Fever From Chills and the Pharmacy Has No Medicine Left? Doctor Luo Dalun: Don’t Panic — Simple Food Therapies (Five Tiger Decoction, Ginger-Scallion-Brown Sugar Water) Can Help

Opening: the pharmacy shelves are empty — even if I taught you a formula, you couldn’t get the herbs

At the very start of this episode, Doctor Luo Dalun comes clean with everyone: at this point, teaching another formula is not much use.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Right now I feel that whatever formula I teach is useless. Why? Because even if I teach it, you can’t get the herbs — many pharmacies seem to be empty everywhere. Some friends were prepared and bought a bit of medicine in advance, so you have those; those who didn’t buy anything can’t find any now. I went out to buy alcohol spray and the like, and even that was gone.

Why are the pharmacies empty? Doctor Luo puts his finger on it — panic and hoarding squeezed out the supply:

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Actually, if everyone stayed calm and didn’t hoard — didn’t stockpile anything, and just went out to buy what we need when we need it — that would be the normal order of things. But we all have the hoarding habit; once panic sets in, the medicine supply really does run short, and that’s how this problem arose. It’s exasperating. So I can’t really lecture on formulas right now — if I talk too much about prescriptions you can’t find, it’s all for nothing.

Since formulas are out of the question, this episode takes a different approach: food therapy. But before that, Doctor Luo wants to give everyone a reassurance pill.

First, don’t be afraid: this illness is not as serious as people imagine

Many people panic the moment they hear that someone around them has caught it. Doctor Luo says: first, get rid of the fear of disease.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: As far as we can tell so far, the harm is not as great as imagined. A tiny minority might become seriously ill and face real danger after infection; but for ordinary people like us, there is basically nothing to worry about. I’m in Sanya right now, and no one around me seems to have caught it; but in the northeast, just about everyone has been through it — my hometown in the northeast went through the whole round, and many friends in Beijing seem to have been infected.

What to do once infected? Doctor Luo says: whether you take Western medicine or Chinese medicine, at the core it is all just bringing the fever down.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Whether you take paracetamol, ibuprofen, or Chinese medicine, it’s all just reducing fever. With Chinese medicine, where you might have burned with fever for three or four days, you’ll come down in a day or two; with Western medicine it’s the same — a day or two. Basically everyone goes through this process, so don’t be too afraid. This illness is fundamentally a very ordinary case within the category of external contractions — the only reason it’s special is the impact on the elderly and the seriously ill; for ordinary people it passes with very mild symptoms. Some people go completely frantic the moment they’re infected — I get countless WeChat messages every day asking what to do and how to bring the fever down immediately. There’s really nothing to worry about.

Fever is a good thing: upright qi is doing battle with the pathogen

Doctor Luo also explains a principle many people find hard to accept — fever itself is not a bad thing.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Fever means the body’s normal immune system is at work — upright qi is fighting the pathogen. Fighting is a good thing; if you don’t fight, is that good? Not fighting isn’t good either. But be careful not to let it get too high — if the resistance is too violent, it can harm the body itself. If you hit 40°C, 39°C, 40°C, that is indeed a bit high; below 38°C is basically within the normal range — let it burn a little; it’s beneficial either way. So everyone, don’t panic.

You stocked a pile of medicine — so how do you actually use it?

Many families stocked up on lots of medicine, but once genuinely infected, they panic and don’t know what to take. Doctor Luo says: just follow the pattern-differentiation logic we’ve talked about all along — tell cold from heat.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: To start with, take some Gan Mao Qing Re Granules — Tong Ren Tang’s Gan Mao Qing Re Granules, that’s perfectly fine; or take some Xiao Chai Hu — if the food stagnation is heavy and there’s a lot of dampness around you, take Huo Xiang Zheng Qi, combined with Xiao Chai Hu; you can also combine it with Gan Mao Qing Re Granules, or Shuang Huang Lian, and so on. Match it to your situation: if your stomach and intestines feel uncomfortable, pair it with Huo Xiang Zheng Qi; if you’re shivering, chilled to the bone, feeling cold all over, use Gan Mao Qing Re Granules — that one is for scattering cold. If the heat inside is obvious — sore throat, high fever, heat signs coming out — you have Lian Hua Qing Wen, right, and antiviral oral liquid also works; if there’s coughing, pairing it with Xiao Chai Hu is fine; for nausea and dizziness, combine Xiao Chai Hu with Shuang Huang Lian, or Pu Di Lan, whatever — all of these are worth trying.

In one sentence: cold signs get cold-scattering medicine, heat signs get heat-clearing medicine — we’ve introduced all of this before, and if you have medicine at home, prepare along those lines. But what if you truly have no medicine at home and can’t buy any right now? That’s when Doctor Luo teaches food therapy.

