Miserable Every Time the Wind Blows, Sweating Non-Stop, Joint Pain That Travels All Over Your Body? — Doctor Ni Haixia’s Fiftieth Lecture on the Huang Di Nei Jing: the Feng Lun (Wind Treatise) and Bi Lun (Bi-Syndrome Treatise) — Wind Is the Chief of a Hundred Diseases; Wind Between Skin and Flesh Makes You Itch; Wind Moves and Changes; Fat People Hot with Yellow Eyes, Thin People Cold with Tearing; Li Feng Ruins the Nose Bridge; the Five-Zang Winds All Sweat and Fear Wind; Stomach Wind, Head Wind, Lou Feng and Xie Feng; Wind, Cold and Damp Combine to Make Bi; Wind-Dominant Bi Migrates, Cold-Dominant Bi Pains; for Back Pain Seek Weizhong; Weizhong Plus Yingu — Turbocharging; Post-Surgery Back Pain and Han Tang #30 Pills

Patient search words: miserable when the wind blows / sweating and fearing wind / sweating at the slightest effort / sweating non-stop / itchy skin / hives / urticaria / wind rash / joint pain / joint pain that travels around / migratory joint pain / fixed joint pain / low back pain / backache / back pain after surgery / leprosy / yellow eyes / tearing eyes / red swollen eyes / acne on the back / pimples / white hair / shaved eyebrows never grow back / longevity eyebrows / yellow nose / puffy face / sweating when eating / whole-body aches / headache when the wind blows / head wind / how to treat rheumatic joint pain / wind-dispelling medicine / cold-dispelling medicine / damp-dispelling medicine

Corresponding topics (medical terms): Su Wen · Ci Yao Tong Pian (Low Back Pain Treatise, chapter 41) concluded — yao bei wei zhong qiu (for back pain seek Weizhong BL40); Weizhong with Yingu KI10, seeking yang within yin, turbocharged; find the tender point below and needle; the scar after surgery blocks acupuncture like the Berlin Wall — left-right treatment is blocked; Han Tang #30 pills for post-surgery back pain; the story of the Western physician crippled by surgery on social relief · Su Wen · Feng Lun (Wind Treatise, chapter 42): wind is the chief of a hundred diseases; wind hides between skin and flesh and causes itching (running into an air-conditioned store while sweating); wind is good at moving and changes often; when the interstices open you feel a chill, when closed hot and stuffy; tu li bu neng shi — shivering, forgetting, unable to eat; wind entering yangming — fat people heat-in-the-middle with yellow eyes, thin people cold-in-the-middle with tearing; wind entering taiyang merges with the vessels — all shu points of the five zang and six fu are on taiyang, muscles swell and fester, back acne; wind-dispelling, cold-dispelling and heat-dispelling are three different medicines — thin people dispel wind plus cold, fat people dispel wind plus heat; li feng (leprosy) — heat raging in blood and qi, nose bridge rots and complexion fails, skin ulcerates, wind and cold lodged in the vessels, curable — cold-dispelling and heat-dispelling prescribed together without conflict (doubts about rou cong rong/tu si zi and yang qi shi/tu si zi pairings are unfounded); the five-zang winds by season and day — jia-yi liver wind, bing-ding heart wind, wu-ji spleen wind, geng-xin lung wind, ren-gui kidney wind; pian feng (hemiplegic wind), nao feng (brain wind), mu feng (eye wind), lou feng (leak wind), nei feng (internal wind), shou feng (head wind), chang feng sun xie (intestinal wind with undigested diarrhea), xie feng (draining wind); the wind pulse floats on the skin — light touch finds it; the five-zang wind patterns in detail (all with sweating and aversion to wind) — lung wind pale white, cough, shortness of breath, worse at dusk, diagnosed above the brows; heart wind vexed, easily angered and frightened, red, cannot speak quickly, diagnosed at the mouth; liver wind prone to sorrow, slightly green, dry throat, easily angered, sometimes dislikes women, diagnosed below the eyes; spleen wind heavy and lazy, thin pale yellow, no appetite, diagnosed on the nose; kidney wind puffy face, spinal pain, soot-black complexion, hindered private matters, diagnosed on the flesh; stomach wind sweating neck, cannot eat, diaphragm blocked, belly full, cold food causes diarrhea, thin body with big belly; head wind head and face sweat much, worse the day before a windy day, better on the windy day — diagnose by the ganzhi calendar (keep an almanac and Ling Gui Ba Fa disk in the clinic); lou feng clothes always wet, dry mouth, cannot labor; xie feng sweat soaks the clothes, whole body aches — whole-body pain is cold · eyebrows belong to the lung, hair to the kidney (longevity brows mean longevity; tend liver and kidney together and the hair turns black and shiny; the 90-year-old whose white hair turned black) · Zhang Zhongjing’s Shang Han Lun came from this chapter (the warm-disease school’s failure to use cold-dispelling medicine criticized) · Su Wen · Bi Lun (Bi-Syndrome Treatise, chapter 43) opening — wind, cold and damp, three qi arriving mixed together, combine to make bi; wind-dominant xing bi (migrating), cold-dominant tong bi (painful), damp-dominant zhuo bi (fixed) — the last left for the next lecture

