Self-assessment

Chinese medicine body type quiz

26 questions, about three minutes, no account. The questions and the scoring come from China’s national standard for constitution classification (GB/T 46939-2025), used exactly as the standard writes them.

Instead of hunting for a disease, this describes a constitution — the pattern your body leans toward when nothing is acutely wrong.

And it does not read that pattern on its own. It reads your body against the season, and against the place you live in — body, season and place are read as one system, not as three separate things. Late August in Denver is not late August in Miami. Neither one is the valley in central China this calendar was written for.

Two numbers, one source, one year

About eighteen times more. And life expectancy in the two countries sits within half a year of each other — 78.4 in the United States, 78.0 in China.

Both figures: World Bank, 2023, same indicators for both countries. This does not say Chinese medicine explains anything. How long people live is driven by road deaths, firearms, overdose, diet, insurance, clean water, vaccination — dozens of things, and a country’s numbers cannot tell one person what to do. We put it here only because it is the reason we found the question worth asking.

Maybe you want to know how people in China look after their own bodies.
Take the test.

One thing before you start

One of the nine types is asked about differently for men and women, so the questionnaire needs to know which set to show you.

And where you live

Your result also shows this fortnight’s climate where you are — how warm, how wet, how much daylight, and how that is shifting — next to the advice for your constitution. US cities of about 100,000 people or more, and cities of 500,000 or more elsewhere — for those we use the US city whose climate is closest, and say so.

My city isn’t on the list

If you practise acupuncture: we are asking US practitioners which of these 27 items they would throw out, and why. What we are asking clinics.

Reading first, test later? The nine constitution types · Qi deficiency · Yang deficiency · Yin deficiency · Phlegm-dampness · Damp-heat · Blood stasis · Qi stagnation · Inherited-special · Tired but your labs are normal · Waking at 3am · Body heavy and tired · Always colder than everyone else · Sneezing when you’re not sick · Worse on rainy days · Hot hands and feet at night · Tired, cold or sweaty after running · What time should you run · Herbal formulas by type