If you are in the “gray zone” of health, your body's
defense can be strengthened with Chinese herbs before
you develop chronic or recurrent illnesses such as
colds, flu, bronchitis or headaches
Nara Shikibu grew up as a sickly kid who was weaned on antibiotics. Five additional years on tetracycline as a teenager left her feeling run down and wasted. “I fell apart at eighteen. I couldn't keep anything down. I was only able to eat some rice with butter and clear broth,” Nara said. “On top of that, I had horrible allergies. I seemed to catch everything that went around and become even sicker, and it would take me a long time to feel better.” Over a seven-year period, Nara saw nearly a dozen doctors. She had “all the tests,” and nothing came back positive other than a mildly elevated candida level.
Nara got married and tried going to school and working. Even as a very young woman she did not have the stamina to devote time to her marriage, work and study. She ended up divorced and struggling to get up every day and go to work. “The doctors didn't know what to do with me and finally started saying my problems were all in my head.”
In 1995 when she was twenty-five, several friends suggested Nara try Chinese herbs. “They told me, ‘You won't believe what you'll get out of this. ’ I went in already trusting in the process, thinking that Chinese medicine has proven to be helpful for others, so it might help me too. When I saw Dr. Han, he immediately saw what was wrong with me. After everything I had been through, it was hugely gratifying to have someone say, ‘I can see it on your tongue, I can feel it in your pulses. ’ ”
Nara's condition was representative of an increasing number of people in the West. She was in the gray zone of health—not suffering from a specific illness that could be diagnosed by Western medicine, yet not well.
Western medicine looks at factors that can be objectively measured by a lab test, EKG or X ray, for example. Nara did not have any definitive signs, so it was not possible to diagnose her illness. Without a definitive diagnosis, Western medical treatment is often limited. When one is in the gray zone of health, it is possible to fall through the cracks of the health care system.
From a Chinese medicine point of view, Nara's imbalances were clear from her symptoms. Chinese medicine recognizes that symptoms tend to appear during the early stages of an illness, before the crisis sets in. Disease does not just happen. It is a process, starting as a minor imbalance, gradually developing or worsening when not treated. “Healing is about life, not just disease,” said Maoshing Ni, Lic. Ac., D.O.M., Ph.D., known as Dr. Mao, who is the cofounder of the Tao of Wellness clinic and Yo San University of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Los Angeles, California. “Disease is a symptom of life out of balance. Chinese medicine is the healing of life. In Chinese medicine, we have a saying from the classics: ‘A superior physician treats an illness before it even begins. A mediocre physician treats a condition as it's developing. An inferior physician treats a patient after an illness has occurred. ’ That would put us all in the inferior category! But prevention is so important. Problems are easier to deal with when they are small.”
Nara's imbalance was a combination of deficiency and stagnation. This is one of the most common patterns of imbalances seen in the West. Yet there was also a certain uniqueness to her situation. Both her deficiency and stagnation were extreme. Her internal Energy was depleted. This was seen in her weakened Kidney and Spleen Energies. Her Kidney and Spleen deficiencies were mostly Yang deficiencies, which are not commonly seen types of imbalances in the West.
Stagnation can happen at various levels. Imagine your body's Energy system as a tree. The most superficial level of stagnation would be at the level of leaves. A deeper stagnation would involve the twigs, then the branches, trunks, major roots, smaller roots and ultimately the fine, capillary-like end roots. Nara's stagnation was at the level of the root, involving Qi, Dampness and Blood as well as Liver, Lungs, Spleen and Large and Small Intestine Energies.
Nara's Yin and Yang disharmony was complicated. Because of the Yang deficiency she felt cold all the time. Energetically Cold foods, or foods of cold temperature, exacerbated her digestive problems and fatigue. However, her tongue was coated with a thick yellow moss indicating internal Heat resulting from the long-term accumulation of stagnation. Deficiency and stagnation are opposite Energetically. Deficiency is a weakness—a state of lack of Vital Substance. Dampness is an excess or abnormal accumulation of External Causes. Yet at a deeper level they are related.
