (earth dragon/earthworm) — it also has a collateral-freeing effect. Those foreign patients — how did they finally pass? Cerebrovascular disease, pulmonary embolism. So you could use Buchang Nao Xin Tong to protect the cerebral vessels, or Tong Xin Luo to protect the cardiovascular system — I think either is fine.

Closing: When upright qi is sufficient within, no evil can invade

At the end, Doctor Luo puts everyone’s mind at ease and cheers them on.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Everyone keeps asking: when will it really be over? Basically, after you’ve been through COVID there’s nothing major left. But this study reminds us: some small hidden risks remain. Don’t be frightened by what you hear — we raise precautions precisely because we finally have solutions. In 2023, the big challenge we face is still health: after this pandemic everyone can see that life got chaotic — in the end, what is our pillar? Health. Everything else is a small problem, and Chinese medicine has a solution for all of them. Support your upright qi well, exercise well — no vigorous exercise: standing meditation (zhan zhuang), Eight Pieces of Brocade (ba duan jin), walking — all fine; protect your upright qi, don’t over-consume yourself; usually resolve a little blood stasis, a tiny bit every day. Everything we do is not to brace for one COVID or one plague — it’s to raise the quality of our lives. When upright qi is sufficient within, no evil can invade — protect your upright qi and no evil qi can harm you. We have a lot of experience in clearing fu xie, so actively supporting upright qi is what we should do going forward.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: How long will the residue last? This is research that just came out — we’ll keep following it. Some people clear it — when upright qi is sufficient, it clears; some people may carry a little residue — but the core is still whether your upright qi is sufficient. Tomorrow we’ll continue talking about preventing and treating external invasion. Dear friends, see you tomorrow!

What to take away

Testing negative isn’t a free pass. The NIH autopsy study found the virus still replicating at low levels in heart and brain tissue even 230 days after patients tested negative — deaths were mostly pulmonary embolism and cerebral thrombosis.
Fu xie (latent evil qi) is a real, ancient concept. “Injury by cold in winter, warmth disease in spring” — evil qi hides, deepest in the kidney channel, and erupts when upright qi drops. Hepatitis B, HIV incubation, and shingles are modern examples.
Treat it by supporting upright qi and expelling evil, layer by layer. Cold-type residue: warm yang and draw outward (Ma Huang Fu Zi Xi Xin Tang); heat-type residue: nourish kidney yin and cool blood (sheng di) plus clearing herbs.
Four things after recovery: ① strengthen upright qi first (huang qi, goji berries, ginseng, shan yao — “embers still glow”); ② don’t ignore lingering symptoms (honeysuckle-lianqiao tea, Xiao Chai Hu); ③ don’t burn yourself out; ④ take blood stasis seriously — post-COVID chills mean blocked capillaries needing warming AND unblocking.
Blood stasis signals to remember: thick dark sublingual veins, dark purple tongue, tongue-edge ecchymosis, dark eye orbits, poor memory, cold hands and feet, fixed pain worse at night, stabbing chest pain, dry throat that only wants moistening. Treat with small doses of Xue Fu Zhu Yu; heart stasis with Tong Xin Luo; cerebral protection with Buchang Nao Xin Tong.
The bottom line: when upright qi is sufficient within, no evil can invade — strengthening upright qi is the first priority.

Compiled from Doctor Luo Dalun’s health lecture series (COVID recovery series: latent evil qi).