What Are Chinese Medicine Remedies for Common Symptoms?

Most people brush off the small signals: the energy crash before lunch, stiff joints, a throat that always feels coated, weight that will not move, skin and hair aging too fast, a lower back that aches when you wake. In Chinese medicine none of these are random. Each one tells me something about the terrain underneath, and each has a simple remedy you can start at home.

What are Chinese medicine remedies for common symptoms?

The best ones are small and done every day: a nap, a warm compress, ginger tea, a walk, a bowl of broth, a patch on the sole of the foot. Chinese medicine reads a symptom as a sign of the whole system, cold where there should be warmth, stagnation where there should be movement, dryness where there should be moisture, and answers with the simplest thing that changes it.

The remedies below are aimed at the terrain, not the symptom. It is the same thinking we teach inside Gut Brain Synchrony: learn what your body is telling you, then change its conditions.

Why do I crash at 1pm every day?

Your body is asking for rest. If your energy is crashing by noon, take a midday nap for 20 minutes.

In China the midday rest, wu shui, is an ordinary part of the working day. Midday is when yang peaks and begins to turn toward yin, and a short rest at that turning point lets the body recharge. I explain the organ-clock side of this in my post on why Chinese people nap after lunch.

Sleep research backs up a short nap. At Flinders University in Australia, 24 healthy young adults had their night's sleep cut to about five hours and then took afternoon naps of different lengths. After a 20-minute nap, improvements in sleepiness, fatigue, vigor and cognitive performance emerged about 35 minutes after waking and lasted up to 125 minutes. The 30-minute nap, by contrast, produced a period of impaired alertness right after waking, the groggy feeling called sleep inertia, before the benefits arrived.^[1]

Does a ginger compress help joint pain?

Yes. If your joints are stiff and achy, warm them up with a ginger compress so trapped cold can get out of your joints.

Cold that gets stuck

Chinese medicine calls this bi, painful obstruction: wind, cold and damp lodging in the channels and joints. When cold dominates, the pain is deep, fixed and stiff, worse in cold, wet weather and better with heat. Cold contracts, so qi and blood stop moving freely through the joint. The treatment is to warm the area and give that cold a way out.

Fresh ginger, sheng jiang, is acrid and warm, and it has been applied externally in China for more than a thousand years to manage arthritis.^[2]

What the research found

A nursing researcher followed ten adults who had lived with osteoarthritis for at least a year as they received ginger compresses. They described constant penetrating warmth throughout the body, deep relaxation, more energy, increased suppleness and more comfortable, flexible joints, and the study concluded that the compress carried the qualities of heat, stimulation, anti-inflammation and pain relief.^[2]

A follow-up study gave 20 adults with moderate to severe osteoarthritis seven days of topical ginger treatment from trained nurses, either a hand-prepared ginger compress or a standardized ginger patch. After one week, scores for pain fell by 48 percent, fatigue by 49 percent, global effect by 40 percent and functional status by 31 percent. Health satisfaction went from 80 percent dissatisfied to 70 percent satisfied, and scores kept improving across 24 weeks of self-treatment at home.^[3]

Does ginger tea help with mucus in the throat?

It does. If your throat feels full of mucus, sip warm ginger tea and avoid ice-cold meals.

An old saying in Chinese medicine: the Spleen is the source of phlegm, and the Lungs store it. Your digestion works like a warm cooking pot. Feed it ice water, smoothies and cold leftovers and the pot cools. Food and fluid that are not transformed become dampness, and dampness thickens into phlegm that sits in the throat and chest. So stop chilling the pot, and warm it back up.

Temperature matters to mucus in a way you can measure. In a controlled study of 15 healthy people, sipping hot water sped up nasal mucus from 6.2 to 8.4 millimeters per minute within five minutes. Cold water slowed it, from 7.3 to 4.5 millimeters per minute, and was the only drink whose effect lasted to 30 minutes.^[4]

Ginger adds its own chemistry. In Chinese medicine, fresh ginger warms the Lungs and Stomach and transforms phlegm, which is why it sits in so many classical cough and phlegm formulas. At Columbia University, researchers found that ginger caused significant and rapid relaxation of isolated human airway smooth muscle, and that its active compounds 6-gingerol, 8-gingerol and 6-shogaol relaxed the airway by altering calcium signaling in the muscle cells.^[5]

Does walking after meals help you lose weight?

