Former heaven hidden (or deep-lying) cold pattern

April 9, 2008

Sometimes reading the Chinese medical journals seems so repetitive,

but every once and a while, I come across something really new (at

least to me). As an example of this, I find the lead article in issue

#6, 2007 of Shi Yong Zhong Yi Nei Ke Za Zhi (Journal of Practical

Internal Medicine) by Huang Yong-sheng et al.

extremely interesting. It discusses the role of " former heaven hidden

cold " evils in the development of coronary heart disease (CHD). In

this article, the authors introduce a study conducted in the

cardiovascular department of the Changchun University of Chinese

Medicine & Pharmacology Affiliated Hospital. Of 2925 patients

examined, 773 or 26.43% presented a " former heaven hidden cold

pattern. " This included 251 males and 522 females aged 23-84 years,

with a median age of 45.11 plus/minus 23.26 years. Twenty-one point

six percent of these patients (167) were diagnosed with CHD.

According to the authors, this condition or pattern is due to the

patient's parents' " wedded essence " having a yang qi insufficiency.

Therefore, within the patient's kidneys, there is hidden cold. This

hidden cold damages the body's righteous qi. Because the disease evils

are yin evils, they also obstruct and block the yang qi, thus

repressing and exhausting the qi mechanism. This then leads to the

creation of hidden phlegm, hidden stasis, and qi stagnation. Hence we

have an explanation for all the main standard CM components of CHD.

Because of this deep-lying or hidden cold, as teenagers the females

typically suffer from dysmenorrhea, cold feet or cold hands and feet,

while the males also typically manifest cold feet or cold hands and

feet plus lower abdominal pain and/or urinary incontinence. At around

35 for females and 40 for males, these patients commonly present

stomach pain, stomach distention, torpid intake, aversion to chilled

foods, possible acid eructation, and/or burping/belching. At 49 for

females and 64 for males, they then go on to develop chest pain,

recalcitrant cold feet or cold hands and feet, easy fatigue, shortness

of breath, upper back pain, stomach pain and/or distention, and low

back and knee soreness and limpness. The tongue is pale and slightly

cyanotic with teeth-marks on its edges, and the pulse is deep,

bowstring, fine, and weak. Thus the diagnosis of this pattern is based

on the patient's history, their main symptoms, and their tongue and

pulse signs.

This discussion is interesting because it seems to account for a

familial predispostion to CHD. It also presents a nice longitudinal

evolution of symptomology over decades. This is something CM is

theoretically good at but which often gets overlooked in the press to

deal with current symptoms. When discussing hidden evils in general,

most of the emphasis in the contemporary Chinese literature seems to

me to be on hidden warm or damp heat evils, but here we have a

discussion of hidden cold evils. Likewise, when discussing warm or

damp heat evils, these mostly are described as hiding in the blood

aspect, but here the authors say these cold hidden evils are harbored

in the kidneys. So this article adds a number of new ideas at least to

the available English language literature on hidden evils: 1) There do

exist hidden cold evils, and 2) these evils can hide in the viscera

and bowels, not just the blood aspect. Further, in talking about

hidden evils in general, the authors say that they cause diseases with

serious (literally " heavy " ) pathology. The seat or location of the

disease is deep, its course is long, the disease is not easy to see,

and it is difficult to cure.

All interesting food for thought.

Bob

April 10, 2008

So interesting, so full of places to asking about; congenitve, a woman's

exposure during pregnancy, male preparation for conception, of course

astrological, i guess, thanks. Recently I was reading about in western med

reviews, how some researchers were finding pathogens or tendencies to ailments,

passed along matriarchial lines over a couple generations, and personally from a

tcm perspective, how it makes even more sense. I'm still fascinated and

wondering about it all, but thanks teacher, I'd love to hear yours and others

thoughts about this. pls

Bob Flaws <pemachophel2001 wrote: