Body energy is a concept unique to Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). The amount of body energy is used as a relative measurement to determine the health of a person. Simply put, a larger amount of body energy indicates that the person is healthier and less prone to diseases and illnesses.
But what exactly is body energy? TCM understands it to be a combination of two elements, Blood and Qi. Most people find the concept of Qi rather mysterious, and indeed it is a topic of great depth and profound theories that go far beyond what I wish to cover in this little book. An analogy I often use when describing Qi to those who do not have a deep cultural understanding of the concept is that the body is a battery. Blood is the equivalent of the battery’s capacity and Qi is the amount of energy currently stored in the battery. It would logically follow that the amount of Qi you can have is limited by the capacity of the blood you have. This relationship between Blood and Qi is important if we are to understand how to improve our health. Because the quantity of Qi a person can have is determined by the storage capacity of Blood they have, the focus of healthy living should be to increase the amount and quality of blood in the body.
TCM asserts that sleep has two very important functions: building Blood and replenishing Qi. While the processes pertaining to blood are more or less proven, the replenishment of Qi is something that TCM has a model for, but that is difficult to evaluate empirically. The way TCM describes Qi is that it is what makes a person energetic. When we wake up in the morning (if we are healthy) we feel refreshed and energised. After working for an entire morning, we start to feel tired in the afternoon. The difference between the state of our body in the morning and the state of our body in the afternoon is a loss of Qi. When we rest after feeling tired, our Qi is replenished and we feel refreshed.
Blood, on the other hand, is often used in TCM as an indicator of health. The difference between a healthy person and a person who is ill is that a healthy person’s body has an abundance of Blood whereas an ill person has a lack of Blood. An abundance of blood means that the person is able to carry more Qi, which makes them feel energetic and allows their body to function at its optimal capability.
It is important to remember that when TCM discusses Blood, it is referring to the total quantity of Blood. TCM believes that as our health declines, either due to aging or to other influences, our quantity of blood decreases as well. Since Blood determines how much Qi the body can carry, a decrease in its capacity also causes a decrease in available Qi for the body to utilise. This means that a person will feel less energetic and be more prone to illnesses, since the body is functioning at a lower level. TCM believes that many chronic diseases are the result of low levels of Blood and Qi.
In the following section, I will divide a person’s body energy into five levels and discuss in detail how each level affects our bodily functions.
Five levels of body energy
Determining the body energy level of a patient is the most important part of the TCM diagnostic procedure. TCM doctors use various methods of observation to determine this level:
- visual observation of the patient’s appearance, including complexion and tongue colour;
- physical observation (touch/palpation) of the patient’s pulse and oddities in muscle texture;
- mental observation/consideration of the patient’s symptoms and peculiarities.
(Such assessment is, of course, subjective and dependent on the skill of the doctor, but in the Appendix I describe how technology may change this.)
Once the patient’s body energy level has been measured, TCM doctors can accurately determine the cause of the illness and formulate an efficient method of treatment.
A person’s body energy level can be broken down into five levels. I will now look at each level in detail.
Level 1: Healthy level
This person’s body has the optimal level of Blood and Qi. Their bodily organs function flawlessly and they do not feel any discomfort. Such a person has a rosy facial complexion and a fit figure. Their body’s maintenance tasks are fully up to date and new damage from both interior and exterior causes are dealt with without apparent effort.
From TCM’s perspective, this type of person is extremely rare, especially in today’s world.
My favourite analogy of energy level is money, or more specifically, a person’s lifestyle relative to his or her financial situation. When your earnings are sufficient, you can afford to buy a new car when your old one is well past 200,000 kilometers. A cracked window that could be a safety hazard? You can pay to get it replaced. At this level of super-health, all your faculties are in perfect condition, and you are supremely confident that you have all wear and tear covered.
Level 2: Semi-healthy level
This level of body energy is slightly below level 1. There are many factors that contribute to a decline in body energy. One of the main factors is an unhealthy lifestyle that includes physical strain, such as abnormal sleep patterns and emotional stress. Using the previous financial example, this is when your earnings are insufficient for a luxurious lifestyle. Instead of buying a new car, maybe you buy a seven-year-old used one. You can still get to where you want to go, but that sound you hear when your car comes to a complete stop has you asking questions. In health terms, your body goes through more noticeable maintenance cycles, such as occasional non-infection-related colds (see page 29) and other minor ailments. This is where diagnostic paths first begin to divide. You begin to question whether or not these problems are minor or serious. If you are at the semi-healthy level, the answer is that they are minor, but incorrect treatment could bring the body’s energy down to level 3.
