It all began when the Beijing summer heat really set in. With temperatures hitting 38 C, high humidity and semi-severe air pollution, stress levels are high. My skin was acting up, and for the first time in my life, I suffered from adult acne. My face was red and itchy, and to top it all off, painful mouth ulcers and a sore throat made it almost impossible to speak or eat. The lack of food was not a problem, considering that I had no appetite, but I felt nauseous and was suffering from bad digestion. I felt sweaty and oily on the outside and exhausted and nervous on the inside.
One glance from my colleague was enough. "You're on fire," she discovered immediately.
"Excuse me?" I said back in awe. I have heard my Chinese mother-in-law tell me the same thing before using the Chinese term shanghuo, which literally means being on fire.
What was this ominous health condition all about? A quick search showed me that it is a term that comes from traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), describing the excess of internal heat in the body.
Turtle jelly and Bezoar
I was confused, so I asked my WeChat friends for advice. I posted on my WeChat moments, "Help, I suffer from shanghuo; what should I do?" The response was overwhelming - all of my friends seem to have transformed into medical experts.
"Drink Chrysanthemum tea," Julia said. "Eat red bean rice porridge with lily and mung beans," Stefanie wrote, adding that I should drink more water. Yanan told me to sleep more, and Ace suggested I should drink mint tea. Cucumber and bitter gourd should help too, as do raw tomatoes and peppers. Grace told me to refrain from oily, salty or spicy food, "especially hotpot boiled fish and shrimp," but to eat light food instead. Some very exotic remedies my friends suggested were to take compressed Aloe Vera, turtle jelly or Bezoar detoxifying pills.
But most of my Chinese friends were just taken aback by the fact that foreigners, too, can suffer from shanghuo.
However, their advice only added to my confusion. What was going on with me? Was bitter gourd, water and sleep really all that my upset skin, mouth and stomach needed? If I was indeed suffering from shanghuo, I wanted to talk to an expert.
Nie Xiaoling is a doctor of TCM at Guoyihui, a TCM clinic near Sanyuanqiao, Beijing. Her clients, mainly diplomats and their families that live in Beijing's Embassy district, call her Dr Merry.
"In TCM there is a very basic theory called Yin-Yang balance," she explained. "Yin stands for calm, dark and silence. Yang stands for active, bright and sunny. If the Yang is out of control of the Yin, the fire rises up. We call this phenomenon shanghuo."
Foreigners, who tend to have more meat in their diet are more likely to suffer from shanghuo than Chinese, Nie said. The symptoms range from increased thirst, headaches and dizziness, to irritability, bad sleep quality and constipation.
The treatment depends on the severity of the symptoms. Drinking more water and eating fruit might help for lighter shanghuo, but when people start to have trouble sleeping or show signs of strong irritability and inflammation, Nie prescribes herbal medicine, acupuncture and cupping.
"Every person's symptoms are different, so we need to diagnose it first and prescribe specific herbs to put out the fire," she said.
Complementing Western medicine
Danny, a US expat in Beijing, believes that shanghuo "mysteriously" makes sense. "When something is not right with the body, for example, when I eat too much Western food in the winter time, my throat does feel bad, that's shanghuo," he said. According to his experience, it does not happen as much in the US as it does in China.
But what do students of Western medicine think about the "fire" disease?
Wu Xiaobo, who's getting his doctorate at the Urology Institute of the Fudan University Huashan Hospital in Shanghai, does not see Western and Chinese medicine as two opposite poles.
"I study clinical medicine, but I do believe in some aspects of Chinese traditional medicine," he says, referring to the long history of TCM. Wu thinks that TCM helps with balancing overall health, and can be beneficial for chronic and pulmonary diseases, however, not necessarily with acute or very severe diseases, such as cancer.
For Wu, shanghuo means that the five elements and organs, that build the theory of TCM, are imbalanced.
"It results in a disturbance of the whole body," he said, adding that even though there was no definition for shanghuo in Western medicine, it could be similar to chronic fatigue disease.
It has been a month now, and Beijing still feels like an oven that bakes me like bread. Neither my skin nor my digestion has gotten any better. However, as I slowly get warmed up to the idea of TCM I see that the condition is not treated by eating a cucumber and drinking a little more water. If I want to balance my energy levels, I need to get a grip on my stress level, sleeping rhythm and overall nutrition and hydration. Perhaps I'll even try taking herbal medicine. I'll do anything to put the fire out!
