In a previous blog, I made the exception of writing a non-technical blog about the human mind. Since there are exceptions to all rules, I decided to make another one and write an article about the human body. In my article about the mind, I took an Eastern approach by writing about the mind from a Zen Buddhism perspective. In this article I’ll continue on the same track, using teachings from traditional Chinese medicine as the basis for how the body functions.
My motivation for first studying traditional Chinese medicine was because I’ve had severe migraines once or twice a month for the last 20 years and traditional medication hasn’t helped. In addition, I’ve had constantly high levels on my liver blood samples and I even took an ultrasound scan of the liver. Still, it all ended in not being able to determine the cause of the abnormality in the liver.
Traditional Chinese medicine has been used to study and diagnose the human body for more than 2400 years and there is nothing that can’t be diagnosed to find the cause of an illness. This sounded very encouraging to me since I wasn’t really happy with the diagnosis I got from the doctor on my liver and I’d also like to know how I could prevent my migraines.
Balance
Imagine a lawn where one day a foreign weed species landed and started to grow. Would you snip off the weed and treat it with herbicide to prevent it from growing, potentially damaging parts of the lawn with the introduced chemicals? Or would you strengthen the soil to create a balance where it by itself naturally could repel this newly introduced weed?
In traditional Chinese medicine, it’s believed that if the body is in balance it can fend off any diseases and protect itself against any bacteria and viruses that enter the body. Our body is a part of our surrounding environment and when there are huge shifts in the environment, it occasionally has a hard time keeping up and lose its balance. Imagine you being blindfolded and led into a hot sauna or out in the freezing cold without a jacket, you’d surely be surprised by the sudden change in environment.
The balance in the body follows the hours of the day and the seasons of the year, the body will naturally have more energy during daytime and in summer and less during nighttime and in winter. When it rains or if you’re in a very humid environment, the body will also naturally get a higher water content and feel heavier than on a sunny day. That’s why symptoms in your body appear and disappear and the intensity of them increase and decrease during different times of the day and year.
The balance between the body and mind is also crucial. To keep a healthy, steady flow of energy in the body, the mind also needs to be open and have a good flow. If you’re under a lot of stress and pressure, it can disrupt the flow of energy in the body and lead to a stagnant or too fast flow which is the main cause of illnesses. The emotions in the mind are directly connected with the organs in your body. It’s believed that a person that is often angry or irritated has an imbalance in the liver and on the flip side, you will damage your liver by being angry.
Since the body knows how to take care of itself, it’s essentially down to us to in any possible form prevent it from losing its balance and support it once it has. If we listen to our body’s signal it tells us what it wants. We know how to tell when we need water by thirst and food by hunger. But it also tells us when there’s poor blood flow in a part of the body by numbness (pins and needles feeling) and by manifesting pain when there’s no blood flow. You have probably experienced numbness in the legs after having your blood supply cut off to your legs for a while.
Traditional Chinese medicine has been deliberately studying the balance of the human body for more than 2400 years. In the body, there are energy lines, called meridians. They consist of 12 lines on each part of the body and 2 vertical ones through the center that make up a very intricate network of how energy flows in the body. They explain how organs and parts of the body are interconnected and affect each other.
When there’s an imbalance in a body, the position of the numbness or pain is manifested on one of the 361 points on these energy lines. One can therefore diagnose which part of the body or which organ is in imbalance and needs a bit of support from our end. This point can then either be pushed with your thumb or stimulated by a needle through acupuncture to increase flow along that energy line helping the body to regain its balance.
Essentially, what’s left for us to do is to decide how we interact with our bodies and what we put in them.
Water
If you have ever taken care of a plant, you know that if you constantly feed it with water, the roots won’t have a chance to breathe and it will quickly suffocate and perish. The stomach is often symbolized as the soil of a plant, if we constantly ingest food and beverages into our system it will have a hard time keeping up. The body creates energy through digestion but it needs energy to digest what we consume, it’s up to us to maintain this fine balance of creating and using energy.
When we eat or drink something, water is added to the body. Water in its liquid form is heavy and pulled down by gravity, the body will through digestion need a lot of energy to evaporate this liquid mass into a vapor that can flow freely throughout the body to hydrate and lubricate the organs and joints. If you have less energy than the amount of water you intake, then the body will not be able to turn it into vapor and it will instead sink through gravity creating loose stools and swelling in your legs.