It is one of the best habits for it. If your body will not let go of stubborn fat, walk for 10 minutes after meals while giving yourself a tummy rub.

Chinese families say: walk a hundred steps after a meal and you will live to ninety-nine. The Tang dynasty physician Sun Simiao gave the same advice and added rubbing the belly with your hand. Stubborn weight is often dampness, the residue of digestion that is not transforming food well. Movement after eating helps the Spleen and Stomach, and rubbing the belly moves qi through the middle so food does not stagnate.

Ten minutes after each meal

Timing is the key. In a randomized crossover study, 41 adults with type 2 diabetes spent two weeks following advice to walk 30 minutes once a day, and two weeks following advice to walk 10 minutes after each main meal. Blood sugar after meals was 12 percent lower with the after-meal walks, and 22 percent lower after the evening meal, when people ate the most carbohydrate and sat the most.^[6]

Every blood sugar spike brings an insulin spike, the hormone that tells your body to store energy. A meta-analysis of 37 studies found that breaking up sitting with short bouts of activity lowered glucose, insulin and triglycerides after meals, with a greater effect on glucose in people with a higher body mass index.^[7]

Why the tummy rub

Rubbing the abdomen moves the gut. A 2025 meta-analysis of 25 randomized trials with 1,508 people found that abdominal massage significantly improved constipation severity, bowel movements per week, stool consistency and pain.^[8]

What is yin deficiency in Chinese medicine?

Yin is the moistening, cooling, nourishing substance of the body, and when it runs low, you age faster. If your skin and hair are aging faster than they should, drink bone broth and eat black sesame to nourish your yin.

Think of yin as the oil in the lamp and yang as the flame. Yin is your fluids and blood, what keeps skin plump and hair glossy. Late nights, stress and overwork draw it down, and the signs show on the surface first: dry skin, fine lines, dull, thinning or graying hair. Chinese medicine refills the lamp, with food.

Bone broth

Bone broth, simmered for hours, is rich in collagen, the protein that gives skin its structure. A meta-analysis of 26 randomized controlled trials with 1,721 people found that hydrolyzed collagen significantly improved skin hydration and elasticity compared with placebo.^[9]

Black sesame

Black sesame, hei zhi ma, nourishes the Liver and Kidneys and the blood, and it is the classic food for hair. Its lignans, such as sesamin, act as antioxidants inside the body. In a placebo-controlled, double-blind trial, adults with daily fatigue took sesame lignans with vitamin E for eight weeks. Their anti-oxidative capacity rose significantly compared with placebo, and in the participants aged 40 and over, sleep and physical appearance improved compared with placebo.^[10] For the full story on sesame and hair, including a recipe, read my post on whether black sesame seeds can reverse gray hair.

What is the Kidney 1 acupressure point used for?

Among other things, morning lower back pain. If you wake up aching with lower back pain, put a patch on the Kidney 1 point, Yongquan, on the bottom of your feet at bedtime.

In Chinese medicine, the lower back is the house of the Kidneys, and a back that aches after a night lying still points to the Kidneys. Yongquan, Bubbling Spring, sits in the hollow behind the ball of the foot when you curl your toes. It is the first point of the Kidney channel, where Kidney energy wells up from the ground before the channel runs up the inside of the leg toward the lower back. Treat the root at the feet to support the house at the top.