Opening: picking up from the last lecture — for back pain seek Weizhong, and I keep one turbocharged trick up my sleeve

In the fiftieth lecture, Doctor Ni first closes out the Low Back Pain Treatise from the previous lecture. Standing at the podium, he declares with total confidence: treating low back pain, to this day I have never missed. Before closing, he also teaches a rare character — wei (痏).

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: If you really look up this character “wei” in the dictionary, it has another meaning: when a person is injured, after the wound heals it leaves a scar; the scar that remains behind, we call wei. In practice what we do is bleed — prick several wei, then take the left and treat the right, the right and treat the left. Up to now, I can tell you, in treating low back disease and low back pain, I have never missed. There is only one situation in which I miss — surgery. Whatever kind of patient this is, as long as he has not been cut open, the effect is almost immediate.

So what makes post-surgery patients so hard? Doctor Ni explains, both angry and resigned.

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: The patient comes in and I ask where his back hurts, and he says it hurts here, hurts there. He takes off his clothes and there is the incision — one cut, and it is as if the Governor Vessel, the yang place, was sliced down; when we treat left disease on the right and right disease on the left, we are exactly blocked by the incision. So I often say, this Western medicine is very troublesome — it cannot cure the disease, you have surgery and the pain is still there; it cannot cure you and it blocks my treatment. They build a Berlin Wall right there — how are we supposed to handle that? If you cannot cure it, you cannot cure it — why did you operate? The operation did not help, and then we step in, and there is no way to step in anymore.

Among Doctor Ni’s patients there are not only ordinary people but physicians themselves — and Western ones at that.

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: I have many Western physician friends. There was a beautiful doctor who had low back pain for twenty-five years. She knew surgery was bad, so she kept taking painkillers and never had the operation. Finally the pain became unbearable and she had surgery — the surgery made it worse, and she lost the ability to function, could not work anymore, and now lives on social relief. Later she heard about me and came. The damage was already done, so I could only tell her: I will needle you three times; if there is no improvement, stop coming. I told her — if you had not had surgery, since you are a physician and not an ordinary patient, I would bet you: if I cannot cure you, it is free! I dare to say that.

And how, then, do you treat back pain that has never been cut open? Doctor Ni repeats the verse and teaches a “turbocharged” point-pairing method.

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: The whole Low Back Pain Treatise — I taught it when we did acupuncture: when the pain is on the bladder channel, we needle Weizhong; needle Weizhong, then needle Yingu, bringing yin and yang together — I often use yin to treat yang, and I joke that this is like a turbocharger, boosting the effect. Then find the tender point below, needle one more time, and the pain is gone. To sum it up in one sentence: yao bei wei zhong qiu — for back pain, seek Weizhong. Besides Weizhong, the closer the pain is to the inner side near Yingu, the closer it is to the spine — search this band for the tender point, press, press, find where it hurts, put the needle in, and the pain disappears. If the pain is on the outside, press a bit further out; the closer the pain is to the tailbone, the further down we move. When you see stagnant blood, let it out; when there is no stagnant blood, needle — find the tender point and needle there — the effect is almost immediate.

