If You've Caught COVID, Try This Method—Spread It to Family and Friends If It Works
These days, very many people have symptoms from the Omicron variant of COVID—chills, fever, headache, sore throat, lower-back pain, body aches, dizziness, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, nasal congestion, sneezing, sweating, fatigue—and many consult me. In guiding everyone to solve the problem with natural therapies, I have accumulated a set of effective experience, which I now share. Readers who have caught Omicron might give it a try; if it works for you, please pass it on to your relatives and friends.The key to this method is dispelling cold and inducing sweat. It suits every stage after Omicron infection and patients of every age, from infants to the elderly; pregnant women can use it too. Because no medicine is involved, it has no liver or kidney toxicity. Those with chronic conditions such as hypertension, diabetes, cardiovascular/cerebrovascular disease, or cancer can also use it. I'll explain the rationale in detail later; for now, here's a brief introduction:1. Drink hot water (as hot as is comfortable—hotter is better, as long as it doesn't scald) to promote sweating. If the patient does not usually sweat easily, boil ginger, garlic, and scallion together in water; the three may be used alone or in any combination. Those not allergic to chili or Sichuan peppercorn can also boil chili or peppercorn and their products to drink. Dosage is up to personal taste; don't be rigid. The goal is sweating, so as long as sweat comes, the amount doesn't matter. Those allergic to ginger, garlic, scallion, chili, and peppercorn should just use plain boiled water.2. Soak the feet in hot water to promote sweating. How long to soak varies; add hot water as it cools, as long as the patient sweats. Ginger-scallion or ginger-garlic water induces sweat more strongly than plain hot water; if you are frail and don't sweat easily, consider ginger-scallion, ginger-garlic, or peppercorn water and soak a bit longer. You don't need much ginger, scallion, garlic, or peppercorn: a handful of small scallions or one large scallion, one or two liang of ginger, several to a dozen cloves of garlic, and a small handful of peppercorn. The goal is sweat, so don't fuss over amounts.3. Use the hairdryer on hot, blowing slowly from the cervical spine along the spine to the coccyx. Beware of scalding the patient's skin; wear a thin undergarment while blowing hot air. Those who don't sweat easily should blow longer over the coccyx, which usually brings on sweat. When caring for infants, parents must prevent scalding; set the hairdryer to low or hold the nozzle a distance from the skin to avoid burning the child.4. Apply a hot towel to painful areas: for headache, the forehead and back of the neck (a broad area around the TCM Fengchi, Fengfu, and Dazhui points); for sore throat, the throat; and elsewhere on the body, wherever it hurts. You can also blow painful spots with the hairdryer on hot, handling headache and sore throat like a hot compress.5. The four methods above may be used alone or in combination. The patient must sweat. While using them, keep warm to help. If there is no fever or only a low fever, the illness is not yet severe, so induce only a light sweat. If already high fever, or the low fever has lasted long, induce a thorough sweat. Once you've sweated, take a hot shower and sleep well; on waking you'll feel light all over. Mild cases are solved by one session; severe patients may repeat the method until resolved.6. After symptoms disappear, once each morning, noon, and night, induce auxiliary sweat—through exercise, foot soaking, or hot drinks—and drink plenty of water. Exercise may bring a thorough sweat; foot soaking or hot drinks need only bring a light sweat. Do this for 3–5 days to prevent relapse.7. Those not yet infected can, once each morning, noon, and night, induce auxiliary sweat through exercise, foot soaking, or hot drinks. This prevents Omicron infection, or, at the very start of infection, clears the virus in time so that severe symptoms don't appear.Why is this method so effective? Because the disease caused by Omicron, in TCM terms, belongs to cold-damp epidemic, not to wind-heat cold as some experts claim. Treating it as wind-heat only worsens the patient's condition.The early stage of Omicron infection mostly brings chills, fever, and body pain—all the TCM "wind-cold binding the exterior pattern." Even when sore throat and dry mouth appear a few days later, they belong to the "fire constraint pattern." So treatment should follow the TCM principles of "warm what is cold" and "release what is fire-constrained," using acrid-warm exterior-releasing methods or heat therapy to make the patient sweat. Once sweat comes, every symptom eases markedly, and very fast.From the Western and modern-biology angle, angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) is the host receptor through which COVID and its variants enter cells and cause infection. So once infected, patients easily develop vascular disease; those with hypertension, heart disease, kidney disease, and diabetes especially easily worsen into severe cases. Hot drinks, hot compresses, foot soaks, and hot-air blowing speed blood circulation and activate the immune system, making immune cells patrol faster and destroy the virus sooner. Drinking lots of water also lowers blood viscosity and prevents worsening vascular disease.In my observation, only a few patients with severe underlying disease shift from a wind-cold to a wind-heat pattern, and mostly several days after the virus enters; even then they still have a mixed cold-heat pattern and must not be fed only cold-cool exterior-releasing herbs. Most people who take wind-heat cold medicine get the opposite of what they want, so please don't abuse it.Dear readers, if you or your family have caught Omicron, have no medicine at home, and face a severe local medical crunch with no way to seek care, give this method a try. If it works for you, please forward this article to your relatives and friends.I have used this method to prevent Omicron, and so far none of my family has developed fever or other severe symptoms. Some patients consulted me; I guided them to use this method and got good results. I've been promoting it on a small scale these days, and many people have seen clear effects, which is why I now strongly promote it.With the nation in crisis and a severe medical crunch, this simple, convenient, effective, and cheap natural therapy needs no drugs and doesn't squeeze limited medical resources; it is very much worth promoting. Once we find effective ways to fight viral infection, we can return to normal life sooner.Readers may repost freely; media or self-media should cite the source. To save time, I have long kept comments closed; this article exceptionally opens them, so please share your results after using the method.