Food therapy No. 1: Master Li Ke’s Five Tiger Decoction

The moment “Five Tiger Decoction” comes up, Doctor Luo first clarifies: many formulas down the ages have carried this name.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: The name Five Tiger Decoction (Wu Hu Tang) has been used for many formulas, ancient and modern. In the old medical books, Ma Xing Shi Gan Tang (Ephedra, Apricot Kernel, Gypsum and Licorice Decoction) with fine tea added was also called Five Tiger Decoction. But the Five Tiger Decoction I’m talking about today is the one from Master Li Ke, the renowned old physician.

What is the core of Master Li Ke’s Five Tiger Decoction? Doctor Luo boils it down to two words — ginger and walnut:

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: The core of this Five Tiger Decoction is ginger and walnut. Walnut treating external contraction is the experience of many Chinese medicine doctors — the walnut looks like a brain; it tonifies the brain and the kidney. When kidney qi is filled up, that fills up upright qi, which then drives out the external pathogen. Judging by the experience of many folk doctors, walnut truly does help with external contraction — that’s why they put walnuts in their formulas, exactly the same logic as adding Chinese yam to ours. So the core of this Five Tiger Decoction — remember: walnut.

How do you put it together? Doctor Luo takes apart Master Li Ke’s original formula for everyone:

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: In Master Li Ke’s Five Tiger Decoction, use six walnuts — if they’re small, use ten or more — crushed with the shells on, and put them in the water. Then 40–45 grams of fresh ginger; usually seven or eight, even eight or nine slices will do. Add jujubes to go with the ginger — the ginger-jujube pair is classic, and the jujube harmonizes the spleen and stomach; use about ten jujubes, just broken open, no need to remove the pits — the original formula says 45 grams. Then add scallion white, which is also a core part of this formula — 1 to 2 stalks of scallion white, using the big northern scallion, not the small ones; that white section of the big scallion. You don’t have to trim the root hairs off either — the root hairs are excellent for inducing sweat. Finally add some black soybeans, 30 grams. Black soybeans tonify the kidney, but they also bring fire down — when you’re tonifying heavily, adding black soybeans to the kidney-tonifying herbs will pull the fire down, including deficiency fire, which is why in ancient times black soybeans were often used to drain fire and heat.

The decoction method and how to take it also have their rules — brew it once, sip it in small bowls, many times:

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Add water and boil for 30–40 minutes; 45 minutes to an hour is fine too. Once it’s done, drink it in small bowls, one after another. Remember: don’t add water and re-boil the dregs — no, just once. Drink this one bowl in multiple small servings. This works well for the early stage of catching cold — you can remember this Five Tiger Decoction.

Zhang Baoxun’s Five Tiger Decoction: a small-dose version, good for children

Besides Master Li Ke’s large-dose Five Tiger Decoction, Doctor Luo’s good friend, the Chinese medicine practitioner Zhang Baoxun, also has a version of Five Tiger Decoction — much smaller in dose, and rather fun:

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: My good friend Zhang Baoxun’s Five Tiger Decoction is fun too. His is different from Master Li Ke’s: he also uses walnut with ginger, but only two walnuts, with a few slices of ginger, and then mung beans and sesame — nine mung beans, just nine; 2 grams of green tea; and 5 grams of sesame. Boil all that in water and drink it. It also suits the very beginning of an external contraction. The core is actually the same — walnut and ginger — it’s just that Master Li Ke’s version has bigger doses and Zhang Baoxun’s smaller ones. It suits children and so on; this formula works too, and quite a few people report good results.

Why food therapy at a time like this?

After the two Five Tiger Decoctions, Doctor Luo explains the point of this episode — it’s not for show; you genuinely can’t buy the medicine anymore:

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: People ask why I’m introducing this formula. First, right now you can’t buy Chinese herbs anyway — go to a pharmacy and ask for dried ginger, and the dried ginger is gone; because of Gan Cao Gan Jiang Tang (Licorice and Dried Ginger Decoction), even honey-fried licorice is sold out now. People’s purchasing power is too strong — everyone seems to have hoarded, and once they hoard, the supply truly isn’t enough. Second, our herbal stock isn’t prepared for this, so I’m teaching food therapies. You can try these food methods without following the formula to the letter — if you have Chinese yam, put some yam in, that’s fine; drink yam water, whatever works.