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: The only ones we cannot cure are the surgical cases. For those who have been cut open, we tell them to take some blood-moving, stasis-resolving medicine. Pills are more convenient, because they need to be taken for a long time — that is how our Han Tang #30 pills came to be, made specifically for people with low back pain who have had surgery.

The main event: the Wind Treatise — “wind is the chief of a hundred diseases,” that is the master line

With the back pain finished, Doctor Ni turns to page 354 and opens the forty-second chapter of the Huang Di Nei Jing — the Wind Treatise (Feng Lun). This chapter is devoted entirely to wind.

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: The Yellow Emperor asks: when wind wounds a person, sometimes it is cold-heat, sometimes heat-in-the-middle, sometimes cold-in-the-middle, sometimes li feng, sometimes pian ku (hemiplegia), or sometimes it is plain wind — the diseases are all different, the names are all different, or it reaches inward to the five zang and six fu. It all really comes from wind. Why? Bo Qi says: wind is the chief of a hundred diseases.

Why can wind wound in so many ways? The first layer: wind gets stuck between the skin and the flesh.

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: When wind first attacks, it sits between the skin and the flesh — it cannot get in further inside, and it is blocked from coming out, so it is stuck in between. Wind qi hiding between skin and flesh causes itching. Do you want to test what it feels like when wind qi is between the skin and flesh? It is simple — go outside and run, run until your whole body is hot, and while you are pouring sweat, run into a convenience store — they are everywhere — the instant you run in, you are hit by the cold, the outside cold wind strikes you, and a lot of the sweat is trapped on the surface of the skin and cannot get out. That is the wind coming in — you start to itch and scratch your skin. Do you have any skin disease? No — but you still itch, because it is just wind between the skin and flesh.

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Wind is good at moving and changes often — it is just like a woman, good at changing. When the interstices (cou li) open, we feel a chill; if the pores close up, it creates heat and stuffiness — wind thus has cold and heat phenomena: pores open, you feel cold; pores locked, you feel hot, because the yang inside your body cannot get out.

Cold and heat together: you cannot eat, and you shiver — tu li bu neng shi

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: When it is cold, the appetite is bad, because you have caught wind-cold; when it is hot, the body — normally it should feel cool — but now the pores are locked, the heat cannot disperse and stays inside the body; this heat consumes the muscles, so the person becomes thin, the muscles atrophy and shrink. So wind creates cold and heat: cold-heat weakens the appetite, heat consumes the muscles. When cold and heat symptoms appear together, the patient gets tu li bu neng shi — suddenly shivering and trembling, suddenly forgetting many things, the body twitching, and unable to eat anything — this we call cold-heat.

Wind enters yangming: fat people get heat-in-the-middle with yellow eyes, thin people get cold-in-the-middle with streaming tears

The same wind, entering the yangming channel, produces completely opposite signs in a fat person and a thin person. Doctor Ni says this simplifies pattern differentiation in one stroke.

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Wind qi enters yangming and follows the yangming channels into the eyes. In a fat person, the wind qi cannot leak out, so it creates heat-in-the-middle — damp-heat is very strong in the middle burner, and the eyes turn yellow; this yellow is a bright fresh yellow. In a thin person, the wind qi leaks out into cold; he sweats a great deal, creating a cold pattern called cold-in-the-middle, and the tears keep streaming out. So the fat person and the thin person are different — ordinarily the moment we see a fat person we know heat, the moment we see a thin person we know cold, and that is the whole story. When two people catch wind, whether it is wind-cold or wind-heat, this is generally how we differentiate. In America wind-heat is more common — they eat anything, they really have no learning.

Wind enters taiyang: why are there so many pimples on your back?

Wind also burrows into the taiyang channel and merges with the taiyang vessels — now this is interesting.

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: When wind qi enters the taiyang channel and merges with the taiyang vessels, it travels through all the shu points — the shu points of the five zang and six fu all sit on the taiyang channel. At this time the taiyang surface qi clashes with the yang qi, making the taiyang channel movement unfavorable; the muscles often feel swollen, stuffy and painful, even festering, and boils often grow on the back. Why do you have so many pimples on your back? It is wind qi merged with taiyang.