Now if you imagine a flowing river and a stagnant duck pond. In a river that is constantly flowing, waste products get filtered out and you get a clean, steady flow of water. However, in a duck pond with no circulation, there will be an accumulation of duck waste, feathers, leaves, trash and other impurities.
When the body has a manageable flow of water, it will turn it into vapor and transport it through the body, filter it and let it exit as urine. It will also use this vapor to control the heat of the body through perspiration and breath. But, if the body doesn’t have enough energy to vaporize the water in the body and push it around and out of the body it will condensate and become stagnant, just like the duck pond.
If there’s no heat to melt the fats and impurities accumulated in the water and circulate them, they will solidify creating body fat. The expansion of stagnant water, or body fat, in the body puts pressure on the blood vessels decreasing the blood flow.
Blood
Blood is the food for the energy and blood needs energy to circulate so they’re dependent on each other as they flow along the power lines in the body. A poor blood flow therefore also means a poor flow of energy and vice versa. The blood should circulate 50 times a day along the power lines in the body to keep a healthy body. If there’s not enough flow then the blood won’t be able to reach all parts of the body to deliver nutrients and you will experience numbness or pain.
When your body has a balanced amount of energy and flow, your body will stay warm and function properly. When the body gets cold it won’t function as well, digestion will slow down, there will be a reduced blood flow and the immune system will weaken. When there’s not enough blood flow in the body, there is not enough energy and thus not enough heat, this creates cold areas in the body where the blood doesn’t circulate.
If you consume a lot of sugar or saturated fats like animal fats and dairy fats like butter, cream or cheese, then your blood will naturally have a more syrupy or honey-like consistency and be less fluid. Also, substances like nicotine and caffeine that contract the blood vessels and reduce blood flow accelerate the creation of cold areas. These cold areas are where illnesses and diseases arise since they are blocked and the energy and blood in the body can’t reach and heal them.
Cancer cells are more primitive than normal cells and more sensitive to heat and thus thrive in these colder pockets of the body, that’s why a multitude of cancer treatments use heat when treating cancer. Now that we understand the implications of a too-slow blood flow, how about the contrary, a too-fast blood flow?
If you for example consume too much alcohol, the alcohol will make the blood flow increase rapidly which could cause a blackout and loss of consciousness. When the blood flows too fast through the body it will not have time to filter out waste products and deliver nutrients to the organs in the body. In addition, it won’t have time to cool down as it passes through the sides of the body returning to the liver. This results in blood that is too hot and rich in nutrients and fats getting stacked up in your liver, this blood that is carrying impurities is then circulated in the body again creating a plethora of not only diseases in the liver but the whole body.
Energy
Energy, together with blood, is created in our stomachs through digestion. When we eat too much food, the body can’t digest the food and it stays in the stomach for too long, resulting in the stomach having to work harder to digest all the food. This creates an environment where the stomach is at overcapacity, just like the suffocated plant example in the previous chapter. The stomach has difficulty properly functioning and digesting, making it more difficult to create energy and blood. The body tries to compensate by making the stomach work harder, just like a laundry machine constantly spinning, the stomach gets overworked and overheated.
The increase of energy in the stomach makes things that should move down in the body move upwards and we feel symptoms like nausea, heartburn, and reflux where stomach acid moves up through the throat. When too much energy is created, it evaporates too much of the water in the body making it boil down and get more concentrated, which gives darker-colored urine, sweat that has a strong smell and also bad breath.
When these conditions continue, the heat in the stomach gets transferred to the blood that it creates, now there’s blood that’s too hot, traveling along the energy line that goes through the stomach. This stomach energy line goes all the way from the tip of the big toe, through the knees and up to the throat, head and nose.
Having blood that has too much energy and heat being sent to these places along the stomach energy line can cause various illnesses like pain in the knees, headache on the sides of your head, swelling and pain in teeth and jaw, inflammation in the mouth, bladder and milk lines.
The body now has lots of extra internal heat due to the stomach working too hard. If the body in addition has lots of stagnant water or body fat, like the duck pond, that fat will act like insulation trapping that extra heat inside the body. This makes it harder for the body to release the redundant heat and will result in skin diseases like atopic skin and eczema. This is due to the extreme heat drying out the moisture in the skin and the poor blood flow preventing the body from rehydrating it.
