Drink More Hot Water and Lower Your Pillow: Wind-Cold Symptoms Resolve on Their Own
Recently, possibly because of the weather, or possibly because I was struck by an influenza virus, my tonsils became red and swollen again and my nose was blocked. Swallowing brought a stabbing pain in both my throat and my ears, together with tinnitus, a ringing sensation inside the head, and some hearing loss. My shoulders and neck ached badly, and tilting my head up or down triggered dizziness. Three consecutive COVID-19 tests for the whole family came back negative, ruling out a SARS-CoV-2 infection.I tried Gegen Tang (Pueraria Decoction) and Mahuang Tang (Ephedra Decoction), but the effect was negligible. Perhaps the herbs had been stored at home for too long; these were kampo granules I had brought back from Japan before the pandemic. But with the pandemic situation, buying such medicines is inconvenient. These symptoms were quite distressing and affected both my work and daily life.I suspected I had been infected with an influenza virus or something like streptococcus, compounded by too much desk work and a troublesome cervical spine, which together produced these symptoms. I did some stretching to loosen up my cervical spine, and there was indeed a slight improvement, but it was not marked. I hardly knew how to position my head: raising it made me dizzy, lowering it made me dizzy, and it was an awful feeling.I badly wanted to resolve this as quickly as possible. In the past, when treating colds in myself or my family, I could usually fully relieve the symptoms within two hours, but this time that no longer seemed to work. Eventually the throat pain became so severe that eating and drinking were difficult, and the dizziness left me restless whether sitting or lying down. I had to switch my daily reading to audiobooks and forced myself to push through my work.A few days ago the symptoms became unbearable. I decided to drink large amounts of boiled water—not cooled boiled water, but water hot enough to burn. Enduring the pain of swallowing, I sipped it blow by blow, small mouthful after small mouthful. Over two hours I drank two and a half liters of boiling water; I stayed wrapped in my quilt and kept drinking. After drinking the hot water I began to sweat (not profusely) and to urinate frequently. Once I had finished the two and a half liters, the pain in my throat and ears was much better, though my head still felt dizzy.After drinking, I tried to find a comfortable position to sleep. Searching this way and that, I found that only by lying flat in bed without a pillow was my dizziness at its mildest. So I removed the pillow and slept a long, deep sleep. When I woke, I felt much lighter all over. The dizziness had clearly eased, my nose was no longer blocked, and the pain in my throat and ears was barely noticeable, though opening my mouth wide still ached.I knew I was on the right track. After waking I drank another liter of boiled water, and my throat and ears no longer hurt. Over the following days I kept sleeping without a pillow, and the discomfort in my shoulders and neck, along with the dizziness, gradually eased. After two or three days everything returned to normal. I no longer believe in the old saying that a high pillow brings peace of mind. Instead I switched to a buckwheat-hull pillow; every night before bed I press it flat so that the part I rest on is very low, in order to restore my cervical spine.This illness was indeed caused by wind-cold, but it was also not unrelated to my daily high-intensity desk work. And because the people I serve are so special, I could not simply stop working after falling ill; at most I could switch off my phone in the evenings and reduce my workload.I myself learned a lesson from this illness. This week I greatly reduced the time I spend hunched over a desk, bought a stand for reading while standing, and now read on my feet rather than sitting at my desk. I also added some cervical-spine stretching exercises and keep at them every day. After these comprehensive adjustments, my mind now feels even clearer than before I fell ill.Some diseases simply cannot be solved by medication alone. Drinking plenty of hot water genuinely shortens the course of infectious diseases and relieves symptoms. Long-standing cervical spondylosis can also affect a person’s hearing, so adjusting the pillow in a targeted way—gently stretching the cervical spine through a supine, head-tilted-back sleeping posture—produces quite a noticeable effect.It is winter now, and with influenza and COVID-19 pressing from both sides, seeking medical care is very inconvenient. My experience may be of some value, so I am sharing it in the hope that it may help patients with the same problems.