If you ever visit an acupuncturist, you may hear them talk about your Spleen and Stomach (in uppercase!) and you realise they don’t mean the spleen or stomach that you know about. Weird? Yep. It is.
So what are they talking about? What does it mean for you and your clients? Most important of all, is it relevant?
The cool thing about Chinese medicine is that it came about in a time when nobody cut bodies open to figure out what was going on – so instead, they learnt from looking, touching, listening and smelling. So the Spleen and Stomach in Chinese medicine are concepts that refer to something more than those organs as we picture them. While the organs themselves are part of the concept, these terms also refer to the digestive system’s overall function in the body and can include things like your microbiome and all those awesome gut bacteria.
Science may only be newly discovering the importance of all that but the way Chinese medicine explains digestion, it’s already factored in the broader picture – that’s why traditional Chinese medicine is so cool.
Let me give you an example. According to Chinese medicine, your Spleen and Stomach (aka gut) prefer that you eat food sitting down with your friends, and they want you to take your time and enjoy the process. They also like you to eat food that’s mostly cooked and warm so it’s easier to digest, they want you to eat a wide variety of foods and not too many rich foods, which can cause your gut to become sluggish. Clean, easy-to-digest food is preferred.
Chinese medicine specifies a whole set of “rules” to ensure your gut works well. Modern science agrees that not only do our bodies require nutrition derived in a certain way, our friendly bacteria also need to be fed certain things to thrive and help us be healthy.
The other cool thing about the Spleen and Stomach in Chinese medicine is that they’re considered three-dimensional in nature – that means they go hand-in-hand with specific emotions. For example, an emotion that’s related to the Spleen is worry. So when you worry too much, it will weaken your Spleen and if it gets quite weak (due to over-worry and also possibly poor diet) you might find you feel angry and frustrated and this involves the Liver. When the organs become unbalanced, they start to affect each other and follow another set of patterns.
So by following the Chinese medicine “rules” of digestion, you’ve got more than just the literal spleen and stomach (organs) covered, you’ve ticked off what to do for your gut bacteria, you’ve ticked off the importance of your emotions in relation to digestion and this means you digest your food better and therefore get more nutrition into your bloodstream, organs and cells.
Some signs to look out for in terms of the Spleen being weak are bloating, poor appetite, constipation or sloppy poos, fatigue, eating or craving the same foods every day, worrying often or being anxious, suffering from swollen feet and ankles and hands (as the Spleen and Stomach feed the four sides of your body), bruising easily, varicose veins, feeling sluggish and slow, having a foggy head and having a swollen tongue with a coating on it. In pregnancy, some signs of issues with the Spleen are fatigue, low blood pressure, dizziness, anemia, constipation, ankle edema, gestational diabetes.
You may notice some of these symptoms in yourself or you may notice them in your clients. You don’t have to have all these signs, but you may have some, which will mean your Spleen needs tending to.
To improve your client’s health, look at her diet and aim to keep it clean and simple with most food cooked – even if just slightly cooked – if possible. If she’s close to an acupuncturist then consider acupuncture to improve her gut function. Herbs and probiotics can also be valuable. Bioceuticals do a good probiotic for pregnancy called UltraBiotic Pregnancy Care. Also, ensuring she’s resting when she can (if she’s pregnant) will help and good old-fashioned slow-cooked chicken soup is always a winner.
We suggest you do some of this for yourself too – tending to others all through the day and night is tough on your body and stressful. So when you eat, make it easy for your body to digest.
If you have any questions about how Chinese medicine sees the gut, feel free to ask us on our Facebook page.
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