Level 3: Sub-healthy level
As body energy continues to decrease, at a certain point the body will reduce the energy spent on maintenance to cope with the demands of staying alive. In financial terms, there are now insufficient funds. Diseases and damage to the bodily organs that pose no immediate threat to the body will be ignored. At this energy level, the body only has enough to maintain daily operations. With a weakened immune system, it no longer engages in unnecessary battles against diseases that are not life-threatening. Despite a lack of symptoms, experienced TCM doctors can detect signs of a decrease in body energy level by observing the patient’s appearance.
In today’s society, a large proportion of working adults exist at this body energy level. Since these people rarely experience disease symptoms, they are under the false impression that they are in good health.
Using the Blood and Qi theory, we can view this energy level (level 3) as indicating that a person is unable to create sufficient Blood. According to TCM theories, Blood is created every night during sleep. A healthy person is able to generate enough blood during sleep to replace that which is used up during the daytime. When the amount used during the day is more than is generated at night, the body will use Blood that is stored inside the liver to cover for this shortfall.
If this shortfall continues, the amount of time the person can maintain their energy level will depend on the amount of Blood that was stored in their younger days. Most people have healthier lifestyles in their youth than when they are adult, though this is changing. The capacity for energy in the body depends on how healthily the person lived when they were young.
Level 4: Energy depletion level
The body’s continued use of previously stored Blood depletes these holdings. When the body no longer has enough Blood and Qi to maintain its regular functions, the person will feel constant fatigue. At this stage the body will start to break down its muscles in order to generate energy.
People at this energy level are usually in their 50s or 60s. Many of them feel that their health is weakening. However, most are not yet diagnosed with any serious diseases.
Level 5: Complete exhaustion level
At this level, the body has used up most of its available energy. As the organs deteriorate, such a person develops serious diseases, such as cancers, kidney failure, stroke, etc. Since the low energy level affects all the body’s organs, the patient will likely develop serious illnesses in multiple organs. Modern medicine may view such phenomena as the spreading of cancer from one organ to another. In TCM’s view, such phenomena are due to the deterioration of multiple organs caused by a lack of body energy.
From studying the five levels of body energy, we can see that it is important to determine the cause of the occurrence of symptoms in relation to the person’s body energy level.
Using the body energy model, we can see that most disease symptoms occur at two levels: the semi-healthy and the energy depletion levels. (Let us omit the most serious diseases for now as they mostly occur at level 5 – complete exhaustion.) The causes of the symptoms, however, are completely different at each stage. At level 2 (semi-healthy), a person’s high energy allows their body to battle constantly against diseases, resulting in frequent symptoms. At level 4 (energy depletion), the person’s low body energy level is the cause of the symptoms. Low body energy causes the body to lose some of its proper functions as well as reducing the strength of the immune system. The person will feel constant fatigue, as well as any symptoms associated with the diseases they may contract owing to a weak immune system. Thus, at level 4, while the person may also feel ill, the degree of severity is much greater than that which is encountered at level 2.
As the causes of the symptoms are different for levels 2 and 4, the treatment methods used are also different.
At level 2, as we have seen, the symptoms are the result of the body’s counter measures against diseases. TCM views these symptoms as among the body’s proper functions, which means that they should not be treated as illnesses. We should instead allow the body to perform its functions while aiding it by providing proper rest and nutrition. This method is in stark contrast to the conventional method of treating symptoms to stop them from occurring.
At level 4, the cause of the symptoms is much more serious. Given the depleting energy level, the body is unable to function properly. Coupled with a weakened immune system, one of the bodily functions that is underperforming, the person will experience a variety of symptoms resulting from both internal body weakening and external diseases. TCM’s treatment for this scenario is much more complex. A person with body energy depletion must alleviate symptoms that are life-threatening or that prevent the person from increasing body energy, specifically symptoms that deprive the person of proper sleep and nutrition. Once these symptoms have been dealt with, the focus of the treatment will be to increase the person’s body energy to a healthier level.
