Cold Hands and Feet, Fear of Cold, Diarrhea in a Breeze? Doctor Luo Dalun: People with Yang Deficiency Should Drink Gan Cao Gan Jiang Tang (Licorice and Dried Ginger Decoction) to Prevent It

Opening: They say another wave is coming — first, don’t panic

Lately many people have had a knot of worry in their stomachs: the epidemic may be about to hit with another wave. Doctor Luo Dalun puts his cards on the table right away — don’t be afraid; if you protect yourself properly, you’ll be fine.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: In past flu seasons, not everyone got the flu either. Chinese medicine says zheng qi cun nei, xie bu ke gan — when upright qi (zheng qi) prevails within, evil qi (xie qi) cannot invade. As long as your upright qi is strong, you’ll be fine; and even if you do catch it, the case will be mild. Omicron is now basically about the same as the flu — just small waves. There’s no need to panic.

Same virus, wildly different reactions: why the north and the south are poles apart

The weather outside differs by season and by region, and it affects people differently. Watching the reports from his patients, Doctor Luo noticed a clear pattern.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Patients in the north tend to have headaches, aching bones and muscles, then extreme chills, high fever, and severe sore throat — the reactions are much stronger. Why? Because the north is cold, and cold evil easily attaches itself to other things — cold evil is the carrier. It carries the virus (what Chinese medicine calls li qi, pestilential qi) into the body. When the body surface is bound and constrained by cold, the surface is shut tight and the movement of qi and blood is obstructed — that opens the door for external evil. Once external evil gets in, the body wants to fight back: a robust person is fine, but a weaker person — whose qi and blood circulation was already abnormal because of the cold weather — struggles hard against the evil and produces all sorts of turbulence.

The south is much milder.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: In the south, places like Sanya — I’ve asked many patients who had it: it seems they didn’t even catch a cold, just sneezed and had a little runny nose, and then they were fine, nothing serious. Take Guangzhou: over a hundred thousand people were infected — 160,000 infected, and only 4 severe cases in total. Because the climate in the south is warm, qi and blood flow more easily.

So prevention has to be tailored to the region: in the north, focus on warming the yang and dispersing cold — don’t jump straight to Lianhua Qingwen or detoxifying formulas, cold and cooling medicines; that’s the worst approach. When you first feel chills, you need to warm the yang. In the south, the priority is usually draining dampness and moving qi, with a bit of detoxification added — the south tends toward damp-heat. Of course, the south can also catch cold: when a cold snap comes, the whole south cools down, and since people there usually dress lightly — T-shirts top and bottom — the sudden drop easily lets cold in. Cold evil must be taken seriously, north or south.

Who does cold evil love most? — People with qi deficiency and yang deficiency

The same cold snap: why do some people stay fine while others get knocked over? It all comes down to constitution.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Especially people with qi deficiency and yang deficiency — these are the ones most easily affected by external cold. They’re always colder than others, their handshake is ice-cold, and a cold wind gives them diarrhea — this is a person whose yang qi is insufficient. When the weather really turns cold and many people around you are getting sick, what should you do? You can drink some Gan Cao Gan Jiang Tang (Licorice and Dried Ginger Decoction).

A county hospital in Henan: the whole hospital drank one decoction — zero infections

The formula is called Gan Cao Gan Jiang Tang — Licorice and Dried Ginger Decoction — and it comes from Doctor Zhang Zhongjing. One story made it famous during the epidemic:

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Word has it that in Henan there was a hospital — a county-level hospital — and when COVID swept through, every single staff member drank this decoction. What was the result? Nothing. Not one person was infected. People all over the country were using it and reporting good results.

Of course, Doctor Luo repeats over and over: not everyone should drink it.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: People with yin deficiency, people with liver fire — you can skip it. But who drinks it very well? People with yang deficiency, people who are always cold, whose handshake is ice-cold, who get diarrhea at a gust of cold wind — when the weather is about to change, about to turn cold, and lots of people around you are infected, these people can drink it.

Just two herbs: 12 g honey-fried licorice and 6 g dried ginger

Gan Cao Gan Jiang Tang couldn’t be simpler — two herbs: one is honey-fried licorice (zhi gan cao), the other dried ginger (gan jiang).

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: According to Doctor Zhang Zhongjing’s proportions, the honey-fried licorice is double the dried ginger. For our own use, for example, 12 g honey-fried licorice and 6 g dried ginger. These are both food-grade medicinal herbs anyway — in Japan they make it into little sachets as a kampo (traditional Japanese herbal) preparation, but really you can just go to any pharmacy, buy the herbs, and boil them into a drink at home. Drink it like a beverage, and the body warms up.

What did Zhang Zhongjing originally use it for? — To restore the yang

In the Shang Han Lun (Treatise on Cold Damage), this formula was Doctor Zhang Zhongjing’s key move for treating yang deficiency combined with badly damaged body fluids.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: When Zhang Zhongjing treated cold damage and saw “a floating pulse, spontaneous sweating, frequent urination, vexation with mild aversion to cold, and cramping and tightness of the feet” — at this point the yang qi is insufficient on one hand, and on the other the yin fluids are also depleted, the body fluids badly damaged, which is why the feet cramp and the person fears cold and harbors external evil. When the condition shows “a dry throat, vexation and irritability, nausea and vomiting,” he said: “give Gan Cao Gan Jiang Tang to restore the yang” — warm the yang qi back up.

