#473
August 11, 2026

Right Tradition for the Condition, Combining classical Maps in the Treatment of Long Covid
Brendan Kelly

Our Sponsors

Qiological logo with text and tagline.
Blue Poppy logo with a blue poppy flower and text.
Tip of the needle_logo plus
Jessica Parker Functional Medicine

A diagnosis can feel like a single label, but some conditions reveal a wider terrain — one that spans immune response, cultural rhythm, and slow imbalance over time.

In this conversation with Brendan Kelly, we explore long COVID through the lens of classical Chinese medicine, looking at how frameworks like the Shang Han Lun’s cold-to-heat progression and the Wen Bing’s epidemic theory make sense of a condition with over two hundred possible symptoms. We discuss treatment not as a single formula, but as traditions blended and matched to where a disease has been and where it’s heading.

We also touch on why epidemics are never purely individual, and how a culture’s own excess heat may shape its susceptibility to illness.

Listen in for a conversation that brings clinical experience and classical theory to a condition modern medicine still struggles to treat.

In this episode, we discuss:

  • Long COVID by the numbers – An estimated 18–20 million Americans affected, with 3–4 million pursuing permanent disability and $170–200 billion in lost wages annually.
  • Why long COVID resists Western treatment – A condition spanning over 200 signs and symptoms across nearly every organ system, poorly suited to a model built around single-organ specialties.
  • The Shang Han Lun as a starting point – Reading COVID’s early chills-then-fever progression as cold entering through Tai Yang, Shao Yang, and Yang Ming.
  • Why cold alone doesn’t explain the picture – The idea that cold is the branch, while pre-existing internal heat is the root that allows long COVID to take hold.
  • The Wen Bing tradition and epidemic disease – A school developed for outbreaks the Shang Han Lun couldn’t treat, built on the premise that epidemics arise from collective, not just individual, imbalance.
  • Heat as an individual, cultural, and ecological pattern – Drawing a line from overstimulated modern life to a warming climate to conditions more hospitable to viruses and bacteria.
  • Bian Hua, the change-and-transform sequence – How heat produces dryness, dryness produces phlegm, and phlegm produces internal wind, forming a roadmap for disease progression.
  • Treating what hasn’t appeared yet – Using disease progression theory to address a likely next stage — wind, fatigue, qi deficiency — before symptoms show up.
  • Vaccines through a Chinese medicine lens – Considering immune response as inflammation, or heat, and its possible link to internal wind and neurological symptoms.
  • Comparisons to Lyme disease – Drawing on over a decade treating Lyme to build confidence that long COVID, despite its complexity, is treatable.
  • Blending multiple classical traditions – Why no single system treats every condition, and why matching the right tradition to the right pattern matters more than volume of points or herbs.
  • Diet, lifestyle, and patient empowerment – Moving away from top-down medicine toward patients who can feel, and act on, the connection between food and symptoms.
  • The economics of undervaluing the profession – A case for charging appropriately, both for practitioner sustainability and the field’s long-term credibility.
  • Case outcomes from clinical practice – Patients self-reporting 95–100% improvement across a case series of long COVID patients with multiple, overlapping symptoms.

Not every Chinese medicine tradition can treat every condition. To effectively treat a wide variety of condition, we need to match the tradition to the condition.

Brendan Kelly LAc

I have been practicing Chinese medicine full-time since 2004 combining acupuncture, eastern and western herbal medicine and nutrition to treat a wide variety of conditions including  complex, multi-organ diagnoses like Lyme disease and Long COVID. 

Since 2022 I have been collaborating with Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center about Long COVID, including submitting an NIH grant to study the effectiveness of Chinese medicine in treating the condition. I also co-authored with two MDs from Dartmouth an in depth article that was published in the Journal of Integrative Medicine in April, 2025. Titled “Long COVID Response to Classical Chinese Medicine” it presents case studies from my clinical experience treating the condition as well as larger social, economic and policy issues.

I teach and lecture at school and conferences around the US and Europe on a wide variety of topics including Chinese medicine and western herbal medicine, health. I also speak and teach about issues of sustainability from my first book “The Yin and Yang of Climate Crisis” which uses the lens of Chinese medicine to look at the bigger and deeper issues of our rapidly warming planet.

Links and Resources

Visit Brendan Kelly’s clinic and get a copy of his book. You can also read his Long COVID article and explore his recorded classes.

Member Only Content

This additional content is available to members of our podcast.
Become a Member

Explore Similar Podcasts

Subscribe to the Qiological Podcast in Your Favorite Player

Apple Podcasts
Spotify
YouTube

You don't have access to purchase this item.