TCM Has Certain Advantages in Treating Various Post-Infection Sequelae

After infectious diseases are treated, all kinds of sequelae readily appear; the most famous is long COVID. In modern medicine these sequelae have almost no corresponding disease names, let alone medication protocols. This makes many such conditions difficult to diagnose by the Western-medicine approach.

For example, last semester a teacher's child was infected with Mycoplasma, had a fever for several days, and was treated with antibiotics; the fever went away. Afterward the child was in a state of inexplicable vertigo, so dizzy that he could not walk. At the hospital, doctors suspected ataxia or vestibular neuritis. A battery of tests did not support these diagnoses; no specific disease could be diagnosed, and the doctors did not know how to treat it.

Finally the teacher, at her wits' end, asked me to assess it. I told her that when we were children we also encountered this kind of thing; it is usually a cold sequela. In those days there were many children and conditions were poor, so parents did not pay much attention; if it could not be handled, it would resolve on its own after a few days.

But to put her at ease, I still suggested she use the Chaihu series of TCM formulas. Because vertigo triggered by an externally contracted febrile disease belongs, in TCM pattern differentiation, to the Shaoyang pattern, and the representative formula for Shaoyang pattern is Xiao Chaihu Tang.

The child took the medicine three times—whether because the drug worked or because it self-resolved, the vertigo stopped.

I personally regard this as a typical post-infection sequela. What disease such sequelae actually belong to may be hard to explain clearly with modern medical theory.

But in real life, such cases are not rare. People often develop all sorts of strange symptoms after a cold; some resolve on their own after a while, while others are less lucky and linger on.

Chinese medicine is skilled at treatment based on pattern differentiation and has accumulated rich experience over thousands of years. One remarkable thing about TCM is that the various symptoms recorded in its classics cover nearly all the symptoms we see in clinical practice. This shows that the ancient doctors were no fools: they observed the body's disease responses and found many solutions.

I recently encountered another case: a 77-year-old middle-aged woman who, for more than thirty years, had been prone to sweating and a fear of wind and cold. No clear cause could be diagnosed, so no effective treatment could be found.

Readers who have studied TCM, especially those familiar with the classical-formula or formula-pattern school, may react at once: isn't this exactly a "Guizhi Tang pattern" or a "Yupingfeng San pattern"?

The text of Guizhi Tang says "spontaneous sweating, shrinking with aversion to cold, shivering with aversion to wind." Translated into modern language, this means "prone to sweating, fearing cold and wind." These symptoms exist in many people and are usually a sequela left behind after a cold.

How should such diseases be diagnosed? Modern medicine might label them autonomic nervous dysfunction, but when it comes to actual medication there are not many options.

Chinese medicine is different: such patients can be treated with Guizhi Tang, and also with Yupingfeng San. For this particular patient I combined Guizhi Tang and Yupingfeng San into one, adding some Fuxiaomai (light wheat), to form a compound.

After three doses, the patient reported less sweating, and the fear of wind and cold caused by sweating also diminished. But because her course was long, all problems could not be solved at once, so afterward I advised her to continue using some yang-warming herbs to consolidate the effect.

There are also those with post-infection dry mouth; for these, too, it is not easy to find a solution in Western medication guidelines. But Chinese medicine can treat them with formulas such as Shengmai Yin or Renshen Baihu Tang.

These diseases are currently in an ambiguous state: under modern medical theory, diagnosing any single disease would be inappropriate; the doctors' tentative diagnoses are not supported by biological or imaging tests, and they can only be classified as refractory illnesses of unknown etiology.

Chinese medicine describes such diseases with another set of theories—for example, spontaneous sweating and aversion to wind are explained as deficiency of wei qi. This explanation does not sound very scientific, and I myself do not entirely agree with it.

But this does not prevent the ancients from having found solutions to such problems in their life practice; these solutions are the corresponding formulas recorded in ancient medical classics. These formulas were discovered by working people through practical experience, and when we use them to treat, the symptoms are relieved or even eliminated.

Moreover, the ancient doctors efficiently integrated these kindred formulas: most ancient medical classics classified diseases into categories such as the "wind-stroke gate," "cough gate," and "dysphagia gate."

Later learners of TCM, once they have the ability to study, can use these classics like a reference book—looking up solutions according to the patient's symptoms. This kind of convenient reference is extremely practical.