Why honey-fried licorice in particular, and at double the dose? This is where Zhang Zhongjing thought most carefully.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Raw licorice (sheng gan cao) harmonizes the other herbs and has a mild detoxifying effect. Once licorice is honey-fried, it gains the ability to tonify qi and restore the pulse (yi qi fu mai) — that’s what makes Zhi Gan Cao Tang (Honey-Fried Licorice Decoction) work for palpitations with a knotted or skipping pulse from qi-yin deficiency: the honey-fried licorice tonifies qi, harmonizes the spleen and stomach, and restores the pulse. In Gan Cao Gan Jiang Tang the honey-fried licorice is used at double the amount precisely to keep the dried ginger from being too dry and too hot and damaging the yin — you can’t warm the yang and wreck the yin in the process. The honey-fried licorice guards the body fluids on one side and tonifies qi and restores the pulse on the other. It’s a very classic formula.

Why does ginger prevent illness? — Sending the defense troops to the front line

The reasoning is not mystical at all: ginger is intensely pungent and has a dispersing, reviving action — it shakes sluggish qi and blood back into motion.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: When your qi and blood are moving slowly, a sudden revival — the nutritive and defensive qi (ying qi and wei qi) circulating properly — is what keeps external evil in check. If a person with yang deficiency never gets that revival, the qi and blood creep along, the defense troops never reach the front line, and external evil sneaks in. So people in the past were right to use ginger — the ancients, when walking through mountain valleys thick with mist and miasma in the early morning, would hold a slice of ginger in the mouth to revive qi and blood and ward off the mountain miasma. That’s the wisdom of our ancestors.

Doctor Luo also told a story he had heard firsthand:

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: A few days ago a friend posted on Weibo that his friend works as a doctor overseas and treats COVID patients every single day. What does this doctor do daily abroad? He drinks dried ginger water and eats dried ginger products. Several years have now passed, and he has never been infected. Strictly speaking, you can eat anything made from dried ginger or fresh ginger — drink some ginger-sugar paste (jiang tang gao), it does you good, it’s warming.

Who can drink it? Who absolutely must not? — Read it on the tongue

However good a formula is, it has to match the constitution. Doctor Luo makes it crystal clear: this decoction suits people with yang deficiency; people with yin deficiency or liver fire should stay well away.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: People with obvious yin deficiency — the tongue is bright red, the pulse races, they’re prone to flare-ups, liver fire, dry stools, can’t stand heat, and feel comfortable drinking cold things — people with this kind of yin deficiency and liver fire should not use it. People with yang deficiency have a white tongue, a pale tongue body — they can use it.

What should yin-deficient people do? Nourishing yin is boosting immunity — drink some e-jiao (donkey-hide gelatin), take Liu Wei Di Huang Wan (Six-Ingredient Rehmannia Pill), that kind of thing. For yang deficiency, Gan Cao Gan Jiang Tang, Fu Zi Li Zhong Wan (Aconite Center-Rectifying Pill), and ginger soup all work; even a Sichuan pepper foot soak warms you up.

Yang-deficient and always cold? More everyday warming tricks — Thirteen Spices is medicine too

Beyond herbs, Doctor Luo shared a surprisingly practical household trick: Wang Shouyi’s Thirteen Spices (shi san xiang).

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Yesterday a Chinese medicine practitioner said: look at Wang Shouyi’s Thirteen Spices — my goodness, what a formula! It’s full of aromatic qi-moving ingredients. Spices are traditional medicines — much of Chinese medicine is spices. I used to know a roast-chicken maker whose chicken smelled incredible; I saw the recipe as a child — dozens of medicinal herbs in it! Why is Little Sheep hot pot so delicious? Mainly dang gui (Chinese angelica) — that herb has a very special fragrance.

So for people with yang deficiency, heavy internal dampness, or sluggish qi — people who often feel bloated and stuffed after eating — put a little more Thirteen Spices in your cooking. That’s prevention too.

How much is enough? — A light sweat is the target

Prevention is about the body’s state, not the dose.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Drink a little every day, until your whole body feels warm and you break into a slight sweat — not a heavy sweat, a light sweat is the best state. In that state, the infection rate really does drop, because your upright qi has started circulating again — that’s the principle behind how Chinese medicine resists external evil. What we’re talking about isn’t really aimed specifically at the epidemic — it’s about adjusting the body back to normal and increasing upright qi, and that’s what lets you resist external evil.

Northern friends, remember this overall strategy: yang deficiency needs warming — don’t cool it down first

Finally, Doctor Luo stresses the master principle once more:

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Northern friends, pay more attention to staying warm and guarding against cold. If your constitution is yang-deficient to begin with and you insist on taking cold things like raw gypsum (sheng shi gao), you won’t prevent illness — you’ll harm your body. Even at the very onset of illness, when your body feels cold, you should warm the yang; only after the heat breaks out — fever, sore swollen throat — do you start clearing heat. Don’t clear heat first. When the body’s yang qi is insufficient, warm the yang. That’s the overall principle.

And the applications of Gan Cao Gan Jiang Tang go far beyond prevention: bleeding caused by yang deficiency (swap the dried ginger for stir-fried ginger, pao jiang), flooding of water and dampness from yang deficiency, and more — the formula drives straight at one target: warming the yang, with honey-fried licorice protecting upright qi and guarding the body fluids.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: That’s today’s introduction to Gan Cao Gan Jiang Tang. Southern friends, we’ll cover the various aromatic dampness-dispelling methods next time. Tomorrow we’ll continue the series on preventing external disease. Thank you for listening — see you tomorrow!

Compiled from Doctor Luo Dalun’s health lecture (external-disease prevention · warming yang for yang deficiency).