Your body's Energetic systems need to be harmonized and balanced, and there is a dynamic to this Energy pattern—a constant movement and free flow of the Energy, which delivers the nutrients—the Essence of Qi—to the body. At the same time, this Energy removes the waste and toxins, preventing and freeing your body from stagnation. One of the basic functions of the body's Energetic systems is to maintain this dynamic movement of Energy flow. Kidney Energy provides the most important source of power for the movement. It is the push behind the movement. Heart Energy assists the Kidney Energy. The Lung Energy helps to distribute the Energy flow that carries the nutrients. The Spleen Energy sustains the other Energy systems by supplying constant nourishment from food. The Liver Energy regulates the movements by directing the Energy “traffic.”
When Kidney and Spleen Energy become deficient, the body's ability to maintain Energy circulation is compromised. This leads to a reduction of the nourishment delivered throughout the body as well as a gradual accumulation of toxins and metabolic wastes that are normally cycled out of the body by the Energy circulation. The stagnation then becomes a causal factor in further impeding the Energy flow.
The challenge in designing a treatment plan for Nara was that the herbs for Tonifying or strengthening her deficiencies could potentially fortify and deepen her stagnation. Herbs that disperse or clear stagnation could weaken or even damage her already deficient Qi. Her Yang deficiency required Warming herbs, yet Warming herbs could easily aggravate the internal Heat, whereas Cold herbs, although helpful in clearing Heat, could damage her already weakened Yang Energy. There was a fine line of balance to maintain and a very small margin of error to work with.
Think of your body as a container that is normally filled with Qi and other Vital Substances. When Energy deficiencies occur, your container becomes half empty. To correct (fill) this imbalance seems simple. You would merely fill the container with “good stuff ”—vitality and Qi. However, in Nara's situation it was much more complex. Because of the stagnation caused by many years of antibiotics her container was not only half empty but also filled with “bad stuff” that first needed to be taken out. The priority is usually given to the cleanup first so that room can be made within the container for the “good stuff” to be put in later.
The Centers for Disease Control estimates that one half of the 235 million doses of antibiotics prescribed each year are unnecessary. Like Nara, many people who are suffering from the gray zone of ill health turn to their doctors for help and are sometimes given round after round of antibiotics. Often, antibiotics are prescribed for colds and flu, but since antibiotics combat bacteria, they are useless against such illnesses, which are viral infections.
Taking antibiotics to fight a bacterial infection is like fighting an enemy with only one highly trained, technologically powerful soldier. The vast majority of the time antibiotics are effective in disabling the invading bacteria. Your body, while weakened, is still able to eliminate the small amount of remaining bacteria from its system. However, should the bacteria defeat the soldier, the battle can easily be lost. Even if antibiotics do win, they do nothing to strengthen your body or your immune system. Also, antibiotics often possess a single active agent, and invading organisms oftentimes need only minimal mutation to become resistant to this agent. Because of the long-term overuse of antibiotics, more virulent and antibiotic-resistant bacteria are developing. As a result, pharmaceutical companies are constantly scurrying to develop newer and more potent antibiotics to try and stay ahead of bacterial resistance.
From a Chinese medicine perspective, antibiotics are Energetically Cold and Bitter in nature, and tend to aggravate existing Dampness. Bitter flavor generally has clearing and Drying effects. When overused, Cold and Bitter Energy can easily damage Yang or turn into a Dry Energy and damage underlying Yin.
Antibiotics often irritate and weaken the digestive system and lead to de creased vitality and a weakened immune system. Herbs can be used for common infectious conditions to supplement antibiotics, to reduce side effects or as an alternative to antibiotics if a patient does not respond to antibiotic treatment. Although antibiotics are an important method of treatment for dangerous bacterial infections, there are many instances when the use of herbal medicine would be more advantageous. Many herbs are capable of strengthening and supporting the immune system and have antimicrobial properties. These herbs fight the microorganisms that cause disease.
In addition to antibiotics, because of her discomfort and pain, Nara took anti-inflammatories (aspirin or related medicines), which irritated her already sensitive stomach. She was also prescribed Diflucan, an antifungal medication, R which is highly toxic to the liver. Dampness is essentially an abnormal accumulation of moisture, which in nature is already Wet and Cold. Adding to her system these medications, which carry with them even more Cold and Dampness, worsened her condition.