Figure 2.1 (page 28) illustrates the five levels of body energy. An encouraging point that we should keep in mind is that the decrease in body energy is a slow process. Depending on a person’s constitution, those with an unhealthy lifestyle can spend years or even decades at the sub-healthy level before reaching the energy depletion level. In contrast to the decrease in body energy, an increase in body energy takes much less time. Once a person switches from an unhealthy lifestyle to a healthy one, they can experience positive changes in a matter of months. We can compare our body to a common smartphone battery. A fully charged smartphone can be used for hours or even days yet once the battery is depleted, it requires only a fraction of time for recharging. The human body is even more efficient.
Figure 2.1: The five levels of body energy
With Figure 2.1 in mind, the concept of healthy living becomes apparent, though it is rather abstract compared with the concept of body energy. Just how healthy are you? Are you healthier than you were two months ago? How about a year ago? Not only are there no methods of measuring health, there are no ways of actually describing it.
Based on the five levels of body energy, we can have an understanding of how healthy a person is in terms of where they are on the body energy chart (Figure 2.1). The goal of healthy living becomes a straightforward one as well: to go from a downward drop to an upward climb on the body energy chart. Many chronic diseases that occur at levels 4 and 5 will not occur at level 3 and above. Increasing body energy allows many chronic diseases to be treated successfully by our own body’s self-healing system.
The common cold and TCM’s theory of cold-temperature damage
The common cold, as its name suggests, is one of the most common diseases that we encounter. Almost every person has experienced the symptoms. Understanding of the common cold is drastically different in modern medicine compared with TCM. These differences in understanding mean that the subsequent treatment is also quite different. TCM asserts that the continuous mistreatment of the common cold by modern medicine directly contributes to the development of several chronic diseases. Let us first examine the differences between modern medicine and TCM in relation to how the common cold is understood.
Modern medicine asserts that the common cold is a viral infectious disease that mainly affects the upper respiratory tract. The symptoms are caused by the body’s immune system reacting to the infection. Currently there is no cure for the common cold. All treatments are aimed at reducing the symptoms caused by the cold virus.
Traditional Chinese Medicine on the other hand has a different view. It categorises the common cold into two distinctive types. The first type is similar to modern medicine’s understanding that the symptoms are caused by an external pathogen – for example, the cold virus. The second type occurs when the body is in the process of removing ‘cold-temperature damage’. TCM views the majority of cold symptoms as of the latter category. While modern medicine is successful at treating the first type, its mistreatment of the second type is the source of many chronic diseases that have their roots in the common cold.
Human body temperature is maintained near a constant level of about 37 degrees Celsius. When the body temperature drops below 35 degrees, the body begins to malfunction. This condition is known as hypothermia, and if left untreated can be fatal. To avoid hypothermia and to maintain body temperature, our body has a mechanism that is activated in response to coldness. TCM’s theory of cold temperature damage refers to the byproduct of this mechanism.
Figure 2.2: The gallbladder meridian
When our body encounters a cold temperature, far below our body temperature, our body surface temperature drops, as heat transfers from high temperature areas to low temperature areas. To counter that drop in body temperature, chemical reactions within our body fluid occur, generating heat and raising body temperature back to its normal range. After heat energy has been released, waste material is produced that the body then stores below the skin surface. If the body is exposed to cold for a short period of time, it will be able to remove the waste material through its normal metabolism. However, if the body is exposed to cold for a long period of time, the waste material will be transported to the inner parts of the body and stored there while the body surface continues the process of burning body fluid to counter cold temperatures. As more and more waste material builds up inside the body, some of it will travel through the meridians into various body organs (for a discussion of the meridians, see Chapter 3). Over time those waste materials reduce the functionality of the organs as well as lowering the fluidity of the corresponding meridians. Depending on the part of the body that it is exposed to cold, the meridian that is affected and the resulting symptoms vary.