The prescription lesson: wind-dispelling, cold-dispelling and heat-dispelling are three different medicines

Knowing that wind has cold and heat, prescribing becomes an art. This is where Doctor Ni repeatedly taps the blackboard — wind-dispelling medicine, cold-dispelling medicine and heat-dispelling medicine are three different things.

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Why do we need to know wind-heat versus wind-cold? Because when we write a prescription we say: this is wind-dispelling medicine — I did not say it is cold-dispelling or heat-dispelling. Wind-dispelling medicine, cold-dispelling medicine and heat-dispelling medicine are three different things. When you see a thin person, combine wind-dispelling with cold-dispelling; when you see a fat person, combine wind-dispelling with heat-dispelling — the prescription is done. Otherwise you give a fat person wind-dispelling plus cold-dispelling, and after taking it he says, great, but I got even fatter — how can that work?

Li feng — leprosy: the nose bridge rots and the skin ulcerates, but it can be cured

The Wind Treatise also contains a very serious disease: li feng, which is leprosy.

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: This li disease is extremely fierce, the fever is very strong; the heat qi inside the blood and qi makes the blood not very clean, the qi unclear, so it causes the nose bridge to rot and the complexion to fail — the nasal column, the bridge of the nose, all ruined, that severe; the skin ulcerates; wind and cold lodge in the vessels and do not leave — this is called li feng. When treating leprosy, wind has cold and heat mixed together; when we prescribe we must pay attention — this can be cured. You say cold-dispelling and heat-dispelling medicine are opposite, would they conflict? They do not conflict. Many outside doctors, when cold and heat are mixed together, do not know how to prescribe. In fact, putting both in the prescription is no problem. Some doctors say this medicine and that medicine contradict each other and should not be combined — for example, some say rou cong rong (Cistanche) and tu si zi (Cuscuta) contradict each other, or yang qi shi and tu si zi contradict each other, so they never combine them. In practice, combining them has no effect at all.

The five-zang winds that follow the seasons: jia-yi liver wind, bing-ding heart wind…

Next comes the calendar. Wind wounds the five zang according to season and day, each with its own name.

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Take spring: wounded by wind on jia-yi days is liver wind; in summer, bing-ding, that speaks of fire — wounded by wind is heart wind; late summer wu-ji, wounded by evil is spleen wind; autumn geng-xin is lung wind; winter ren-gui is kidney wind. Spring, summer, autumn, winter and long summer — when the wind blows, there are the five different winds of the five zang.

Then a whole string of wind names, which Doctor Ni recites in one breath, like calling out a menu.

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Pian feng — when wind strikes the shu points of the five zang and six fu, each entering by its own door, it is pian feng: the five zang and six fu originally have even, balanced qi vessels; now a few are seeded here, the vessels become uneven — that is the deviation (pian). Wind qi climbing along feng fu and up along the Governor Vessel becomes brain wind; wind entering the head becomes eye wind — when the eyes are cold, tears come out; when the eyes are hot, they become red, swollen and stinging. Some ladies will tell you: strange, why do my eyes keep tearing? That is eye wind. Catching wind after drinking alcohol is called lou feng (leak wind); catching wind while sweating after sex is called nei feng (internal wind); catching wind right after washing the hair is called shou feng (head wind); for people who work outdoors where the wind blows constantly, prolonged wind entering the interior becomes intestinal wind — intestinal wind with undigested diarrhea (sun xie), belly pain; wind on the outside at the interstices is xie feng, on the surface, sweating without stop. Conclusion: the chief of a hundred diseases is wind; all these changes are other diseases — there is no fixed formula; it is entirely pattern differentiation, prescribing according to the symptoms you see.

The wind pulse: touch it lightly and the pulse is right on the skin

How do you feel a wind disease? Doctor Ni draws a hand and explains the wind pulse clearly.

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: In a normal person’s pulse, the cun position is a little higher and the chi position a little lower — cun is nine fen, chi is one cun; this is yang, this is yin, this is chest, this is abdomen; the guan in the middle is the diaphragm — the diaphragm area, where liver, spleen, stomach and diaphragm connect, all can be felt at this pulse. When you meet a wind pulse, wind enters through every pore — the pulse runs out onto the surface of the skin: the pulse travels along the skin; you touch the skin lightly with your finger, do not press, let it fall gently and you feel the pulse — that is the wind pulse; you can feel the wind-cold.

