Working Up a Sweat Is Better Than a Good Medicine

Half of the Shanghan Lun (Treatise on Cold Damage) is about the sweating method. Among the eight traditional therapeutic methods of Chinese medicine, the sweating method comes first. Textbooks of Chinese medicinal formulas place the sweating and exterior-releasing method at the top; likewise, textbooks of Chinese material medica begin with herbs that induce sweating and release the exterior. Most Western antipyretics and analgesics also work by inducing sweating.

I grew up in the countryside as a child, where medicine was scarce. When I caught a cold, my mother's most common remedy was to cook me a bowl of noodles and put a lot of chili paste in it. As I ate that bowl of chili-paste noodles my mother made, I broke out in a sweat all over. Once I sweated, my body felt much clearer. There is a rural saying: break out in a good sweat and a hundred illnesses are dispelled. In the countryside, people who love working the land really are more robust.

Many illnesses can be relieved by sweating, such as fever, pain, rhinitis, cough, skin itching, and emotional depression. Sweating not only helps control body-temperature balance but also expels toxins from the body. Sweat is an important route for excreting harmful substances such as arsenic, cadmium, lead, and mercury, most of which are carcinogenic. People who regularly work up a sweat through exercise are less likely to have elevated blood pressure, blood lipids, and blood sugar. Sweating also effectively expels excess salt from the body and prevents the formation of stones.

I am a chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patient, and I rarely rely on medication to manage my COPD. Every time I exercise and break into a sweat, my breathing becomes much smoother, my coughing up of phlegm becomes easier, and the quality of my rest improves greatly. If I keep exercising for a while, I can go a whole year without coughing. Every time it recurs, I find that whether I use hot compresses or exercise, as long as I sweat, the condition eases considerably.

Moreover, after sweating, not only is the cough brought under control, but the muscle fatigue and eye strain brought on by mental work are also relieved, leaving one refreshed. In fact, the formulas Chinese medicine commonly uses to treat cough, such as the Xiaoqinglong Decoction (Minor Blue-Green Dragon Decoction) and Mahuang Decoction (Ephedra Decoction), are all diaphoretics. If you can achieve sweating through exercise on your own, you can relieve the condition without taking medicine. Many chronic rhinitis patients have recovered through running and other exercise. After patients with frequent urination exercise and sweat, the number of times they urinate also drops markedly. The renowned Chinese medicine scholar Professor Zhao Shaoqin, when treating patients, often required them in his instructions to exercise more.

Everyone's physical condition differs, so the exercises one can choose also differ. Patients whose joints are easily damaged should avoid running, mountain climbing, and other exercises that strain the joints, and choose swimming and other exercises that harm the joints less. Personally I prefer a combined indoor workout: I combine weightlifting, push-ups, stretching, and running, and within half an hour I break into a sweat.

Some patients who sweat easily, after long-term exercise, find their constitution improved so much that they no longer sweat as readily. The Guizhi Decoction (Cinnamon Twig Decoction) of Chinese medicine is also a diaphoretic, yet it can treat hyperhidrosis; so the principle by which sweating exercise improves hyperhidrosis may be similar to that of Guizhi Decoction.

The famous Qing-dynasty physician Wang Hongxu, when treating tumor-type diseases, had patients drink a little yellow rice wine along with the medicine and cover themselves with a quilt to induce sweating. This adjunct measure is very reasonable scientifically; after taking the medicine, sweating both helps the medicinal action take effect and conveniently expels toxins through the sweat glands.

Exercising until sweating can markedly lower the body's inflammatory level, and the development of many chronic diseases, including tumors, is related to the body's inflammation. So cancer patients who do more sweating exercise recover better. I once treated a mesothelioma patient; in the first few years of treatment he cooperated well with my instructions, keeping up running and other exercise and working up a good sweat every day through exercise, and during those years his treatment outcomes and physical condition were the best. Afterward he began to relax his demands on himself, and his treatment outcomes and physical condition were markedly worse than before.

I do not quite agree with cancer patients fighting cancer through sitting meditation and contemplation; I would rather they do more sweating exercise. In our country only about 18% of adults keep exercising (the latest figure released by the National Health Commission); because of this lack of exercise, the prevalence of chronic diseases among Chinese residents remains high. Life lies in movement; human beings are born to move so that their sinews and bones stay strong. An overly comfortable life only makes us lose our health.