5 Signs of Lung Qi Deficiency

If you've ever had unusual lung symptoms or symptoms and you're not quite sure where they're coming from and you've been to traditional medical professionals and they give you kind of the runaround where they tell you it's this diagnosis but with no way of treating it, I've been having a fun time going through the organs in Chinese medicine and explaining certain symptoms and certain pathologies and what organs they're a part of because sometimes it's not the organ So in that series, this video is 5 Signs of Lung Qi Deficiency Hey guys, Dr. Alex Hine, Chinese medicine doctor, licensed acupuncturist, and author of the health book Master the Day. So before we jump into this video, two very important links right below it. The first is if you'd like to become a patient of mine locally in Los Angeles or virtually via telemedicine, you can reach out to my private practice right below this video, there's a link there, and there's also a free guide which is 4 daily rituals that can help you have years to your life with Chinese medicine. Sign 1 of Lung Qi Deficiency. And again, I like to translate the word qi as function. In this case, lung function deficiency. I don't think we have to make it more mystical sounding than it actually is. Lung function deficiency is the easiest way I've found to translate this in this context. So the first symptom is wheezing or a little cough. Sometimes the obvious example of Lung Qi Deficiency is asthma. People who are asthmatics, like myself, obviously have clear problems breathing. Now these are more congenital, meaning they run in families and they're genetic, but wheezing is obviously a sign that the lung is not functioning the way that it should. So when an organ that is supposed to go down goes up, like a cough or vomiting or wheezing, we call this counterflow. Like counterflow qi, right? So the lung is in a state of counterflow. It's not flowing the way that it should be. And in the same way, a cough, especially these little small coughs like that, are often a sign of lung function deficiency. The second sign is that the person easily catches colds. Now I wanted to share this series of content because some of it doesn't make sense in traditional biomedicine. But in Chinese medicine, we have a little bit different observations and explanations for the same symptoms. So when we say easily catching cold, what exactly does that have to do with the lung? Modern practitioners, traditional Chinese medicine, which is ironically not traditional, but anyway, modern practitioners associate the lung with the surface. So when you are getting exposed to something in the environment, first, one of the organs affected is the lung. So maybe there's a little bit of a wheezing, or maybe there's some sinus discharge, or a little bit of nasal symptoms. From a modern perspective, that's related to the lung function in TCM. Ancient doctors view it a little bit differently, but the formulas that we use are affecting these organs. So the lung is one of the organs that's also involved in the modern sense of the immune system. So a lot of the formulas that we're using to strengthen the immunity of a person are related to the digestion, the spleen, as well as the lung, and other organs as well. But the lung governs the surface. So typically, the lung is one of those organs that's considered to have this direct interface with the outside world. And if a person has lung chi deficiency, they're often predisposed to getting sick a lot. The third symptom is no desire to talk or a soft voice. So some kids that are typically thinner and the pale type, typically more sensitive, often have associated gut issues like SIBO or bloating or failure to thrive. They're thin. They don't have a good appetite. This constitutional type will often find themselves, when they're in the midst of this, as being kind of fatigued by talking. If they're in a pattern where they're having this acutely, they don't want to talk. It's kind of labored. It feels like it requires a lot of energy to speak, and that's a direct manifestation of this lung chi deficiency acutely. The fourth symptom of lung chi deficiency is fatigue. So I've shared in one of my other videos, the first thing I look at when people come in with fatigue is the functioning of their digestion. So there are a couple different lenses we could look at this in terms of Chinese medicine, but in terms of the lung, the lung is called the master of chi. And chi, let's just translate it as breath for the time being. Qigong being breath work, right? Breathing in the most plain layman's terms, breathing is one of the ways you can calm your nervous system the fastest and increase your energy. So that's why Qigong, breath work, has been a foundation. Qigong and Daoyin, Daoyin being the precursor. These have been foundational practices in Daoism and even in Chinese medicine for longevity. Qigong is a way of combining physical exercise, visualization, and breath work all into one that's low impact and it's easy on the joints. You can do it for the rest of your life. You can do it five hours a day. You can do it if you have cancer. You can do it if you're exhausted. You can do it if you're old and it won't harm you like exercise will because it hurts your joints if you do it too much. Or if your joints already hurt, you won't want to do it. But the lung is the master of chi. And one of the best ways to improve fatigue is by doing Qigong exercises. So the fastest way you can do that is by changing your breathing. That's the fastest way you not only can change your state, but also you can change the amount of energy you have by doing 20 or 30 minutes of Qigong. For a lot of people, it'll feel as good as a nap. Now the fifth symptom of lung chi deficiency is spontaneous sweating and disliking wind and AC blowing on them. So when people don't like draughts, it often is a sign that there's something going on with the surface. And we talked about in one model of Chinese medicine, the lung is one of those organs that governs the surface, i.e. is your barrier between you and the outside world, of weather, of pathogens and viruses and bacteria, things that can infect you and enter right through the nose and the mouth. So this idea of spontaneous sweating is that this is a sign of the surface being dysregulated. When the surface is too closed, the person can't sweat at all. When it's too open, they're spontaneously sweaty all the time. Some patients I touch, the hands are always sweaty in a nervous way or the abdomen is just, the surface is just always a little bit too open. And so there's a little bit of moisture on the all the time. Often this does correlate with sensitive people or people with anxiety or who are sensitive in general, meaning they're sensitive to their external environment, whether that's noise, whether that's weather, whether that's wind and AC. If they work in an office, the AC blowing on them will make them very, very cold easily. And people will be like, why are you freezing all the time? So very often this idea of spontaneous sweating and disliking wind and AC blowing on them is the same thing because the surface is a little bit deregulated. And often for these people, it's too open. So it's the sweating and the, that chill they get on their back easily, that kind of, we call it cold aversion in Chinese medicine. These people tend to run cold often if they are chronically lung qi deficient or constitutionally lung qi deficient, but that's also another key sign as well. Now, again, even though these definitions change throughout history and time within Chinese medicine, these are some of the key symptoms I see for this lung qi deficiency pattern. So I hope that helps. Before you go, I have two other videos on these other kinds of patterns in Chinese medicine that help diagnose especially weird or unusual symptoms. So check them out before you go right here.