The five-zang wind patterns (1): lung wind — sweating, aversion to wind, and a patch of white above the brows

Turning to page 357, the detailed discussion of the five-zang winds begins. Doctor Ni says that when the five zang receive wind, the symptoms differ, but they share one common mark: sweating and aversion to wind.

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: When the lung is struck by wind-cold — sweating and aversion to wind — Zhang Zhongjing’s Shang Han Lun came out of this very passage. When the lung receives wind, the person sweats, the pores relax open, and he fears the wind — the wind blowing on him feels terrible. The complexion tends toward white; he often coughs and is often short of breath; during the day it is tolerable, toward dusk it gets severe. The diagnosis is above the brows — the color is white: the area above the eyebrows, the yintang region, is white. If you only read the text, you do not know where that is; I will tell you — these are the eyes, this is the eyebrow; the tail of the brow, the area below the brow, is white. I see it all the time, so I know; otherwise the text cannot express it.

A bonus lesson in physiognomy: eyebrows belong to the lung, hair belongs to the kidney — why do people with longevity brows live long?

Speaking of lung wind being diagnosed above the brows, Doctor Ni takes the opportunity to explain thoroughly the “jurisdiction” of eyebrows and hair — one of the most practical physiognomic arts in the Nei Jing.

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: The eyebrows sit on the lung. The hair — its luster and shine are governed by the kidney; hair is the surplus of blood, belonging to kidney qi above; the growth of hair is governed by the liver. So if you want your hair to grow well and be black and shiny, you must tend both liver and kidney. If you only strengthen the liver, what grows out is still white; strengthen both liver and kidney, and it turns black. When elderly people in their seventies and eighties have white hair, you give them medicine, or if their body is in good shape, by ninety — hey, it suddenly turns black again — have you ever seen that? Once he has eaten something good, secretly observe him, see what he is eating, how it turned black. Eyebrows are not governed by liver and kidney — eyebrows are governed by the lung, so if you shave your eyebrows, they do not grow back; that is why women tattoo their brows. The Chinese say longevity brows mean longevity — after seventy or eighty, the eyebrows grow very long and hair grows inside the ears: both are longevity, representing very strong kidney qi, because the kidney is yang, the kidney is the root of the prenatal (xian tian), and the spleen and stomach are the root of the postnatal (hou tian). The tail of the eyebrow growing very long is called a longevity brow; hair growing inside the ear is longevity. But a young person with hair growing inside the ears is a fierce character — someone who has been killing for a long time, kidney qi very strong, very ferocious.

The five-zang wind patterns (2): heart wind and liver wind — one cannot speak quickly, the other is annoyed by women

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: When the heart receives wind-cold, the heart wind pattern also shows sweating and aversion to wind, just like the lung, but with jiao jue (vexation, exhaustion), easily angered and frightened; the complexion is red; in severe cases the speech cannot come quickly — he cannot speak fast; the diagnosis is at the mouth: the color of the lips is very fresh, very red, very bright. The patient’s emotions fluctuate greatly. As long as wind is received, it is always sweating and aversion to wind — when the patient tells you, “strange, I am always sweating and the wind blowing on me is unbearable,” that is already a wind pattern. Whichever zang receives wind, sweating and aversion to wind are the same symptoms. If you really cannot diagnose, it is simple: press the fifth vertebra for pain — the heart shu point (Xinshu BL15) — done. The liver wind pattern also shows sweating and aversion to wind, prone to sorrow, the complexion slightly green, blue. Because the liver itself is wood, and metal overcomes wood — sorrow is the injury of metal; when the liver is injured, there is disease knotted inside; then metal moves over, the liver becomes vacuous, and sorrow appears. There is a little green on the eyelids, the throat is dry — the throat here is very dry — and easily angered, and at times dislikes women. This “at times dislikes women” — I rarely encounter this phenomenon; the person who wrote the book back then may have had his own purpose. The diagnosis is below the eyes — the color there is green.