There are many different ways for a person to sustain cold temperature damage (also known as cold Qi). The most common of these ways are damage to the gallbladder, stomach and lung meridians. Damage to the gallbladder meridian occurs most frequently. When we look at this meridian in Figure 2.2, we can see that it is thought to extend for quite a long distance and the section that is most vulnerable to cold temperature damage is along the outer thighs. As they are less sensitive to temperature change compared with other areas of the body, people tend to wear less clothing to cover them. For example, while people put on extra clothing to keep their upper body warm, a jacket for example, only when the temperature drops significantly do they put on an extra layer on their legs. For women who wear skirts even in cold weather, the likelihood of sustaining cold temperature damage is even greater. There are several signs that a person may show when they have sustained cold-temperature damage to the gallbladder meridian. Prolonged exposure to cold in the outer thighs will cause these areas to build up an abnormally large amount of fat. Decreased fluidity of the gallbladder meridian will also affect the body’s ability to absorb nutrients.
Figure 2.3: The stomach meridian
Figure 2.4: The lung meridian
The stomach meridian (Figure 2.3) is commonly affected by cold-temperature damage as well. The source of the damage is primarily our diet. The frequent consumption of cold foods and especially of low-temperature beverages are two of the most common causes of cold-temperature damage to the stomach. A person who has sustained this damage will often suffer from indigestion, frequent attacks of nausea and abdominal bloating.
Compared with the previous two meridians, cold damage to the lung meridian (Figure 2.4) occurs much more rarely. As I will explain later, the 12 meridians can be categorised as either ‘Zang’ or ‘Fu’. The gallbladder and the stomach meridians are Fu meridians, which are less important than the lung meridian, which is a Zang meridian. Cold temperature damage usually occurs within the Fu meridians, but if the body is unable to repair this damage, over time it will infiltrate the body and affect the more important Zang meridians. The lung meridian is the first Zang meridian to be affected by prolonged cold-temperature damage. The resulting symptoms can vary greatly because a person who shows signs of cold-temperature damage in the lungs will also suffer from low body energy. Generally speaking, a well-trained TCM doctor can identify such a person by examining their complexion and their pulse.
The removal of cold-temperature damage and the common cold
As you may have noticed, the symptoms of cold-temperature damage described above do not include the common cold symptoms that people often associate with catching a cold. This is an important distinction that we should keep in mind when trying to understand how TCM views cold symptoms. It sees them as the result of the body removing cold-temperature damage, not of its receiving it. A body is only capable of removing cold-temperature damage when it has enough energy. So long as a person’s body has a low energy level, while it may have sustained cold-temperature damage, it will not commence the process of repair. Cold symptoms may then not occur even when the body has a large amount of cold-temperature damage.
According to this view, a healthy person, or a person with a high energy level, will frequently experience common cold symptoms. The person’s body is able to react quickly to cold-temperature damage by repairing the damage soon after it occurs. Conversely, an unhealthy person or a person with a low body energy level rarely experiences common cold symptoms. The body is weak and unable to get rid of the cold-temperature damage. This view of a person’s health contrasts with the way we typically define a healthy person. When we encounter someone who is rarely ill and rarely experiences common cold symptoms, we often view such a person as strong and healthy. However, more often than not the lack of common cold symptoms is due to low body energy rather than high body energy. The body simply lacks the ability to deal with the damage through inflammation.
When one understands that common cold symptoms are caused by the body’s removal of cold-temperature damage, it is easy to see how modern medicine mistreats the common cold. If we assume that the symptoms are a necessary part of the body’s healing process, using methods that interrupt such a process is actually harmful to the body as it halts the healing process rather than assisting it. People who frequently use cold medicine to stop cold symptoms may be the ones who sustain the most cold-temperature damage. By using cold medicine to stop the symptoms, we stop the body from properly repairing cold temperature damage. The result is that this damage remains in the body and accumulates over time. This leads to a decrease in the fluidity of the meridians and a decrease in the efficiency of the organs. In extreme and prolonged cases, this may lead to chronic diseases or worse.
The most common chronic disease that results from this practice is chronic allergic rhinitis. A person with allergic rhinitis is typically someone who has a moderate to high level of body energy. When such a person has cold-temperature-damage, their body will attempt to remove the damage which causes common cold symptoms. When the person experiences such symptoms, cold medicine is immediately used to halt the symptoms thus preventing the removal process from achieving completion, leaving cold-temperature damage inside the body. However, because the person has enough body energy, the body will attempt to remove the leftover damage at the next opportunity. The result is that the person will frequently experience cold symptoms which are then diagnosed as allergic rhinitis.