In a randomized trial in the BMJ, 129 people with chronic low back pain in Taiwan received a month of acupressure or physical therapy. Acupressure conferred an 89 percent reduction in significant disability compared with physical therapy, and the benefit held at six months, along with better pain scores and function.^[11]

Putting herbal medicine on points, acupoint application, is mainstream in China, and Yongquan is its favorite point. When researchers reviewed 117 clinical studies of acupoint application for high blood pressure, Yongquan was the most frequently used point of all, and the Kidney channel was the dominant channel.^[12] Bedtime is the traditional time to do it. In a randomized trial of 63 people with insomnia, a gel plaster on Yongquan and Yintang, worn from bedtime to early morning, improved sleep quality and daytime sleepiness more than a placebo plaster on the same points.^[13]

How to use these six Chinese medicine remedies

Frequently asked questions

Is a ginger compress good for inflammation?

Yes. People with osteoarthritis described ginger compresses in terms of heat, anti-inflammation and pain relief,^[2] and a week of topical ginger cut pain scores by 48 percent.^[3]

Does walking after meals help with digestion?

Yes. Movement after eating helps the Spleen and Stomach transform food, and a short walk after each meal lowers the blood sugar rise that follows it.^[6]

Does ginger tea help with phlegm?

Yes. Warm liquids keep mucus moving where cold ones slow it down,^[4] and ginger's compounds relax the airway.^[5]

Your symptoms are your body talking. Listen early, and answer simply.

— Brehan Crawford, L.Ac.

References

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2. Therkleson T. Ginger compress therapy for adults with osteoarthritis. J Adv Nurs. 2010;66(10):2225-2233. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2648.2010.05355.x
3. Therkleson T. Topical ginger treatment with a compress or patch for osteoarthritis symptoms. J Holist Nurs. 2014;32(3):173-182. doi:10.1177/0898010113512182
4. Saketkhoo K, Januszkiewicz A, Sackner MA. Effects of drinking hot water, cold water, and chicken soup on nasal mucus velocity and nasal airflow resistance. Chest. 1978;74(4):408-410. doi:10.1378/chest.74.4.408
5. Townsend EA, Siviski ME, Zhang Y, et al. Effects of ginger and its constituents on airway smooth muscle relaxation and calcium regulation. Am J Respir Cell Mol Biol. 2013;48(2):157-163. doi:10.1165/rcmb.2012-0231OC
6. Reynolds AN, Mann JI, Williams S, Venn BJ. Advice to walk after meals is more effective for lowering postprandial glycaemia in type 2 diabetes mellitus than advice that does not specify timing: a randomised crossover study. Diabetologia. 2016;59(12):2572-2578. doi:10.1007/s00125-016-4085-2
7. Loh R, Stamatakis E, Folkerts D, et al. Effects of interrupting prolonged sitting with physical activity breaks on blood glucose, insulin and triacylglycerol measures: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Sports Med. 2020;50(2):295-330. doi:10.1007/s40279-019-01183-w
8. Lin Z, Wang D, Fei X, et al. Effect of abdominal massage on constipation: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled studies. Complement Med Res. 2025;32(6):522-541. doi:10.1159/000548699
9. Pu SY, Huang YL, Pu CM, et al. Effects of oral collagen for skin anti-aging: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Nutrients. 2023;15(9):2080. doi:10.3390/nu15092080
10. Takemoto D, Yasutake Y, Tomimori N, et al. Sesame lignans and vitamin E supplementation improve subjective statuses and anti-oxidative capacity in healthy humans with feelings of daily fatigue. Glob J Health Sci. 2015;7(6):1-10. doi:10.5539/gjhs.v7n6p1
11. Hsieh LL, Kuo CH, Lee LH, et al. Treatment of low back pain by acupressure and physical therapy: randomised controlled trial. BMJ. 2006;332(7543):696-700. doi:10.1136/bmj.38744.672616.AE
12. He YQ, Liang BX, Feng WY, Xian SX. Rules of acupoint selection and drug use in clinical treatment of hypertension with acupoint application therapy. Zhongguo Zhen Jiu. 2020;40(5):565-569. doi:10.13703/j.0255-2930.20190325-k0002
13. Wang TR, Han Y, Liu B, Du MB. Observation of acupoint application of gel plaster on insomnia. Zhongguo Zhen Jiu. 2021;41(5):505-509. doi:10.13703/j.0255-2930.20200423-0005