Traditional Chinese Medicine basics - Body types classification

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Classification of Body types is a crucial basic in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM).
In professional practice, classification of body types is a lot more detailed and complicated.
However, here we will only introduce the basic grouping methods.

Despite thousands of years in practice,TCM does not develop a clear identification of different body types until 1970s. Nowadays, there are nine body types commonly used in TCM.

It is important to note that, in TCM's understanding, people usually belongs to more than one body type, which means people usually belongs to multiple body types. The only exceptions are children or infants, which is likely to belong to a single body type. As people advance in age, it  is less and less likely that they will belong to a singe body type.

However, in most cases, there is a 'dominant' body type that runs through a person during his/her life time. In TCM, it is believed that it helps keeping one's health in check when one identify their own body type and take care of themselves accordingly.

The followings are the names of the nine body types in TCM:

Type 1 - Yangxu
Type 2 - Yinxu
Type 3 - Qixu
Type 4 - Yuxie
Type 5 - Tanshi
Type 6 - Shire
Type 7 - Qiyu
Type 8 - Pinghe
Type 9 -Tebing

*For easier reference, we will mainly refer to these body types by their according numbers, for example: This ingredient is especially suitable for Type 1 individuals.



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