The five-zang wind patterns (3): spleen wind — a faint yellow on the nose; kidney wind — a black face, and even sex fails

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: The spleen wind pattern also shows sweating and aversion to wind; the body is heavy and lazy — when the spleen has problems there is heaviness and weariness; the spleen governs the four limbs, so all four limbs are unwilling to move; the belly is full; the complexion is thin and yellow — you can see a little yellow, because the spleen governs yellow; he does not like to eat; the spleen opens into the nose, so the diagnosis is on the nose — you see the nose is a little yellow. This yellow has two kinds: one is a faint yellow — faint yellow, with sweating and aversion to wind — that is wind-stroke; some people have a very bright, shiny yellow on the nose — the spleen is not yellow at all, but the nose is very shiny — then you have just won the lottery! The nose shines — hurry up and buy a lottery ticket. You call it spleen wind, but he just won the lottery — his nose is yellow too, just a slight difference. Looking at color is inspection (wang zhen). The kidney wind: also sweating and aversion to wind, the face breaks out in pimples, puffy; spinal pain so he cannot stand straight. The complexion is tai — this character “tai” is pronounced tai, like the tai in Taiwan; it is the black produced by burning in a fire, in a stove — that is tai. The diagnosis is on the flesh; the color is black — you can see some blackness. Yin qu bu li — private matters are difficult to speak of: men cannot perform, and women’s menses stop, very obstructed. On the skin you can see a slightly dark tint.

Stomach wind: sweating neck, cannot eat, full belly — with two ancient terms taught along the way

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: The stomach wind symptoms: the neck sweats much; aversion to wind; food and drink do not go down — he cannot eat, because the wind carries cold and heat; the diaphragm is blocked and impassable; the belly easily becomes full and distended. Shi yi (losing clothing) then zhen zhang (bloating) — wearing too little clothing makes the belly swell; eating cold food then diarrhea. On examination the body is thin but the belly is big: in stomach wind the belly is very distended and the body is very thin. Remember: thin means cold, fat means heat. Along the way, two ancient terms: shi yi (si yi) means wearing too few clothes, thin clothing; geng yi means going to the toilet — in the old days there was no flush toilet; you changed into a special outfit for the toilet so as not to dirty your clothes, so “geng yi” (changing clothes) means using the toilet.

Head wind: the headache follows the calendar — keep an almanac and a Ling Gui Ba Fa disk in your clinic

The head wind pattern: head and face sweat much, aversion to wind, and its rhythm is tied to the heavenly stems and earthly branches.

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Head wind: the day before the wind day the disease is severe — the headache is so bad you cannot go outside; on the wind day itself it lessens — this speaks of the ganzhi calendar and seasonal nodes. If it is liver wind, when the same jia-yi day comes around, the disease flares, the headache is more severe; when bing-ding days come, entering the fire day that generates it, the disease gets better, lessens. The patient is funny: “Doctor, I have a headache. Does it hurt right now?” “Not right now.” “When does it hurt?” “Yesterday it hurt badly; today it does not.” You take out the almanac and make a little note — of course we have the calculation and know what day it is; look at the almanac: yesterday was a ding day, today has already turned to wu, an earth day — then you know it is heart wind. From now on, everyone, set up a Ling Gui Ba Fa disk in your clinic, plus an almanac, and check the almanac often.

Lou feng and xie feng: sweating when you eat, whole-body aches — whole-body pain means cold

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Lou feng (leak wind) is also sweating and aversion to wind; you absolutely must not dress too lightly; you sweat when you eat — in severe cases the whole body is covered in sweat: as long as you sweat a great deal when you eat, that belongs to lou feng. Panting, aversion to wind, clothes often wet — yi chang ru (the clothes are always soaked); dry mouth, liking to drink, cannot do hard labor. From now on when you see “profuse sweating,” there are many wind-dispelling, sweat-stopping and astringent herbs in Chinese medicine — this is where pattern differentiation is needed. If you do not know wind-cold from wind-heat, you just take painkillers — painkillers stop it temporarily, but they only numb; the patient knows it himself: after taking painkillers the person becomes duller, and the disease is still inside. If you know how to prescribe wind-dispelling medicine, and you are sure the headache is from wind-cold, wind-dispelling plus cold-dispelling herbs down, and the headache is gone; if it is wind-heat, wind-dispelling plus heat-dispelling herbs down, and the headache is gone.

