Neurasthenia is characterized by general lassitude, irritability, lack of concentration, worry, and hypochondria and also known primary neurasthenia, cardiac neurosis, chronic asthenia, Da Costa's Syndrome, effort syndrome, functional cardiovascular disease, Soldier's Heart and Subacute Asthenia. Beard's definition of "neurasthenia" described a condition with symptoms of fatigue, anxiety, headache, impotence, neuralgia and depression. It was explained as being a result of exhaustion of the central nervous system's energy reserves, which Beard attributed to civilization.

Physicians of the Beard way of thinking associated neurasthenia with the stresses of urbanization and the pressures placed on the intellectual class by the increasingly competitive business environment. Typically, it was associated with upper class individuals in sedentary employment. Integration of Chinese medicine and western medicine would be a good choice for this disease. When treating neurasthenia, Chinese doctors will take everything into consideration, including the following conditons.

1. Prolonged abuse
2. Long debilitating conditions
3. Infectious diseases, especially
4. Habitual intoxication by alcohol, snuff, narcotics.
5. Physical trauma, especially the skull.
6. Various misfortunes (death of a loved one, serious accident, sudden financial ruin).
7. Internal glandular diseases: hyperthyroidism, repeated and closely spaced pregnancies, prolonged lactation
8. Prolonged disorders of the digestive system: digestion, laborious and often painful, caused by chronic conditions of the digestive organs.
9. Psychological trauma, producing a prolonged state of emotional tension abnormal, excessive wear and psychical depressing emotions, states of anxiety, fear or concern, etc.