When diagnosing the stomach, the tongue is often used. The tongue is the closest organ to your stomach and it’s also very easy to examine. If it’s very thick and pale, that means there is an excessive amount of water in the body and the blood concentration is therefore too low. A thin and pale red tongue means that there’s a good amount of blood, however, if it’s a very dark red color then that means that the blood in the body is carrying too much heat.
If the tongue has marks after your teeth on the edges or if the edges are rugged, that means a shortage of energy. Also, if there’s a white coating on the top of the tongue, that means that your digestion is not optimal, if this progresses and the stomach has been working overtime generating too much heat for a long period, that white coating turns yellowish.
Energy Storage
When you are born, as a gift from your parents, you’ll receive a deposit of energy that is stored in the kidneys. Kidneys are in charge of reproduction and the development of the body and this prenatal energy is used as an extra supply to support these activities. The kidneys are closely related to problems in areas of the body that we usually categorize as aging, such as bones, teeth, ears (hearing), hair, knees, back and genitals.
The kidneys oversee and control the water level in the body and it also stores and manages the body’s energy reserve by storing the prenatal energy together with the energy you get from your digestion in your stomach. The emotions of worrying and being afraid are connected to the kidneys and if you have an imbalance in your kidneys you often worry and get startled easily. This is also why you pee your pants when you get scared.
Once you’re around 30 years old, this extra deposit of energy will deplete and you find it harder to find the energy to stay up all night partying with your friends. If you do not make adjustments to your lifestyle and engage in too much physical work, eat too much salty foods or if you’re too sexually active you can more quickly run out of your energy supply. This leads to an insufficiency of energy in your kidneys resulting in hearing loss, hair loss, pain in the back and knees, urinal problems and also impotence.
The energy lines of the stomach (where energy is created) and kidneys (where energy is stored) both pass through your feet, thus keeping your feet warm keeps a good flow of energy along these two energy lines, which is why in China and many eastern Asian countries people always wear slippers indoors.
Finding the Balance
Having the right amount of energy, blood and water with the right pace of flow is what enables our bodies to keep their balance to stay well. If there is too much energy in the body then it needs to rest and get hydrated or the energy will heat the body too much and make the water evaporate from your body, making your body dehydrated like a raisin, you’ll be skinny and constipated. Energy moves forcefully upwards and out of the body, creating symptoms like a hoarse voice and a dry cough.
If you have too much water, then you need to get rid of water, either through sweat, breath or urine. If you feel that your body is heavy when it’s raining outside, try exercising to sweat a bit and your body will feel much lighter. This is also valid if you’re having a headache in the forehead since that’s an indication that there is too much water in the body. It’s important to keep the body warm and active to help it cope with the surplus of water in the body. If you can’t exercise then releasing vapor through your breath is also effective, try singing karaoke for an hour or two and remember to only rehydrate in small amounts when the body is telling you it’s thirsty.
The blood level is also crucial, too low concentration of blood and the water levels will rise leading to symptoms similar to anemia, like irregularities in heartbeat, dizziness and numbness. If there is a low flow of blood then the stagnated blood will make your muscles hard, resulting in stiff shoulders and back pain. To fix this, the body needs help to improve its digestion to create more energy and blood.
Living in Balance
To create a body that lives in balance with its surrounding nature and environment, we need to eat food that harmonizes with it. Medicinal cuisine (Yakuzen in Japanese) has been researched together with traditional Chinese medicine for over 2000 years. Herbs and botanicals are studied to monitor the effects on the human body which is then used as medicine. Medicine is not only limited to unusual herbs and spices though, the fundamental idea in yakuzen, food as medicine, incorporate food that we eat every day.
Food is researched and put in huge dictionaries, properties like if a food has a chilling or warming effect on the body and which organs it helps and supports are recorded. Having a chilling or warming effect on the body is regardless of what temperature you eat or drink the food or beverage at. That said, it’s recommended to try to avoid eating or drinking something that’s freezing cold since that will reduce the flow and functioning of the organs in your body.
We might not realize it but nature is in perfect balance with our bodily needs. That’s why tropical fruit, coconuts and bananas grow in hotter countries where they need to eat foods that help the body cool itself. In colder climates, vegetables are cultivated in the warm soil, many of them helping our digestion to keep our bodies warm.