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: The xie feng (draining wind) pattern: profuse sweating, sweat soaks through to the clothes, cannot do hard labor, the whole body aches. This kind of wind attacks laborers — people who work outdoors every day, no air conditioning, doing physical labor, carrying rocks, carrying bricks; when the sweat is pouring, they rest a moment and cool off under a tree and catch the wind; then they go back out and work, sweat again, go back and catch the wind again — in this situation, the whole body aches. When the pain is in the head or a local spot, that is wind with wind-cold or wind-heat; when the whole body aches, Bo Qi says it in one word — cold! So when we prescribe, the moment we see whole-body pain, we put cold-dispelling medicine in the formula. Some patients are sweating; when we dispel cold we must secure the exterior and simultaneously check the sweat; some patients have no sweat at all and must be induced to sweat for the cold to leave. But basically, whenever the whole body hurts, it is cold. Look at the whole Huang Di Nei Jing — is it not always talking about cold? That is why we use warming herbs and cold-dispelling herbs a great deal; only the classical formulas (jing fang) use heat-dispelling herbs. Zhang Zhongjing’s Shang Han Lun all came from this chapter; the warm-disease school (wen bing pai) never uses cold-dispelling medicine — so we do not know how they treat disease, and no wonder they cannot cure it. In America, the warm-disease practitioners cannot cure anything; they have to hand the patient over to Western medicine, and Western medicine says what? Hand him to me — so it lands in my office. Every time the patient says, your final prescription was right — our Zhang Zhongjing Shang Han Lun relies on all of this; the secret manual sits right on the desk.

The Bi Treatise opens: wind, cold and damp, three qi arriving mixed together, combine to make bi

With the Wind Treatise finished, Doctor Ni turns the page and opens the forty-third chapter — the Bi Treatise (Bi Lun).

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: In the old Chinese medical books, the characters “痺” and “痹” were used interchangeably; both speak of numbness, insensitivity, swelling and pain. Originally it was the first character; later the two became confused, their meanings very similar. In the first passage, the Yellow Emperor asks: where does bi come from? Bo Qi says: wind, cold and damp — three qi arriving mixed together — combine to make bi. Why do you need to know wind, cold and damp? Because in one box of Chinese medicine there are wind-dispelling, damp-dispelling and cold-dispelling herbs. If you only know that wind and damp cause pain, and you prescribe wind-dispelling and damp-dispelling herbs, it will certainly not heal — why? You left out the cold-dispelling herb. From now on when you prescribe, pick up a formula and look: this formula has wind-dispelling, damp-dispelling and cold-dispelling herbs — it is for joint pain; and if you find that this patient does not have joint pain, then the prescription was written wrong. Or the patient does have joint pain, and you see someone prescribed wind-dispelling and cold-dispelling without damp-dispelling — the disease will not heal. Wind, cold and damp — three mixed qi combine together. Where the wind qi prevails it is xing bi (migrating bi) — when wind is more, xing bi means the pain moves: today it hurts in this joint, tomorrow that joint, the day after this joint again; we know wind is more, so we prescribe more wind-dispelling medicine, with adjustments in dosage; where the cold qi prevails it is tong bi (painful bi) — when the pain is very severe, the cold qi prevails…

And there, abruptly, the lecture stops — the damp-prevailing zhuo bi (fixed bi) and the many classifications of bi are left for the next lecture.

Closing: three sentences to remember from this lecture

From low back pain to the Wind Treatise to the Bi Treatise, this lecture carries an enormous amount of information — but three sentences are enough to remember: yao bei wei zhong qiu — for back pain seek Weizhong, and surgically cut backs are the most troublesome; wind is the chief of a hundred diseases, and sweating with aversion to wind is the hallmark of wind patterns; wind, cold and damp combine to make bi — dispel wind, dispel cold and dispel damp all three at once.

Based on Doctor Ni Haixia’s Ren Ji (Human Records) Huang Di Nei Jing lecture series (Lecture 50), presented by Doctor Luo Dalun.