What further complicated Nara's situation was the fact that the good and bad were so enmeshed that ridding the container of the bad meant running a risk of further depleting her already weakened Qi. The first step was to separate out the good from the bad. When the stagnation had nothing to cling to, it would be much easier to eliminate. After the cleanup, her container could be filled back up with “good stuff.” This would be accomplished by strengthening her Spleen and Kidney Energy.
“Dr. Han went about trying to devise teas that would help me. It took quite a while,”Nara said. “We used to joke that I was one of his most difficult patients. My stomach was so sensitive that I couldn't tolerate a lot of herbs he would have wanted to use.”
Herbs need to be digested in order to work. Nara's condition was so severe initially that she was unable to digest even the mildest of herbs prescribed, just as she was unable to digest a normal diet of food. Nara required herbs to strengthen her digestive system, but she did not have enough digestive Energy to digest the needed herbs. Hence a catch-22. That is why, when treating people with extremely weak digestive systems, progress is so slow to come about. The herbalist, in a sense, has to inch his or her way along with the patient in order not to overload an already weakened digestive system. As one of Dr. Han's teachers, Dr. Yue Meizhong, physician to Chairman Mao, so aptly put it,“When you need to attack a disease, attack with the force of a tidal wave. But, when patience is required, go slowly as the old woman needlepointing under the table lamp.”
After many unsuccessful trials of herbal combinations, Dr. Han used a treatment referred to as herbal transdermal ionization—a concentrated herbal pack applied to her abdomen—to deliver herbal properties transdermally, bypassing her sensitive digestive system. (See page 147 for more on herbal transdermal ionization.) “Right away I felt a little better,” Nara said. “Then we spent a year and a half trying different herbal formulas and seeing what worked. Even though my healing didn't take phenomenal leaps, at least I saw a bit of improvement. And that was encouraging. I figured that if I was going to find real recovery back to good health, it wasn't going to come in leaps, it was going to come in slow increments—like a steady climb. And that's what it really turned out to be.”
Nara prepared an herbal decoction five days a week for five years. She then began to feel healthy enough to taper off. “It became part of living,” she said. “Get up in the morning, make the special tea and drink it. I go back to the clinic for herbs about once a month now. My stomach is still susceptible to stress, and if I don't eat particularly well I'll feel it. But I can eat normal food now. If I start to feel some discomfort, I'll drink tea for a little while to clean out my system. I get fewer flus and colds than other people seem to. When I feel something coming on I'll get an herbal formula and I don't end up getting what's going around in the office. Overall I've got a normal energy level now, so I can lead a normal life. I feel good so I can enjoy life. The herbs turned my health around. It was such a simple thing. It's just tea. But it restored what the antibiotics had done to my body, so my body could be healthy and take care of itself.”
Western medicine tends to focus on a single factor of illness, and then tailors the treatment intervention accordingly. For example, Western medicine will treat a cold. If the person develops pneumonia, the doctor will then treat the pneumonia. If the pneumonia then evolves into the even more serious condition of septic shock, the doctor will aggressively treat the septicemia.
When you go to your doctor, he or she sees only what is happening with you at that period in time. In reality, the disease process began well before you went to the doctor and will end well afterward.
Chinese medicine endeavors to anticipate the development of disease so that one can take steps ahead of time to prevent disease from occurring and avoid complications. It also treats illness at every stage of its evolution. If you have a cold that develops into pneumonia, Western medicine calls this a complication of your disease. In Chinese medicine, if you have a cold that develops into pneumonia, it is considered a different component of the same disease. Inother words, these conditions evolve from one another, and they are treated as different stages of the same disease process. Chinese doctors are trained to take the necessary steps to intervene before a complication occurs. The Chinese doctor will treat a cold and will also provide intervention and support to preventthe evolution of the cold into pneumonia as well as the necessary herbs to treat these complications should they occur.
In Chinese medicine, the objective of the diagnosis is not just to identify the cause (virus or bacteria) but rather to assess the strength of the Cause versus the R strength of your Qi.
