Of the six excesses, wind is the primary exogenous pathogenic factor, since cold, damp, dryness, and heat may all depend on wind to attack the body.

Pathogenic wind manifested conditions include: diseases involving excess movement of the body: epilepsy (rare convulsions) and Parkinson’s disease; diseases involving symptoms appearing in different parts of the body at different times: early stage rheumatism involving differing joints or skin rashes that appear in different places; diseases involving loss of movement: stroke, paralysis, tetany, and coma; various pain, numbness, and spastic syndromes, sometimes referred to as bi syndromes, including headache, toothache, limb numbness, tendon spasms, arthritis, deep bone pain; diseases that are acute: common cold, influenza, sinus infection, skin eruption, sore throat, cough, eye disorders; and diseases that affect the surface of the body (skin or flesh, rather than viscera): chronic eczema, leprosy, scrofula, hair loss.

Internal wind, not necessarily aroused by exogenous wind, is described as being closely related to the liver and displays four causative factors: liver yang excess and yin deficiency generating endogenous wind (mainly the result of emotional frustration); extreme heat (usually in the advanced stage of febrile diseases); yin deficiency (usually due to prolonged illness that consumes body fluids); and blood deficiency (usually from insufficient blood production or from excess blood loss).