Chinese herbal medicine is a complicated and nuanced practice. People often view herbal medicine in simplistic terms like taking gingko for your memory or milk thistle for your liver. However, arriving at a diagnosis and prescribing an herbal formula for a doctor of Chinese medicine involves gathering information from the patient and choosing the right combination of herbs for their specific pattern.
Herbs are organized into broad categories according to how they act in your body. For example, there are herbs that stop bleeding, herbs that relieve coughing and wheezing, those that drain dampness (improve fluid metabolism), herbs the improve circulation, or even nourish blood, just to name a few. In this article, I’m going to describe some of the most commonly used herbs, that are used to clear heat in one way or another.
Prior to modern medicine, herbs and acupuncture were the primary methods of treatment for febrile diseases—those that involved a high fever and historically lead to a lot of deaths. From that history, today we have a rich collection of herbs that were not only used in ancient times, but that still have relevance in treating many heat-related conditions.
In talking about heat, it’s important to know that there is external heat and internal heat. External heat is the fever that you get when you have a bad cold, the flu or a virus that lays you low for a couple of days. It may be accompanied by a fever or a fever with chills, a dry throat, red eyes and dry stools or constipation. The purpose of the fever is to create enough body heat to kill the invading microbe and in most cases, the fever/heat eventually does it’s job and you get better.
However, if you get sicker and the fever continues, it’s described as going deeper into your body and the heat becomes internal, becoming a more chronic condition. This type of situation is more likely to happen in elderly or weak patients. A common example is when a patient gets pneumonia and never recovers. Hot disorders can also manifest in less life threatening ways, like soft tissue or skin conditions. Because internal heat can manifest in a few different ways, there are categories of herbs to treat each situation. Categories of heat clearing herbs include:
Herbs that Drain Fire. These are herbs that treat an illness accompanied by a high fever, so high that it may cause delirium. In this category are some of the coldest herbs in the Chinese formulary and include gypsum, lotus and gardenia flower (Shi Gao, He Ye, Zhi Zi)
Herbs that Cool the Blood. The herbs in category treat febrile diseases that are the most severe—when hemorrhaging begins to happen. Symptoms of this stage of illness can include nosebleeds, vomiting or coughing blood, blood in the stool and skin rashes. In these illnesses, the internal organs become inflamed and the tiny blood vessels, called capillaries, become more permeable, allowing blood to escape. Herbs in this category include Chinese foxglove root, the root of the tree peony and wolfberry root (Sheng Di Huang, Mu Dan Pi, Di Gu Pi)
Herbs that Clear Heat and Dry Dampness. When heat combines with dampness, you may have conditions such as urinary tract infections, jaundice and dysentery. These herbs are bitter and cold. Their action is antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory and can bring down a fever. They include skullcap root, philodendron, Coptis, Lophatherum Stem and gentian root. (Huang Qin, Huang Bai, Huang Lian, Dan Zhu Ye, Long Dan Cao)
Herbs that Relieve Toxic Heat. This is a group of herbs that treat infections that are bad enough to make you sick, such as sores, abscesses, mastitis and appendicitis. These herbs have anti-inflammatory, anti-infectious and diuretic properties. Some examples of toxic heat clearing herbs include honeysuckle flower, forsythia fruit, indigo leaf, dandelion, wild chrysanthemum flower, purslane and begonia (Jin Yin Hua, Lian Qiao, Qing Dai, Pu Gong Yin, Ju Hua, Ma Chi Xian & Hong Tian Kui)
Herbs that Relieve Summerheat. These herbs help to lower a fever, produce fluids and alleviate thirst in a condition called Summerheat, which can be similar to heat exhaustion or heat stroke. Symptoms include fever, sweating, thirst and diarrhea. Summerheat herbs have diuretic and fever lowering properties, and include mung beans, watermelon fruit, hyacinth bean and soybean sprouts (Lu Dou, Xi Gua, Bai Bian Dou, Da Dou Huang).
The bottom line is that Chinese herbal medicine is a matter of degrees and nuance. There is no single herb that I would use in every case to clear heat (or for any one symptom), because it depends on the kind of heat you have, your symptoms and the severity of your condition. And while many of these herbs were used in the past to treat very severe diseases that would be rare to see in my style of clinical practice, they are still very much in use to treat colds, flu, infections, UTI’s and many other conditions. Chinese herbal medicine is complicated, which demands years of study and experience—of which I have both. If you’d like to know more about the fascinating use of herbs, please contact me.
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Dr. Jeda Boughton is a Doctor of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Registered Acupuncturist in Vancouver. She is also a Registered Herbologist and the founder of BodaHealth.
