Chinese medicine starts from a simple idea: people are built differently. Some run cold, some run hot, some tire easily, some get knocked flat every allergy season. It calls the way your body usually leans your constitution, or body type, and it describes nine of them. One is balanced. The other eight each lean a different way.
Why start there? Because advice that suits one body can be wrong for another. Hard exercise is good for one type and wears another out. The cooling food that suits one is exactly what another should cut back on. So before you change anything, it helps to know which way you lean. Leaning isn't an illness. It's a tendency, shaped both by what you were born with and by how you've lived. It's fairly stable, but everyday habits can nudge it. You may well see yourself in two or three; that's normal.
You've got energy to spare, you don't tire easily, you eat well and sleep well. Your skin has a healthy color, your hair is thick, your eyes are bright. Heat and cold don't bother you much, and you adapt well to changes in the weather and in the world around you. There's no separate page for this one.
You run out of steam easily. You get short of breath, you don't feel like talking much, your voice is on the quiet side, and you break a sweat without doing much. Wind, cold, damp and heat, the heavy heat of summer included, all tend to get to you. More about qi deficiency
You usually feel the cold. Your hands and feet are often cold, you'd rather have hot food and drinks, and you're often low on energy. Summer suits you; winter is hard, and wind, cold and damp get to you easily. More about yang deficiency
Your palms and the soles of your feet feel hot. Your eyes, mouth, throat and even your nose run dry, you reach for cold drinks, and your stools tend to be dry. Winter suits you; summer is hard. Heat, the heavy heat of summer included, and dry air get to you. More about yin deficiency
Your face gets oily and you sweat a lot, and the sweat feels sticky. Your chest can feel stuffy, you have a lot of phlegm, your mouth feels sticky or tastes sweet, and you love rich, sweet food. Long rainy spells and damp places are hard on you. More about phlegm-dampness
Your face gets a greasy shine and breaks out easily. Your mouth tastes bitter or dry, your body feels heavy and tired, bowel movements feel sticky and incomplete or you get constipated, and your urine runs dark and scanty. Hot, humid spells at the end of summer are hard on you, and so are places that are damp or hot. More about damp-heat
Your skin can look dull or darkish, with patches of darker color. You bruise easily, and your lips tend to look dark. Cold is the hard one for you. More about blood stasis
You're often low, your feelings are easily hurt, and you can feel hemmed in and joyless. Gray, rainy days are hard on you, and so is anything that shakes you up emotionally. If a low mood hangs on or keeps getting heavier, talk to a doctor. More about qi stagnation
You sneeze, your nose gets stuffy, your throat itches, your skin breaks out in hives, and sometimes you wheeze. Changes around you are hard on you, allergy seasons most of all, and they tend to bring old trouble back. More about inherited-special
A Chinese care guideline written for each body type also has a section on Chinese formulas for the eight types that lean. Those are on the Chinese formulas page, along with notes on how some of those herbs are viewed in the United States.
That's what the assessment is for. It asks 26 questions, takes about three minutes, and needs no account. It scores all nine types and tells you which one stands out, or that none does. The questions and scoring lines come from China's national standard, translated into English. It's a self-check to help you get to know your body. It isn't a diagnosis, and it can't replace a practitioner who sees you in person.
Came here because you're tired and your blood work keeps coming back normal? Why am I so tired but my labs are normal?
Take the 26-question assessment
The nine body types come from Wang Qi, a professor at Beijing University of Chinese Medicine. He and his colleagues first sorted people into seven types in the late 1970s, kept refining the idea for more than twenty years, and published the nine-type system in 2005.
It didn't stay an idea on paper. China brought body-type checks into its basic public health service, which offers residents aged 65 and over a check once a year, along with everyday advice for their type. In community clinics the check has been used more than 570 million times, and it's offered in the preventive care departments of over 1,700 Chinese medicine hospitals.
As it spread, clinics weren't all doing it the same way, and the quality varied. So China made it a national standard, giving every clinic one agreed method to follow. It was drawn up by a team of 37 from 20 hospitals, universities and other institutions, with Wang Qi first among them, and came into force in April 2026. The assessment on this site uses that standard's questions and scoring lines, translated into English. The everyday advice for each type comes from a care guideline for adults built on the same nine types.
It's a way of understanding your body's everyday tendencies, not a medical test, and it sits alongside your doctor, not instead of one.
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