When you have a cough, you often hear people say, “Ouch, you have a hot cough. And then I hear: “Hey, you have a cough, but it seems to be a cold cough. I can’t figure out what kind of cough I have. The distinction between hot and cold coughs comes from the theory of Chinese medicine. There are many ways to identify illnesses in TCM, and one of them is called the eight principles of identification. One of these methods is called the Eight Classes of Identification, which means that TCM practitioners should distinguish between yin, yang, cold, heat, superficial, internal, deficiency, and actual. Coughs are also identified in this way, so there are cold coughs and hot coughs. Cold cough has the property of cold. Therefore, whenever the body encounters cold, dampness, wind chill, or low temperature, the body cannot resist and will experience bad cold, sneezing, clear snot, and coughing. The cough is accompanied by pain in the body and difficulty in getting out the phlegm. Cold cough is characterized by a cough with thin phlegm and clear snot, and a heavier malignant cold. A hot cough, on the other hand, has the property of heat, and the evil of fire and heat disperses and rises, depleting yin and fluid and easily causing heat swelling. Therefore, when encountering heat, one is prone to fever, sweating, thirst, painful heat swelling, red urine and dry stool. The focus of heat cough is cough with yellow phlegm, itchy snot and throat, dry mouth and tongue, or sore throat. Cold cough and hot cough are not unchanging. They can transform under certain conditions. Clinically, when cold is first felt, it is often manifested as a cold cough and is mostly accompanied by the symptoms of wind-cold. It is common to have cold symptoms such as sneezing, runny nose, fear of cold and wind, and head and body pain. Later, cough gradually appears. Cough with clear sputum. After two days, the cold symptoms gradually disappear, cough, itchy throat, yellow and sticky phlegm, difficult to cough out, the symptoms of the cough gradually prominent, when the cold cough has been transformed into a hot cough. This is why, it is called the cold evil into the heat. If the medication is not in place, or the treatment is not timely, the enemy is not strong, the righteousness misses in the body surface area, the cold evil goes deeper, the lung qi starts to come out to resist the evil, the evil and the righteousness fight each other, the yang qi rises, and the cold cough turns into a hot cough. This is common in clinical practice as acute bronchitis, and some even turn into pneumonia and severe pneumonia. High fever, pus sputum, convulsions, difficulty in breathing and other acute symptoms appear. The proper use of Chinese medicine and herbs in this process can often interrupt the process of cold and heat transformation. It does not progress to the stage of acute illness. Of course, hot cough can also undergo transformation. Most commonly seen clinically is the transformation of a hot cough into a deficient cold cough. When acute bronchitis or bronchiectasis is not completely cured and drags on, it becomes an old chronic cough, which often shows symptoms of a cold cough. Chinese medicine treatment focuses on dialectical treatment, which is to adapt to this changing situation, identify the evidence in place, treat it correctly, treat it in a timely manner, intercept the deterioration process, and treat the undiseased area first. We can help to remove the evil and protect our health.