In Part One of this series, we began looking at blood differently. Rather than thinking only about red blood cells, platelets, plasma, blood pressure, and laboratory values, we explored the way traditional herbalists used the blood as one window into the condition of the whole person. We also introduced several traditional blood types, including high and low blood, thick and thin blood, and good and bad blood, and we looked at the fascinating relationship between blood, the seasons, and the movement of sap through trees.
Now we need to add another layer to that picture: temperature.
This blog post may seem a little redundant of itself and of the first post, but it’s important to lay the foundations and show the difference. We’ll dive more deeply into different constitutions with the post after this.
If you have studied herbal energetics with me before, you already know that hot and cold are two of the most fundamental qualities we consider when assessing both a person and an herb. However, when we apply those same principles to the blood and circulatory system, they become much more practical.
A person can have signs suggesting that the blood and tissues are running hot and excited, while another person may demonstrate a cold, depressed, sluggish pattern. This distinction matters because the two individuals may describe surprisingly similar complaints. Both might say they have a circulation problem. Both may experience headaches. Both may have menstrual complaints. Both may have changes in the hands and feet. Yet the underlying energetic pattern may be almost opposite.
This is why simply knowing that an herb “supports circulation” is not enough.
Before choosing the herb, we need to understand what the circulation is actually doing.
Hot and Cold Blood Are Not the Same as High and Low Blood
Before going deeper, we need to separate a few of the traditional terms introduced in Part One.
Hot blood is not necessarily the same thing as high blood, and cold blood is not necessarily the same thing as low blood.
There may be overlap between these patterns, but they describe different observations.
In traditional Southern blood typology, high and low blood can refer to the apparent distribution, abundance, or deficiency of blood within the person. Hot and cold, on the other hand, describe an energetic quality. They help us understand whether tissues appear excessively active, irritated, warm, and stimulated or whether they appear sluggish, pale, cool, and underactive.
This is also why we should resist the temptation to translate traditional blood types directly into modern diagnoses. “High blood” does not automatically equal hypertension. “Low blood” does not automatically equal hypotension or anemia. Likewise, “hot blood” is not a diagnosis of fever or inflammation, and “cold blood” does not mean that someone’s actual circulating blood has become abnormally cold.
These are constitutional and tissue-pattern descriptions.
We are trying to understand the direction in which the body appears to be moving.