It’s believed that eating food that is in season and produced locally gives you the right energy for that specific environment and season. Eating tomatoes when they are ripe in the summer will help you cool your body to create a balance but munching away on bananas in the winter will not.
My Diagnosis
For as long as I can remember, I’ve always been worrying about most things in life. Worrying creates an imbalance in the kidney, and an imbalance in the kidney creates worry, so it’s like a negative loop between the mind and body. When I was in my 20s a lot of things in my life went through a transition and I started to feel even more worried in my daily life. I was starting to get symptoms like hay fever, headaches, numbness, high liver numbers, bad eyesight in my right eye, cold hands and feet. Let’s put everything together that we’ve learned so far and diagnose my symptoms with traditional Chinese medicine to see how they are related.
Due to my worrying mind, the kidney, which is in charge of controlling the water level in the body is malfunctioning and unable to restrict the amount of water in the body. The kidney is where the energy reserve is located in the body but since the body is losing energy from too much water in the body, it’s like putting water on a fire, the body can’t use the energy reserve since the body can’t generate enough heat, or energy, to use it. The body, hands and feet get cold, the coldness restricts flow and creates stagnation in the body. My sudden decrease in eyesight in my right eye is due to this stagnation on the kidney energy line that connects to the eye at the point named “tenchuu” on the right side of the neck.
Since the kidney can’t use its energy reserve, there’s not enough energy in the body to digest food in the stomach to create new energy and blood. This creates numbness in the body indicating that there is a blood deficiency in the body. I got numbness in the “kimon” and “tensuu” points which indicates that my liver and large intestine are not getting enough blood. The liver is struggling to deliver enough blood since the concentration of the blood in the body is too low, blood containing too much water puts pressure on the heart creating a high or irregular pulse and a tightness in the chest.
Water in the body travels down by gravity to the legs when you stand, and sticks around the abdomen when you sit but when you lay down to sleep, the water can move up to the head and create stagnation in the forehead which results in a heavy body and headache when you wake up in the morning. This is exactly what happens when you’ve been out drinking too much and you get a hangover the next day.
My hay fever started because of my imbalance in the large intestine not being able to function properly by extracting water from food passing. The large intestine is directly connected to the nose and the nasal membrane on the same energy line. There’s an energy shortage along the large intestine energy line which leads to water build-up and stagnation, which creates a malfunctioning nasal membrane that fails to protect your body from particles in the air. This in combination with a reduced immune system due to an energy undersupply in the body results in the body overreacting when it realizes that the nasal membrane is not doing its job, trying to resolve it as quickly as possible it discharges all the water in an attempt to protect itself and you’ll get a runny nose.
To fix my symptoms I first have to get rid of the excess water in the body. I make sure I support the body in any way I can by keeping it warm, I wrap myself in a blanket or take a quick hot bath when I feel that my body is getting cold to support my kidneys. I also take any opportunity I can to sweat to release moisture, a light exercise that makes you sweat but does not deplete your already lacking energy in the body is great. If it makes you breathe faster then that will also contribute to the release of water from the body. Also, I push the “yuusen” point in the middle of my sole on my foot to increase flow to the kidneys multiple times a day.
Food is also water, so don’t drink too much or eat too much since that will again increase your water levels in the body. Instead, drink when you’re thirsty, and eat foods that are easy to digest like boiled vegetables stews or vegetable soups. Eat slowly and chew properly to put less strain on the stomach which hasn’t got enough energy to digest and build energy. Once your stomach regains its energy to create energy and blood, this will restore the flow in your body so that it can start taking care of its own again without you having to think too much about it.
The last piece of the puzzle is to fix the original cause of these symptoms and that’s my worrying mind. Since the beginning of this year I started to meditate daily to clear my head and help my mind from being overwhelmed by thoughts, I wrote an article about the mind a little over a month ago, if you haven’t checked it out yet, it’s located [here].
Studying and understanding the signals that the body gives us is crucial to calibrate the balance in our bodies creating not only a healthy body but also a healthy mind. Our minds are full of wants and desires, we often make quick decisions without taking into account how the body will react to our actions. Instead, we have to let our bodies take the lead and let our minds take the supporting role, doing what we can to complement it and enable it to shine, because we’re dependent on our bodies to enjoy this beautiful world.