TCM’s treatment of the common cold is focused on helping the body cope with the symptoms. In some cases, TCM doctors will prescribe herbs that intensify the symptoms, with the goal of shortening the duration of the cold-temperature damage removal process, much like the old-fashioned advice in the UK to ‘take Beecham’s powders and sweat it out’. Instead of using cold medicine to halt the symptoms, TCM focuses on rest and relies on the body’s own self-healing system to carry out its proper functions.
Uncomfortable symptoms may not be diseases
Modern medicine is built upon the assumption that the body easily makes mistakes. Whenever our body displays abnormalities or uncomfortable symptoms, we simply accept that it is the body making a mistake, that we are ill. Because this way of thinking is propagated by education, a perceived link between discomfort and the body being sick has become deeply rooted in our instincts.
Modern medicine recognises in theory that there is a self-healing system, yet in actual diagnostics the self-healing system is treated as almost non-existent. The two facts below help to illustrate this point:
- When uncomfortable symptoms are diagnosed by a doctor, the diagnosis never contains the line: ‘Your body is undergoing maintenance on a particular organ’. Instead, the line is: ‘There is a problem with a particular organ’. In other words, modern medicine’s standard logic says discomfort or abnormality in an organ is an illness.
- With all examination parameters, there is always a normal range. If your test numbers fall outside that range, they are defined as abnormal, and the abnormality is in turn defined as an illness. Never have abnormalities in testing been defined as signs that the body is repairing organs.
From these two facts we can conclude that while modern medicine does not deny that the body has a self-healing system, it believes that when the body repairs its organs there will be no uncomfortable symptoms and that test parameters will not show any abnormality.
In reality, when we have a cut to our skin, we experience symptoms such as swelling, pain, itch, and the formation of scabs. Simple logic leads us to conclude that these are just symptoms of the body repairing the cut. The cut is the illness. The swelling, pain, itch, and formation of scab are symptoms of the body’s healing system working as intended. The falling off of the scab at the end is just the loss of waste material created by this process. In the process of healing the cut, all the doctor does is apply anti-inflammatory medicine and disinfectant to the cut. All the repair and regrowth work is handled by the body’s own strong self-healing capabilities. In the same way, the body’s organs also display powerful self-healing abilities.
The earlier case study of gout is a good example of the body’s self-healing system at work. The body’s activation of its self-healing mechanisms to remove uric acid crystals causes the patient’s painful swelling around the areas where the crystals occur. While those symptoms cause severe discomfort they should not be classified as illnesses. Just like the process of healing a cut to the skin, they are simply evidence of a properly functioning self-healing system.
As I have said, similarly, the body’s inner organs have self-healing capabilities. In the course of a maintenance cycle, the body may experience a period of discomfort, along with the creation of waste materials. Waste material close to the skin layer can exit by passing through the skin and directly leaving the body. Waste material deeper in the body is not as simple to deal with. The regular, or expected, flow of waste materials naturally follows normal exit procedures. It is when extra waste needs to be transported that additional pathways are required. As we do not normally use those waste transportation methods, when they are activated we classify that fact as an abnormality, which usually leads to test parameters falling outside the normal range. This is often accompanied by discomfort, leading most people to go to their doctor for blood and urine testing. Undesirable results can arise, prompting the diagnosis that the person is sick. But the additional waste material in the blood and urine that pushed the reading beyond the normal range may have come about because of the body’s own maintenance procedures. The abnormalities detected in blood and urine samples may not be signs of illness. They may in fact be the opposite. Such readings may suggest that the body’s self-healing system is hard at work fixing the problem, setting the body’s condition on an upward course.