The elders’ folk way: ginger, scallion white and brown sugar with a boiled egg

And if even herbs are unavailable, Doctor Luo says: don’t forget the elders — don’t forget the old folks at home.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: If you have no medicine around you, don’t forget the old methods of our ancestors, our predecessors and the elders at home. Just take some ginger and some scallion white, drop an egg in, add some brown sugar, and boil it into a drink — that’s fine. When you’ve just caught cold, add these, brew it up and drink it, to scatter the cold and work up a sweat. These methods were all summed up bit by bit by our elders and are widely known among the folk. Something like the Five Tiger Decoction is a bit more professional, but it’s still food therapy — regulating the body through food. There’s nothing wrong with that; why not?

Fever already set in? There’s an even simpler one: Sheng Shi Gao Jing Mi Tang

What if the fever has already started? Doctor Luo pulls out the “Sheng Shi Gao Jing Mi Tang” (Raw Gypsum and Rice Soup) he taught before — simple enough to need only two or three ingredients:

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: If you have a fever, simply use the Sheng Shi Gao Jing Mi Tang I’ve taught: raw gypsum and rice — and it’s even better if you add some Huai yam. For the elderly, add some dang shen (Codonopsis), about 10 grams. Take a handful of Huai yam, a handful of rice, a handful of raw gypsum — add 10 grams of dang shen for old people and children — boil it into a porridge; when the rice is cooked through, drink the rice water. It’s a very simple method.

Wrapping up: don’t panic, tell cold from heat, and food therapy is medicine too

Finally, Doctor Luo gathers the core message of this episode into three sentences — don’t panic, tell cold from heat, and food therapy can hold the line:

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: At a time like this, don’t panic. I see many friends panicking — they don’t even know which medicine at home to use. In fact they’ve stocked everything; they just don’t know how to use it. You only need to tell cold from heat. And if you truly have nothing stocked and can’t grab anything now, try the ancestors’ methods and the folk food therapies — every region has them, and I think they’re all good. What today’s episode reminds everyone of: first, don’t panic; second, if you have no medicine, food therapy is a viable option; and if you do have medicine, food therapy can accompany the medicine — why not? When you’ve just caught cold, just as you begin to feel chilled, if you can warm the body, free the channels and induce a light sweat, so that the channels run smoothly, that’s genuinely good too. These methods also work for the cough that lingers after an external contraction — you can drink them for that as well, because that too is leftover cold pathogen (han xie can liu), which I’ve explained before; drinking these at that stage is useful too.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Dear friends, that’s all for today. Lately I sometimes can’t lecture on formulas because you can’t buy the herbs, so I don’t say much about them — instead I talk about food therapy. Thank you for listening, and I hope the friends currently lying ill recover soon. Tomorrow we’ll continue with ways to prevent external contraction. Dear friends, see you tomorrow!

What to take away

Don’t panic. This illness is an ordinary member of the external-contraction family; most people have mild symptoms. Fever below 38°C means upright qi is fighting the pathogen — letting it run its course actually helps. Panic and hoarding are exactly what emptied the pharmacy shelves.
Tell cold from heat and pick the medicine that matches. Feeling chilled and shivering → cold: Gan Mao Qing Re Granules (Tong Ren Tang). Heavy food stagnation and dampness → Huo Xiang Zheng Qi (with Xiao Chai Hu). Sore throat, high fever, obvious heat → Lian Hua Qing Wen or antiviral oral liquid. Nausea and dizziness → Xiao Chai Hu with Shuang Huang Lian or Pu Di Lan.
Master Li Ke’s Five Tiger Decoction (just caught cold): 6 walnuts crushed with shells (10-plus if small), 40–45 g fresh ginger, about 10 jujubes broken open, 1–2 stalks of big northern scallion white (root hairs fine to keep), 30 g black soybeans. Boil once for 30–60 minutes; sip in small bowls several times; never re-boil the dregs. Walnut treats external contraction — brain-shaped, tonifies brain and kidney; kidney qi full → upright qi full → pathogen driven out, the same logic as adding Chinese yam.
Zhang Baoxun’s small-dose Five Tiger Decoction (children): 2 walnuts, a few ginger slices, 9 mung beans, 2 g green tea, 5 g sesame — boiled and drunk; same walnut-and-ginger core, gentler dose.
Folk standby: ginger + scallion white + an egg + brown sugar, boiled into a drink — scatter cold, induce sweat.
Fever already set in — Sheng Shi Gao Jing Mi Tang: a handful each of raw gypsum, rice and Huai yam (add 10 g dang shen for the elderly and children), cooked into porridge; drink the rice water.
Also for lingering cough: these food therapies work for the cough left after a cold, because that is leftover cold pathogen too.

Compiled from Doctor Luo Dalun’s health lecture series (external-contraction prevention · food-therapy special).