Yang depletion syndrome

Yang depletion syndrome is a diagnosis term in the Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). It includes any disorders due to depletion of Yang Qi in the body. Yang Qi is the life power in the body, as the sunshine to the life on the earth.

Without Yang Qi, our body is a dead body without heart beat, breath, bowel movement, urine secretion, sweat, and other metabolic action in the body – every action or reaction in the body stop. Yang Qi comes from both when we are fetus and when we eat and drink after birth.

In our modern life there are so many reasons that can cause the depletion of Yang Qi from the body and supply less Yang Qi to the body. Heavy emotional activities (such as stressful study by our children in school, or business management by business man, or painful law suit, or hardy to find a job, get promotion…) when we are young, depleted Yang Qi in the upper body (Chest part, including lung and heart). Having irregular diet, drink of cold beverage or alcohol, eating cold food or eating too much Cold stuff such as cold fruits, depleted Yang Qi in the middle part of the body (upper stomach area, including stomach and spleen); stress and unrestricted sexual life depleted Yang Qi in the lower part of the body (the lower stomach area, including liver and kidney). Additional take of antibiotics further more depleted the body Yang Qi in whole body and unnecessary surgical operation depleted Yang Qi where it is performed on the body.

When the Yang Qi is depleted, there is no enough life power to handle the body functions. Depending on the location the Yang Qi is mostly depleted, the symptoms could be different. If the depletion is mostly in the upper body, person may feels overall headache, dizziness, ear ringing, poor memory, slow emotional reaction and analysis ability, irritable emotion and less patience, poor sleep or frequent early awake, running nose, frequent sour throat, mouth ulcer or asthma…

If the depletion is mostly in the chest area, one may feel suppressing feeling in the chest, short of breath, chest pain. If it is mostly in the middle part of the body, one may feel poor appetite, or, sometimes feels no any appetite at all and sometime can eat like horse. Most people may feel acid reflux, bloating and constipation (we observed there are many such patients in the North America). If the depletion is mostly in the lower stomach, one can feel depress, anxiety, irritable emotion, hopeless, low confidence or even phobia. If it is involves the kidney system, one feel low desire for sex, impotency, urine discontinuance or leakage, night urine, low libido, hot feet or hands at night, ache on the heels, restless legs or hot flash.

For such conditions, one may be diagnosed by conventional biomedical system, based on the clinic manifestations, allergic reaction, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, athma, chronic sinus infection, chronic throat infection, chronic bronchitis, coronary heart disease, hypertension, diabetic, hypothyroidism or hyperthyroidism, post menopause syndrome, chromic ulcerative colonitis, prostatitis, but many times, no diagnosis can be make… since it may be found nothing wrong with lab tests, X-ray, MRI or canscan test!

These kinds of clinic condition are so popular in the nowadays life and it can be said that up to nine out of ten patients show clinic evidence to the Yang depletion in their body. The common clinic pictures for such patients, from the TCM point of view, are cold body, cold hands and feet. Some feel cold before and feel hot in the hands or feet now but body temperature never show dramatically either high or low actually. Many times, such person cannot tolerate neither hot in summer, nor cold in winter. They feel tired always and especially in the afternoon so they wish to have a nap. But most may feel frequent wakeup at night so feel hard to get up in the morning. They eat less but still gain weight. They may have more frequent input desire for sex but hardly to have a complete sex activity. If you look at their tongue, you can see purple tint/color in the middle area of the tongue. If you feel their pulse, you can feel their pulse is weak and thin, or so deep so that hardly to feel. Most of them tend not to speak or, when speak, their voice is low. If they speak for a little bit longer time, their voice is harsh. Others may still have high voice when they talk with other person, but when they finish the talk and stay alone, they feel very tired, so that they show like a different person with or without others are around them. They tend to drink little water, or they prefer to drink warm water. They have frequent mouth ulcer that are so easy to cause by just eat or drink cold food or beverage.

If a TCM doctor knows such characteristic of a Yang depletion syndrome, it would be pretty easy for them to help the patients, no matter what diagnosis by the conventional medicine system. Using of acupuncture, or acupuncture plus Chinese herbal therapy are the best way, among any other medicine system (conventional medicine) or therapies (massage, chiropractic, north America herbal therapy, Reiki, therapeutic cough… ), to prevent and treat such Yang depletion condition.  

Here readers should know that, a TCM doctor does not start his/her clinic work to help their patients based on the diagnosis of conventional medicine, but rather, on the TCM diagnosis. They look at your body-function relationship in a totally different view compared with the conventional medicine. Many kinds of “diseases” or “disorders” diagnosed by the conventional medicine might be simply a single disorder from the TCM point of view. On the other hand, one diagnosis by the conventional medicine, such as a chronic bronchitis, might include several different types of disorders from the TCM point of view so need quite different herbal formula to correct them. This is why we can include so many quite different “diseases” diagnosed by your conventional medicine doctor into one TCM term: Yang Qi depletion syndrome.