There are many cases like this. For example, a common problem in modern-day society is the popularity of ‘working hard and playing hard’. There have been many people who, after making improvements to their lifestyles, have started to experience symptoms that can include frequent colds, proteinuria (excess protein in the urine), palpitations, irregular heartbeat, insomnia, headaches, muscle aches and dermatitis. In some cases, if the person happens to undergo a health check-up during such a period, test results may show unexpected increases in blood lipids, blood sugar and cholesterol. All of the above symptoms, even if only occurring temporarily, could be signs of the body performing its self-healing procedures. However, current testing systems categorise all abnormalities as illnesses, so self-healing itself is treated as the enemy. In this situation, we have to consider the following serious problems:
- How many medical procedures are fighting the self-healing process, rather than the actual problem? When we are sick, is modern medicine providing us with positive assistance, or negative interference?
- When the body’s maintenance cycles are interrupted, what kind of negative effects are created? Will such interruption create bigger problems for the patient and waste medical resources?
- How many severe diseases are caused by long periods of fighting against our own self-healing system?
- Modern medicine may have serious issues even when it comes to defining diseases.
The situation in which you properly nurse your health in the right direction and your body starts to experience uncomfortable symptoms is well known. These have been labelled ‘healing reactions’, but most may be symptoms caused by the self-healing system.
In management, there are two main principles guiding the way we act. The first is to ‘do the right thing’. The second is to ‘do the thing well’. The correct approach to doing work is first to ensure that you’re doing the right thing. That is, that the direction in which you are headed is correct. Only then should you proceed to do the thing well. For a long time now, within the medical system, far too many people have been neglecting to ‘do the right thing’. Most people just focus on doing the thing well. Many have spent their entire lives specialising in particular medical projects, when, perhaps from the beginning, their direction was off and they’re only doing the wrong thing well.
TCM has a famous saying: ‘cure the disease, not the symptoms’. When the body shows uncomfortable symptoms, the doctor must use methods of deduction to follow the body’s logic in order to find the source of the problem. The goal of treatment should be to deal with the root of the illness, not the symptoms.
If doctors do not use deductive methods and focus solely on the removal of symptoms, it can happen that procedures used to do that cause even greater harm to the body. Dealing with the root cause of the illness is ‘doing the right thing’. If you use the wrong methods to deal with the symptoms, even if you really remove the symptoms, oftentimes you are only redirecting the illness deeper into the body. This is ‘doing the wrong thing well’.
Let us take the common cold as an example, as before. The term ‘catching a cold’ is used in English. It suggests that something cold enters the body. This cold object is called ‘cold Qi’ in TCM terminology (see page 31). When cold Qi first enters the body, it stops at the body’s outer layers. At this stage, it can be removed if we ingest foods or medicines that help the body generate heat. The real cause of the common cold is that cold Qi enters the body, so the focus should be on helping the body remove it, rather than stopping the symptoms of a cold.
Sneezing and a runny nose are ways by which the body removes water through the nasal passages. TCM deems that the body uses the exiting water to transmit cold-Qi-carrying bodily fluid. Water is like the cooling agent (freon) in air conditioning. Normally, you do not sneeze or have a runny nose. When these symptoms arise, the body is not used to them, so naturally they feel uncomfortable.
If we treat sneezing and a runny nose as a problem that requires treatment and apply medicine to stop these symptoms, we end up halting the body’s cold-Qi-removing process, which forces the cold Qi to remain in the body and, over time, moving deeper, it eventually enters the lungs and causes far greater problems.
In the example of gout, as I described earlier, swelling is in fact the body’s attempt to dissolve uric acid crystals that accumulate in the joints by surrounding them with body fluid. Doing the wrong thing well would be to use medication to disrupt the swelling. The symptoms have been erased but so has the energy invested by the body in solving the problem. Maintenance, though we often take it for granted, can tax the body. It can only occur when your body energy is above a certain level, because energy needs to be expended to conduct it. When you forcefully cancel the self-healing system’s efforts, it has to save up that energy again so that it can perform the same act twice, or three times, or even more.
Doing the wrong thing well, in this case in particular, is extremely detrimental to the body’s health. When the body performs the maintenance procedure of surrounding uric acid crystals with body fluid, the level of healthiness is at a point where the body can carry out this procedure. After medication has been used to reduce swelling, the body may or may not still be above the health level threshold that enables it to perform the act again. If the body can restart the procedure, it will once again use up a large quantity of its resources. If medication is used over and over again, the body will eventually be incapable of restarting maintenance. This puts your health level in a loop, where all your efforts to improve your health will eventually be cancelled out by your body wasting energy on a procedure that it must perform, yet is prevented by medication from doing so.
