[Case study] Modifed Guizhi Formula to release cold

A 31-year-old male patient felt suddenly fatigued, headache, uncomfortable for the whole body, aversion to cold, appetite was normal, and appetite and bowel movement were normal. The tongue is pale and the coating is thin and white, with slight tooth marks. The patient felt no sweat. The left-hand pulse is deep, and the right-hand pulse is floating and slightly tight. The patient had problems both on the interior and exterior of his body, so the pulse of one hand was floating and the pulse of the other was sinking. For the TCM principle, if there is an exterior syndrome, release the exterior first.  Although the patient said that he did not sweat, we cannot use the releasing cold-attack method from the pulse condition and should be treated with the wind-attack method, so Guizhi Decoction was chosen. Considering that it is inconvenient for patients to drink hot porridge immediately after taking Guizhi Decoction, Zhang Xichun’s method was used to add herbs like anemarrhena, astragalus and fangfeng on the basis of the original prescription of Guizhi Decoction to replace the original method of taking hot porridge to help sweat.

The patient took one dose before going to bed and felt that the body began to heat up in the middle of the night, and the feeling of coldness disappeared. The cold healed the next day.

We often use Guizhi Decoction to treat various diseases, but the chance of clinical use to treat cold is less. Generally speaking, when encountering a common cold,  some patients like to take their own medicine. Although it is likely to be wrong self-treatment, because the six channels of exogenous diseases change very quickly, the patient will mistakenly think that his cold is better. Some colds do heal on their own, but some leave the root of the disease or change into other forms, such as cough, asthma, toothache, local body pain, phlegm, constipation, nephritis, etc. It might cause long-term health risks to the body, and continuous wrong treatment can also endanger lives.

A mild cold can be more important than most people imagine.

NO.047

Note: TCM doesn’t ‘treat’ any certain WM disease name. TCM has its own system and method to rebalance the human body, release the symptoms and help the body truly recover on its own. TCM treatment methods and effects are different according to individual differences, and the sharing of the case study does NOT constitute treatment recommendations.