In the treatment of infectious disease, Chinese medicine views the evolution of the disease in several different stages or levels. The following diagnostic and treatment system, designed to deal with fever-causing infections, identifies four distinct levels:
First level: Wei (Defense Qi)
Wei is the protective energy that circulates at the very surface of your body. Wei level is the first protective barrier against the Cause. When the Cause confronts Wei, you experience mild malaise, mild sore throat and nasal congestion. At this level, the Cause is not yet very strong and the Qi is strong and intact.
Second level: Qi
Once the Wei level is breached (or pierced) by the Cause, it reaches Qi, which is the next level. Qi-level involvement is experienced as high fever, chills and pronounced perspiration and thirst. Your body and immune system are actively fighting and resisting the invading Cause. In other words, both the Cause and your Qi are strong.
Third level: Ying
When the Cause pierces your Qi it enters the Ying level, which is evident in the development of pneumonia, endocarditis and myocarditis, to name a few problems. At this level the Qi begins to be overwhelmed, or worn down, by the Cause.
Fourth level: Xue (Blood)
If the treatment fails to stop the disease progression at this point, it will culminate in the Xue (pronounced shh-why) level, the last or final level, which is critical and potentially fatal. Often, the earmark of the Xue level is the presence of multiorgan failure. The patient's blood coagulation factors are exhausted, which results in internal coagulation and extensive bleeding simultaneously. At this stage, Qi has become depleted.
Are you suffering from Spleen and Kidney Yang Energy deficiencies—the gray zone of health? R 1L
You have a Cold constitution (see chapter 20 to determine your Energetic constitution).
You have a sensitive digestive tract and have loose stools.
You have decreased appetite along with a feeling of bloating after eating.
You suffer from chronic candida.
You have low endurance and stamina.
Your body tends to retain fluid or your ankles tend to become swollen.
You have a weak lower back and knees.
During cold and flu season you frequently catch these illnesses.
Colds and flu linger.
Your sex drive decreases during the winter.
You tend to have a lot of mucus buildup.
Figure 2.1
The white area represents your Vital Substances. The shaded areas represent External Causes in your system. As the illness descends from Wei to Xue, your body experiences a diminishing amount of Vital Substances and an increasing amount of External Causes.
There are a number of ways to strengthen Spleen, Kidney and Lung Energies R to treat the gray zone of health.
Avoid Overtaxing Your System: Get regular rest—at least eight hours of sleep every night. Take rest periods and/or naps during the day. Avoid overexercising. Excessive exercise increases the stress hormone cortisol, which weakens your immune system. Ideal exercises for you are Qigong, Tai Chi, yoga and walking. Moderate exercise allows you to strengthen and repair the body so that you go forward without setbacks. Moderation and discipline are the key to preserving and cultivating your Kidney and Spleen Energies.
Limit Caffeine Intake: Caffeine is a stimulant that increases the stress hormone cortisol, which weakens your immune system. Limit caffeine intake to one cup of coffee in the morning; quit if you can. See pages 148–150 for more on caffeine and guidelines to help you quit the habit.
Quit Smoking: Nicotine is an External Cause that contributes to the gray zone of health. See pages 150–151 for more on nicotine and for guidelines to help you quit the habit.
See a Health Care Professional: The goal in seeing a health care professional is to strengthen your body's defenses to optimize the function and decrease the toxin load of every system in your body and to keep your intestines as healthy as possible to optimize the absorption of nutrients.
Have your adrenal hormones tested, as depleted adrenals (often reflect Kidney Energy deficiency) are a major contributing factor in lowered immunity. See chapter 10 for restoring adrenal function.
Have your amino acid levels tested. If your body is not breaking down the proteins you eat into amino acids, this can exacerbate fatigue and symptoms of depression. Amino acid supplementation can boost your energy as well as supply your body with the necessary precursors to neurotransmitters.
Stool, hair and blood tests can determine if you have (1) high levels of accumulated heavy metals in your system, (2) sensitivities to foods or (3) dysbiosis, which is an imbalance of the healthy and unhealthy bacteria and yeast in the gut, any of which may be weakening your immune system and draining your energy.
See page 431 for a laboratory that can refer you to a health care provider in your area who does these types of tests. If you test positive for any of these fac-tors, your health care provider can treat you on an individual basis.
