If you usually feel the cold, your hands and feet are often cold, you'd take hot soup over a cold drink any day, and you often feel low on energy, this may be the body type that sounds like you. In the old language of Chinese medicine, yang is your body's warmth, and yang deficiency means that warmth runs low.
It's one of nine body types, and it's a way your body leans, not an illness. That matters, because it means there are ordinary, everyday things you can adjust. This page walks you through them, and through a simple way to tell whether they're helping.
You often feel the cold, and your hands and feet are often cold. You'd rather have hot food and hot drinks. You also tend to feel low on energy.
Summer suits you; winter is hard. Wind, cold and damp get to you easily.
Reading your tongue and pulse takes someone in person; an acupuncture clinic near you can do it.
Chinese medicine doesn't start from the complaint. It starts from you. The same kind of discomfort can come from quite different body types, and what helps one can make another worse. So the first step is finding out which way your body leans. After that, the part you can do yourself is ordinary: what you eat, how you sleep and rest, how you move, and how you look after your mood, chosen to suit your type. None of it is quick. It's a slow, steady nudge, and it works alongside your regular doctor, not in place of one.
Feeling the cold, with hands and feet that won't warm up, is one of the main features of this type. The everyday care that a Chinese care guideline written for each body type suggests for it comes down to warmth: keep your lower back, your back and your legs covered, choose warm food over cold, cook with warming everyday foods like fresh ginger, garlic and scallions, and move gently outdoors when the sun is out. Everything is set out below.
Swelling is on the list of things this type tends toward. First, the part that matters most: swelling that's new, sudden, or on one side only is a reason to see a doctor, not something to try at home. For the ordinary, everyday kind, the approach for this type is the same warmth-first routine below.
For this type, the one thing we'd start with is a hot foot soak before bed. Make it an evening habit, every night if you can. Use water that feels hot but comfortable. If you have diabetes or your feet are numb, test the water with your hand or elbow first, since your feet may not warn you when it's too hot.
How to tell if it's helping. Keep a notebook by the bed. It takes about half a minute each evening.
For the first three days, change nothing. Just score these three, each from 1 (bad) to 5 (fine). Those days are what you compare against later.
Then start your one thing, and each evening add one more line: Did I soak my feet tonight? Yes or no. Don't judge by one day: everyone has off days whatever they do. Keep going for two weeks, then look back.
Reading your two weeks.
Your mood. This type tends to be quiet and inward, and it's easy to slide into sadness or feeling discouraged. Try to keep a hopeful, forward-looking frame of mind, and when a low mood comes, deal with it early instead of sitting in it. For music, the guideline suggests something rousing and big-sounding, the kind a full choir sings, or something bright and flowing, or light music.
Daily life. Stay out of the cold and keep yourself warm. Dress warmly in winter and eat your food warm. All year round, keep your lower back, your back and your legs warm. Warm, soft colors at home suit this type, and try not to spend long stretches living or working somewhere dark, damp or cold. A hot foot soak before bed is worth making a habit.
Exercise. Gentle, easy activity outdoors when it's sunny: time in the sunshine and fresh air counts. Tai chi and ba duan jin suit this type well. Spring and summer are the best seasons to exercise. In winter, look for somewhere warm, and skip workouts in strong wind, hard cold or snow.
If you live with a long-term condition such as high blood pressure, diabetes or kidney disease, or you're in the middle of any illness, check with your own doctor before changing your routine.
Eat more. Lean toward warming food.
The simplest change is the protein:
Cook with:
Also good:
Eat less. Go easy on raw, cold and heavy food, like:
Even in the height of summer, don't load up on cold things.
You may well see yourself in two or three types; that's normal. The assessment asks 26 questions, takes about three minutes, scores all nine types, and tells you which one stands out, or that none does. It uses the questions and scoring lines of 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.
Take the 26-question assessment
The other body types, each with its own page: Qi deficiency · Yin deficiency · Phlegm-dampness · Damp-heat · Blood stasis · Qi stagnation · Inherited-special.
A runner? Why am I so tired, cold or sweaty after running? Tired with normal blood work? Why am I so tired but my labs are normal?
If feeling cold is new or getting worse, especially along with tiredness, weight gain or dry skin, talk to a doctor; a simple blood test can check things like your thyroid. Home experiments are for the everyday kind. And as above: swelling that's new, sudden or on one side only, or that comes with shortness of breath, needs a doctor promptly.
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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