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[tag]Traditional Chinese medicine[/tag], as presently practiced here and in China, uses the Five Element base. This paradigm includes Water, Wood, Fire, Earth and Metal. Each element is associated with an organ and a season (along with a larger list including emotion, sound, color, etc.). The element associated with winter is Water and its organ association is the Kidney. This organ is noteworthy for its role, among others, in generating the warming process known as Kidney Fire.

Conditions of cold are characterized by a sensation of cold, by fixed pain, and cause stagnation. Think of how when you wake on a cold morning when (for whatever reason) you woke up feeling cold. Initially you have little desire to move away from what little warmth you managed to gather (like that trapped in the blanket you were under), but once you manage to get a little warmer, movement returns. The pain from ?brain freeze? (eating something so cold your head hurts) is very localized, though the sensation of cold may radiate throughout if you?re already feeling cold.

Symptoms of cold conditions that have internalized are varied but generally share the two characteristics of fixed pain and stagnation, often in the form of limited mobility. True Cold, or Yang deficiency, is an overall internal imbalance characterized by a lack of drive, tendancy to feel cold, low sex drive, achy low back and/or knees. In our culture Yang can be consumed (to combat Yang deficiency) by taking on more than we are reasonably capable of, and exhausting the adrenals. Excessive sexual activity will do the same, though the symptom of excessive desire suggests a very different condition (Kidney Yin deficiency). A good source of Yang in food is beef, and Yang deficient people feel better after a good bowl of beef soup (assuming nothing else is wrong, but rarely are we so simple in our imbalances).

Cold symptoms in the midsection include those from ingesting cold foods. Foods cold in temperature easily damage the normal warmth required to digest foods (think of digestion as a further ?cooking? of food in your system). Foods with cooling characteristics will do the same. Long term ingestion of cold foods can produce a chronic condition that could result in abdominal distension. Antibiotics are very cold and will cause ?cold damage? to the middle. In America we?ve been slow to take up the practice of recommending probiotics to those that need to take antibiotics (probiotics ?warm? the interior by replacing the normal and essential bacterial flora required to fully digest food lost to the antibiotics).

Often cold will collect in places we?d rather it didn?t, like in our joints. TCM calls this Cold Bi, and is characterized by fixed pain worse when it is cold and better with warmth. Unlike western medicine, TCM has a number of ways to classify/treat arthritis that allow it to focus on the symptoms surrounding the primary problem. Cold Bi is fixed and always there when it?s cold; Wind Cold Bi occurs only when it?s cold, but not every time. Wind Cold Damp is affected by damp (think fog and rain) and cold.

Perhaps you?re beginning to see how rapidly TCM becomes complex. What causes cold conditions varies depending upon everything from your constitution at birth, to where you grow up, to what you eat, to what you do. This article barely scratches the surface. What is important is to understand how TCM can help us with those things western medicine cannot, especially nagging problems that drain us and possibly lead to more chronic and severe conditions.

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