Modify Your Diet: Dairy products and fried foods create Phlegm, an Intermediate Cause, and are best avoided or limited if you are in the gray zone of health. Avoid sugar, including too much fresh fruit, which is Cooling, or refrigerated or iced foods and drinks. Cooling foods weaken Spleen Energy.
Soups with protein such as legumes, organic meats and poultry are Warming and boost Spleen Energy. Eat Yang (Warming) foods that will warm your Yin (Cold) constitution, such as congees (see pages 327–328 for recipes). When you eat raw vegetables, which are Cooling foods, have a cup of hot ginger tea too. Drink herbal teas with Warming spices such as cinnamon, cayenne, ginger and cloves. Pages 310–326 provide lists of the Energetic properties of foods that you can use as a guideline. Chapter 21 provides medicinal recipes to treat the gray zone of health.
Chinese Herbs and Western Supplements: If you do not currently have a cold or flu, for prevention take 250 milligrams vitamin C, with breakfast and dinner.
When you do have a cold or flu take 1,000 milligrams vitamin C with breakfast and dinner—if this causes loose bowels, reduce amount.
You can also take Chinese herbal formulas and Western supplements specifically formulated to treat the gray zone of health including colds and flu. Formulas can be found online at ancientherbsmodernmedicine.com.
Flu Prevention: Along with lifestyle changes, nutritional supplements and Chinese herbs, you may choose to have a flu shot during flu season. Flu shots can provide relatively good protection (85 percent efficacy) against influenza infections, yet their effectiveness is limited and depends on the following factors:
Accurate coverage. It is not always easy to predict which subtypes of viral strains are likely to cause the epidemic for the next flu season. The flu virus is highly mutable and constantly creates new strains by self-modifying its gene sequences. Some changes are gradual through a series of minor mutations, and some are sudden and drastic through major mutations. The prediction can sometimes be off. Part of the difficulty in guesstimating is that the forecast has to be made eight to ten months ahead of time to allow enough time for pharmaceutical companies to manufacture the vaccine.
Sufficient coverage. There are over six thousand different flu viral gene sequences identified and stored currently in the data bank of Los Alamos National Laboratory. As transcontinental travel becomes increasingly easier and more accessible, the traditional pattern of one dominant strain of virus per type per year is changing as well. Especially for the areas such as coastal regions of the United States and Western Europe, there can be multiple strains of the flu virus going around in any given year. Yet the flu shot usually contains the vaccination for only two or three major types of viral strains. In other words, it will provide protection most of the time for two or three viral strains if the prediction is right on but will not shield you against other strains that are going around at the same time.
Individual differences. A flu shot apparently works much better for young and healthy individuals (nearly 100 percent efficacy) than it does for older or chronically ill individuals. Sometimes even with the vaccination, these people will often require additional support, such as immune-enhancing and antiviral herbs.
Chinese medicine can play a significant role in the prevention and treatment of the flu. Certain Chinese herbs have antibacterial properties, others have antiviral properties and others can stimulate or strengthen your immune system. When applied to a petri dish cultured with the bacteria causing pneumonia, well-known Chinese herbal formulas designed for upper respiratory infection showed no effect. However, when a few drops of blood are added to the petri dish and formula, the bacteria will begin to die off. This demonstrates the fact that herbal formulas do not cure but rather strengthen your body, in particular your immune system, to assist your body in healing from illness.
Antiviral properties are unique to Chinese herbs. In Western medicine, aside from a few recently developed drugs that are somewhat effective in treating chronic viral infections, there really are no medications available in the treatment of acute viral infections. That is why Chinese medicine is preferable for the treatment of most viral infections. Even for severe viral conditions, such as encephalitis and meningitis, specific herbs have been shown to be very effective in counteracting the viral cause.
As far back as 1962, Chinese researchers began studying the effectiveness of herbs against acute viral infection. In a study of 1,150 patients suffering from cold and flu symptoms including fever, chills, headache, sore throat and fatigue— characterized by Chinese medicine as Wind and Heat—the average length of time to full recovery when taking Chinese herbs was 2.7 days, down from the recovery period of 4 to 7 days when treated with Western over-the-counter medications. Many Chinese patent herbal remedies are well tested, and most have at least several hundred years of history.