If your mouth and throat are often dry, your eyes feel dry and scratchy by evening, the palms of your hands and the soles of your feet run hot, and you'd pick a cold drink over a hot one, this may be the body type that sounds like you. In the old language of Chinese medicine, yin is the body's cooling, moistening side, and yin deficiency means running low on it, so you tend to run dry and a little warm.
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.
Your palms and the soles of your feet feel hot. Your eyes feel dry, your mouth and throat get dry, and your nose can feel a little dry too. You'd rather have something cold to drink, and your stools tend to be dry.
Winter suits you; summer is hard. Summer heat, hot spells and dry air are the ones that get to you.
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.
A dry mouth and throat sit right at the center of this type, along with dry eyes and hot palms and soles. A Chinese care guideline written for each body type suggests everyday changes for it. Sleep: get enough, and cut down on late nights. Food: more of the cooling, moistening kind, like duck, pears, celery and snow fungus, and less of the hot, spicy and strongly flavored kind. Skin: protect it from the sun, and keep it moisturized. Everything is set out below.
For this type, the one thing we'd start with is going to bed earlier. Pick a bedtime about half an hour earlier than usual and keep to it. It's simple, it costs nothing, and you can start tonight.
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 go to bed at my new time? 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. Work on patience, and try to stay out of arguments and flare-ups of anger. Win-or-lose competitions aren't the best fit for this type. Quiet things suit it better: calligraphy or drawing somewhere calm and pleasant, or slow, soft music, like a serenade. If you get the chance, take a break somewhere cool and fresh, by the sea or up in the mountains or woods.
Daily life. Get enough sleep, and don't stay up too late. Try to keep away from high-pressure work, strenuous exercise and fierce summer heat. Skip saunas and hot springs, and keep sex in moderation. A quiet home suits this type. Protect your skin from the sun, and keep it moisturized.
Exercise. Light to moderate, in short spells with breaks, rather than one long push. Keep the sweating down and drink water as you go. Skip high-intensity, high-volume workouts, and don't exercise in hot summer weather or stuffy rooms. Tai chi, tai chi sword, ba duan jin and swimming all suit this type.
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 mild, cooling, moistening foods:
Eat less. Go easy on warming, drying, spicy or strongly flavored food:
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 · Yang deficiency · Phlegm-dampness · Damp-heat · Blood stasis · Qi stagnation · Inherited-special.
Waking up in the middle of the night? Why do I wake up at 3am and can't fall back asleep?
If the dryness, the heat or poor sleep is new, severe or getting worse, talk to a doctor. Home experiments are for the everyday kind. A few to know about: a dry mouth that comes with unusual thirst, needing to pee a lot, or losing weight without trying can be a sign of high blood sugar and is worth checking soon. Eyes that are painful, red, or blurry are a reason to see an eye doctor. And if a dry mouth and dry eyes have both been going on for a long time, or you're taking medicine for allergies, blood pressure or depression, mention it to your doctor.
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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