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CAMBODIANS WHO practice traditional medicine believe that good health hinges on proper balance of the body’s hot and cold elements. Certain foods, herbs, and medicines have hot and cold properties and can either throw off or restore metabolic equilibrium. An imbalance — infection or exhaustion — can cause krun khyol, or “wind illness.” Cambodians implicate “wind” in a number of symptoms and conditions, ranging from the common cold to post-traumatic stress disorder. (Depression and PTSD are virtually epidemic among displaced Khmer Rouge survivors.)

Cambodians use practices like cupping, pinching, and coining to release bad wind. Cupping is extremely common in Cambodia, where street healers use a flaming wand to heat the inside of a small glass bottle. They press the open side of the hot bottle on the patient’s back, abdomen, or forehead, where it cools, contracts, and draws out the “bad air.”

Cupping requires a certain amount of skill, but many Cambodians get the same effect from pinching (which is exactly what it sounds like) or coining the skin. All three techniques are said to release wind by bringing stagnant blood to the surface, thus allowing it to dissipate. The practices are based on acupuncture and Chinese concepts of disease and healing that go back more than 2000 years. Today, even some Western acupuncturists use cupping (it’s offered at the WellSpace center in Cambridge, for example). Coining is less common. But it is related to gwa-sha, in which healers rub the skin with short porcelain spoons to unblock qi, the life force that Chinese healers believe flows through the body.

In addition to seeking out these techniques, some Cambodians solicit healing advice from the monks at two Lowell-area Buddhist temples. Others look to the Kru Khmer, shaman healers who play various roles — part fortuneteller, part wise elder, part herbalist, and part magician.

Monrith Sisowath, who recently opened his Oriental Culture Institute herb shop and acupuncture practice, says his grandfather was a true Kru Khmer. He only dabbles in it. But the tattoos that cover Sisowath from neck to ankle hint that he’s not a typical herbalist, either. Blue Khmer characters spill out of his sleeves at the wrist, and a tattooed picture of his mother peeks out from under his collar. He says they protect him from those who mean him harm.

Sisowath, a slight man with close-cropped hair and a Fu Manchu mustache, says he can remove a black-magic spell, but he can’t put one on. He can offer both a diagnosis and a prediction for the future by checking someone’s pulse. “I can tell you if you are going to stick with your husband and I can tell you what year he is going to die,” he boasts.

His real skill, however, lies in prescribing and preparing Cambodian herbs. He started by studying his grandfather’s notebooks, and when he came to Lowell, he sought formal training in herbs, acupuncture, and qi gong theory from Ming Wu, a China-trained healer who owns herb and acupuncture shops in Maynard and Lowell. For Cambodians, who revere royalty, Sisowath wears an extra aura of authority: he bears the name of a Cambodian prince who perished under the Khmer Rouge, and explains that he is a member of the extended royal family.

As you walk in the door of his tiny, two-room office and shop, the smell of incense overtakes the garlic-and-cilantro aroma from the Cambodian restaurant down the hall. Inside, shelves are filled with bottled Chinese medicines and herbs marked in Chinese, Khmer, and sometimes English. A brown-paper package of herbs marked “Post-Natal” goes for 10 dollars. A bag of herbs imported from Cambodia has a printed label in Khmer with one term in English — “Hepatitis A ... B ... C.” A $40 zip-locked bag of stems is for “Pain,” according to the label, as is the dried snake.

“This one is for a long life,” Sisowath says, pointing to a bag with no English label. “This is a treatment for cancer — the lungs, the liver.... This one is for diabetes. I take it myself.”

His treatments address the causes of disease, he says, while Western medicine only treats the symptoms. But Sisowath never advises his clients to stop taking their Western prescriptions. “No, no, no,” he says. “I can’t tell them that. They have their own doctors.”