Throughout this book, I will point out further examples parallel to that of gout that demonstrate a glaring need to differentiate between actual diseases and symptoms of bodily maintenance. Correctly understood, maintenance symptoms are easily handled and are generally not serious health risks. But when handled incorrectly they will gradually wear your self-healing system down.
How to increase body energy, and the importance of sleeping early
Whenever I am asked about the key to improving health, my answer always focuses on the improvement of body energy, or ‘Blood and Qi’. I have described the varying levels of body energy and how each level relates to the health of an individual. The goal of healthy living under the philosophies of TCM is to move upwards in energy level. But how can that be done?
To summarise in brief the relationship described between Blood and Qi: Blood is the storage capacitor for Qi. The maximum amount of Qi that the body can carry depends on the total amount of Blood. If the goal is to increase the total amount of Blood and Qi, then the focus of our lifestyle should be on increasing the body’s total Blood quantity.
There are two main factors that affect our body’s Blood production. The first is the absorption of nutrients. We can think of nutrients as the raw materials that the body uses for Blood production. The second factor is sleep, during which the nutrients are processed into Blood. Both factors are equally important to blood production and a deficiency in either area will result in low production, which over time will result in low Blood and Qi levels, or low body energy.
In ancient China, around the time that most Traditional Chinese Medicine theories were formulated, food was less abundant than in modern times. Malnutrition was common. In classic TCM texts, many of the illnesses that were caused by low blood and Qi were typically related to the lack of nutrition. In modern times, however, food shortage is generally not a problem in most developed countries. When we encounter people who have low body energy due to malnutrition, the cause is probably low nutrient absorption rather than a lack of food. Massaging the gallbladder meridian and properly chewing your food are two topics that will be discussed later on in the book. Properly chewing your food and maintaining the fluidity of your gallbladder meridian will greatly improve your nutrient absorption.
The second factor that hinders Blood production is a lack of sleep. Similar to nutrient absorption, a lack of sleep has become much more common in modern times. The classic TCM text The Yellow Emperor’s Inner Canon recommended that people go to sleep early during winter time and late during the summer. It is interesting to note that the text’s idea of sleeping early refers to 7-8 pm and sleeping late to 9-10 pm. By today’s standards, anyone who sleeps before midnight may be considered an early sleeper. With this in mind, it is not difficult to determine that for many people a lack of sleep is most probably the main contributing factor to low body energy.
The human body has an optimal period for Blood production. The best time is from 9 pm to about 1 am, with a slight variation depending on the time of dusk and dawn at your location. If a person can achieve deep sleep during this period, he or she will provide the body with the optimal conditions for generating blood and increasing body energy. For people who want to maintain a healthy level of body energy, I suggest going to sleep no later than 10 pm. If a person can achieve deep sleep in one hour after falling asleep, sleeping at 10 will give the person two hours of optimal Blood production. For the average person, I suggest at least eight hours of optimal Blood production per week. For those who are ill or have low body energy, more time would be beneficial to their recovery.
A question I am often asked is whether or not a person can sleep beneficially during the day instead of at night. For example, a person working the late-night shift may sleep from 8 am until 4 pm. While that person is still getting eight hours of sleep, blood production is quite different. The human body has a biological clock that governs the various processes that take place in it throughout the day. In TCM, the theory of Midnight-Moon Ebb-flow (Zi Wu Liu Zhu) describes how the body functions in the daytime. For anyone interested in learning TCM theory or doing any form of meditation, I strongly recommend studying this theory as it describes in detail how Qi travels across meridians. To keep things simple in this introductory book, we can consider the theory to be a time schedule for the 12 meridians. The liver and gallbladder meridians, which govern Blood production, are only active during nighttime, thus it is incumbent upon us to achieve deep sleep during those hours to maximise this.
Aside from these two main factors, other variables may affect the body’s Blood production. They may be internal, such as stress or depression, or external, such as environmental pollution, but generally speaking, sleep deficiency and poor nutrient absorption cover the majority of cases in which a person suffers from low body energy. If we can make sure that we give our body enough fuel and time for Blood production, we can increase our body energy over time and improve our health.
