Vomiting, Diarrhea and Stomach Pain? Doctor Luo Dalun: Dried Ginger (Gan Jiang) Is the “Fire” in Your Kitchen That Warms a Cold Spleen and Stomach

Opening: after several days on dried ginger, today Doctor Luo adds his own notes

For the past few episodes, Doctor Luo has been explaining exactly how Doctor Zhang Xichun used dried ginger. As he talked, he could not resist adding a bit of his own — so today, no case histories: just what dried ginger does for a cold spleen and stomach.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Friends, our modern spleen and stomach are especially prone to cold. Why? Because our living conditions are nothing like the ancients’ — for example, in summer there are iced drinks, and many drinks come with ice cubes added; the moment that goes in, the yang qi of the spleen and stomach is injured.

Don’t compare yourself to Westerners: different races, different spleen-stomach foundations

Someone might ask: then why do Westerners drink iced things every day and stay perfectly fine?

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: I really don’t think we should compare ourselves to Westerners — these are not the same group of people, not the same race. Go to Europe or America and look at Europeans’ tongues — the moment they stick out their tongues they are bright red. What does that mean? I don’t know. Many people overseas have invited me to lecture on tongue diagnosis, and I have declined all of them, because I honestly don’t know how to read those tongues: bright red as if suffused with blood — I cannot read a single thing. And the tongues of Black people in Africa, white and pale — what does that represent? It is all different.

Doctor Luo makes the point even more directly: even the length of our intestines differs from theirs — they can eat beef with the blood still in it; try eating that way every day.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: So I say: don’t copy them. If we go over there and our living conditions change, maybe we could drink iced drinks too — I don’t know. But on this land, we should still live by the rules our ancestors lived by.

Ice watermelon, cold roast chicken: one bite and the spleen and stomach “go on strike”

So what happens when you indulge in cold? Doctor Luo gives the most everyday examples:

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Don’t do it — mid-summer, watermelon chilled ice-cold, you gulp it right down — and next thing you know, you are vomiting and having diarrhea. On the surface it looks like a bacterial infection. But why the bacterial infection? Because your spleen and stomach function has dropped. The cold goes in and suppresses the normal transportation and transformation function of the spleen and stomach; once function drops, bacteria multiply and external evil enters.

An even more serious case Doctor Luo has seen with his own eyes:

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: I have seen people take a cold roast chicken out of the fridge — in summer people crave cold and don’t feel like hot food, so a whole cold chicken went down. The result: torrential diarrhea that went on for years, and the person became terribly thin — I have seen patients exactly like this.

Why do you catch cold? These everyday habits quietly injure the spleen and stomach

So keeping the yang qi of the spleen and stomach is crucial. Where do the chances of catching cold come from?

• Iced drinks, cold drinks with ice cubes — poured straight into the stomach;
• Air conditioning — lots of places blow it very cold these days;
• Cold-natured medicines — taking too many injures the spleen and stomach;
• Dressing too thinly — baring the chest when it is cold, wearing very thin clothing on the front of the body, so cold evil reaches the spleen and stomach;
• Cold soups and liquids — pay special attention here: our spleen meridian of foot taiyin runs through the legs, and when soups and liquids are very cold, the cold follows the legs right up to the spleen and stomach and affects their function.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: After the spleen and stomach catch cold, the most direct reactions — I mentioned this yesterday — are vomiting with diarrhea, then stomach pain and belly ache. Friends, be on guard, because summer is coming and craving cold is human nature — when it is hot outside, you like cold things. So in summer, huge numbers of people have spleen-stomach problems. It has nothing to do with the heat; it is that you let your own spleen and stomach catch cold. Cold wind in winter is one kind of catching cold; putting ice cubes into your own belly in summer is another kind. When the spleen and stomach catch cold, function becomes disordered — vomiting and diarrhea, sometimes even fever and stomach pain.

Stomach pain? The simplest fix: boil some dried ginger

What if you have already caught cold and your stomach is hurting?

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Then I tell everyone, the best remedy is dried ginger (gan jiang). The simplest method: boil dried ginger into water and drink it. It is best if your kitchen has dried ginger — I would even suggest that every household keep some on hand. Many homes don’t have dried ginger; even the dried ginger powder sold as a seasoning works. Drink the dried ginger water and you warm up quickly.

