5 Signs of Liver Qi Stagnation

Chinese medicine has all these funny diagnostic terms like spleen qi deficiency or liver qi stagnation or kidney qi deficiency and I think these are very useful terms to understand because they describe certain patterns that have been observed for thousands of years and I think a forte of Chinese medicine is that we look at things and symptoms in terms of their patterns and not individual symptoms. So in this video I thought I would share five symptoms of what we call liver qi stagnation. Hey guys, Dr. Alex Haing, doctor of Chinese medicine and licensed acupuncturist. So before we jump into these five signs there are two very important links right below this video. The first is if you'd like to become a patient of mine locally in Los Angeles or virtually via telemedicine you can contact my private practice right below this video and the second is for a free guide which is five daily rituals that can potentially help you add years to your life with Chinese medicine. Now the liver in Chinese medicine is not always associated with the physical liver of anatomy or necessarily biomedicine. Of course there are some times where the person has actually something that's affecting the physical liver that's measurable like liver enzymes are spiking but in general when we're talking about these gradations and stages of symptoms and disease when we talk about for example liver qi stagnation as we are here today it doesn't mean there's something measurably wrong with the liver or even really anything wrong with the liver yet. So when someone says I have my acupuncturist said I have liver qi stagnation but I did all my blood work and I did all my labs my PCP says they look fine is there something wrong? So the answer is both yes and no. Yes because this is a pre-clinical or a subclinical as the term is a subclinical indicator that something is going wrong from our perspective in Chinese medicine. It doesn't mean you need to run and go get labs done or see your PCP it just means there's a certain tendency that pathology is building and these are what some of those signs look like. So when we talk about liver qi stagnation the liver is one of those organs associated with the emotion of anger or agitation. We also associate it with the regulation of women's menses in addition to other organs as well can be related to many other things like digestive problems, indigestion, reflux, alternating bowels, can be related to headaches, related to PMS symptoms. So the liver plays a very important role often with other organs from our perspective but here are five signs of what we call liver qi stagnation and I think this is a very useful concept to understand because it's often subclinical. So you can experience these on a stressful day for example. So the first one maybe is just emotional right you've had a rough day stressful day at work you really want to quit your job because your boss sucks and you're feeling like you can't get a full breath you feel kind of pressurized area in your ribs you feel fullness maybe a little bit of a tension headache coming on. So one of the first signs is a feeling of emotional stuffiness or heaviness in the chest agitation or a feeling of stuckness like things are not quite smoothly flowing as they should be. The second sign is digestion. Now for this pattern I like to think of it as epigastric and abdominal distention sometimes indigestion sometimes reflux and burping sometimes pain abdominal pain sometimes a lot of gas coming up and sometimes variable bowel movements. So sometimes people say my stools range from soft to hard sometimes even in the same bowel movement that's often one of our signs. The third is more menstrual for women. Breast tenderness irregular menses PMS signs before the cycle these can be an indicator that something's going on with the liver from a Chinese medicine perspective and these are obviously very very common. The fourth is related to let's just call it neurological for example headaches are very commonly related to this headaches and sometimes some kinds of migraines right so headaches that move around especially the lateral sides of the head like that and migraines for some people not all people can be this liver pattern in particular. And finally just another category of feeling agitated a lot feeling like you have that lump in your throat if you ever feel like you're about to cry but it just doesn't come up or come out that can be related to this and also just feelings of you know if you've ever had a really stressful day and you're just like sighing a lot and you can't catch your breath and you're just sitting there and like and you notice yourself sighing a lot often that can be a sign of liver T stagnation. So I think this concept is useful and interesting because it fosters that category of what is not yet necessarily measurable from a biomedical perspective but is beginning to be pathological. So whether it is the stressful day or the changes in your menstrual cycle or alternating bowel pattern or a little bit of that those tension headaches coming up it's useful to see this because I like that's called liver T stagnation almost like it's a bit more ethereal and not quite as tangible or material yet right so at this point it's just T stagnation maybe it's just maybe we could say it's synonymous with emotional stagnation in some cases and so if the emotion passes or the person goes and works out or they go do something fun that night or they get a good night of sleep then that T stagnation can move. We obviously do that with acupuncture and Chinese formulas but there are plenty of lifestyle practices that will do the same thing but recognizing that hey maybe I'm having a rough day or a rough week and I'm experiencing some of these symptoms of what we call T stagnation and it isn't structural or measurable yet but it may be in six months or a year and so I can recognize that while it's a baby while it's immaterial while it's just physiological I can nip it in the bud and take care of it. So that is some of the common signs of liver T stagnation and that's what I have for you today guys. Before we go don't forget to check out those links right below this video and I have two other related videos for you there.