About Fu Zi Li Zhong Wan: why does it have to be Tongrentang’s big honey pills?

Besides dried ginger, there is a ready-made patent medicine — Fu Zi Li Zhong Wan (Aconite Center-Rectifying Pill).

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: If you have Fu Zi Li Zhong Wan, in most cases one bowl of it will stop the problem. Many people with agonizing stomach pain find it eases shortly after one bowl. But it must be Tongrentang’s — I don’t know why, but Tongrentang’s Fu Zi Li Zhong Wan contains a lot of dried ginger. I have chewed the little water pills from many other manufacturers — the tiny ones — and they are not spicy, the kick is missing; Tongrentang’s big honey pill is very spicy when chewed, which shows it is packed with dried ginger — one bowl and you warm right up.

Doctor Luo’s own story: wading in cold water as a child, pain that made him writhe

Why does Doctor Luo feel so strongly about dried ginger and Fu Zi Li Zhong Wan? Because he went through it himself as a child.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: As a kid I loved to play and dressed too thinly; on cold days I would still go out wading in the water — and come home with terrible stomach and belly pain. I remember it well; it happened several times. How bad was the pain? The kind where you are writhing in bed, feeling like you are dying. I remember clearly that my mother first gave me acupuncture — that was my very first acupuncture, needling Zusanli (ST36). I tell you, it did not hit the mark — it really didn’t work; it still hurt afterwards. Because he had caught cold, needling Zusanli alone has only middling effect.

Then mother saw that the boy had clearly caught cold — what to do? First soak his feet in hot water, and then — the scene Doctor Luo remembers most vividly:

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: After the foot soak, I took the Fu Zi Li Zhong Wan — I remember it so clearly — half a bowl, and I was instantly completely well. All that pain, the writhing agony, was gone. From that day I knew Chinese medicine is powerful — matching the treatment to the pattern (dui zheng) is extraordinarily powerful. When I grew up and met this kind of situation, I knew it was cold: use dried ginger, or Fu Zi Li Zhong Wan, to warm the spleen and stomach — warm the spleen and stomach and it is instantly better.

A fact you won’t find in textbooks: cold-type diarrhea is also yellow-brown

Here Doctor Luo corrects a common misconception — many books say that heat-type diarrhea comes out yellow-brown, while cold-type diarrhea comes out clear and watery.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: That is far too bookish. In fact, cold-type diarrhea, in the acute explosive phase, is also yellow-brown — exactly the same. By the time it really turns clear and watery, how far has the cold gone? You have probably already emptied out everything there is to empty, and only then does it look like that. Just after catching cold, what comes out is also yellow-brown. So don’t go by what the textbook says.

So how do you tell whether you have caught cold?

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: If you know you have been exposed to cold these past couple of days — wading in water, blown by cold wind, wearing too few pants, drinking iced drinks, eating cold food — and your vomiting and diarrhea are clearly connected to that, then use warming yang methods to set it right, and the effect is immediate (li gan jian ying).

After finishing cold-natured medicines, remember to “warm the body back up”

One more detail from years of practice — after taking cold-natured medicines, warm the body back up.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Sometimes I have people take cold-natured medicines — for example, Pu Ji Xiao Du Yin (Universal Rescue Detoxifying Drink) for a sore, swollen throat — it is a very cold formula, used to resolve toxins. After a few doses, I always have them take a little dried ginger, or Fu Zi Li Zhong Wan, to warm the body back up. That is: once you are better and the evil qi is cleared, warm things up again and restore the constitution.

Closing: dried ginger is an irreplaceable herb for warming the spleen and stomach

Finally, Doctor Luo restates the core of today’s talk:

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: These are all my experiences. I think protecting the yang qi of the spleen and stomach is crucial. We must learn how to use dried ginger — whether boiling it into water, stirring the powder into hot water, or using Fu Zi Li Zhong Wan — all of it works. Remember, friends: dried ginger is a very important Chinese herb for warming our spleen and stomach — its role is even something no other herb can replace.

Tomorrow, Doctor Luo continues with how Doctor Zhang Xichun used dried ginger to protect ourselves — we will pick up the story next time.

Compiled from Doctor Luo Dalun’s lectures on Doctor Zhang Xichun’s herb usage.