Face Swollen and Appetite Gone After an Angry Late-Night Feast? Doctor Zhu Danxi’s Story of Rage, Roast Pork, and a Puffy Face
Patient search words: puffy face / facial swelling / face swollen after anger / face suddenly swollen / swelling after a binge / no appetite and no strength
Corresponding medical terms: facial swelling (mian zhong) · spleen deficiency with phlegm-dampness · liver qi attacking the spleen (gan qi fan pi) · edema
Opening scene: three characters that capture the whole patient
Doctor Zhu Danxi (朱丹溪), the great Yuan-dynasty physician and one of the “Four Great Masters” of Jin-Yuan medicine, had a remarkable habit: in his case records, he linked the patient’s emotions to the illness. Today’s patient was a woman over fifty. The first thing he wrote about her? Just three characters: “夜多怒” — “anger at night.”
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: In classical case records, it is rare to see a patient’s emotions and temperament written out this bluntly. With those three characters, Doctor Zhu Danxi told you everything about this woman — she grew angry at night, several times, in a big way. What must her everyday temperament have been like? A quick temper, surely. This shows that Doctor Zhu Danxi never treated only symptoms — he treated the person.
Who was the patient? A night of simmering rage
The woman was already in her fifties — by Chinese medicine’s reckoning, an age when upright qi (zheng qi) has begun to decline. That night she quarreled with her family — probably her husband — and swallowed a bellyful of anger. No sooner had she calmed down a little than one more word set her off again. This happened several times in a single night. She was furious.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Notice that Doctor Zhu Danxi singled out this detail — the whole case turns on it. At this age, qi and blood are already insufficient. Add this kind of rage, and the liver qi runs rampant sideways (gan qi heng ni), attacking the spleen and stomach directly.
Late-night roast pork: eating to vent the anger
After the argument, in the middle of the night, she wanted to eat roast pork — the kind with a crisp, fragrant skin. Presumably the husband was making peace: stop being angry, let me roast you some meat. She ate plenty — half a roast pig went down. The anger subsided, and she slept.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: This is a trait of many people — especially women: when angry, they substitute food. Some snack, some eat a midnight meal. But this does not dissolve the anger — it plants a landmine in the body. When you push emotional problems down with food, it’s the spleen and stomach that pay the price.
The next morning: the face swelled up
The next morning — trouble. The face was swollen — under the eyes and across both cheeks it puffed right up. In Chinese medicine this is mian zhong, facial swelling. And her appetite was gone; she couldn’t eat anything. Her whole body felt tired; she had no strength at all.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Facial swelling in a woman is no small matter. There’s an old saying: “Men fear wearing boots, women fear wearing hats” (nan pa chuan xue, nü pa dai mao). When a man’s illness begins, the legs and feet swell first — like pulling on boots. When a woman’s illness begins, the head and face swell first — like putting on a hat. Edema that starts in the head and face is often hard to treat. So this neighbor hurried to fetch Doctor Zhu Danxi — luckily the two families lived close by.
Doctor Zhu Danxi takes the pulse: sunken, choppy, and large-but-empty — deficiency or blockage?
Doctor Zhu Danxi felt the pulse: the six pulses were sunken, choppy, and large but empty (liu mai chen se er huo da).
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: The pulse sounds contradictory. Huo da — large but empty — means the pulse feels big, but press down and it’s hollow. Press deeper and it’s sunken and choppy. Sunken and choppy means qi and blood are insufficient and circulation is sluggish — possibly with something blocked inside. Large-but-empty is a sign of severely depleted primordial yuan qi. Put together, the picture is deficiency: upright qi is insufficient, and phlegm is stuck — phlegm-dampness blocking the chest and diaphragm, unable to descend. So Doctor Zhu Danxi set his strategy in four characters: tonify the deficiency and drain the phlegm (bu xu li tan).
Where did the root lie? Liver qi attacking the spleen, phlegm-dampness stuck in the chest
Past fifty, upright qi is insufficient. Habitually quick to anger — liver qi depressed. The liver qi runs sideways and attacks spleen earth (mu ke tu): the spleen and stomach are injured, upright qi grows weaker, food and drink can no longer be transformed and transported, and phlegm-dampness piles up heavier and heavier. That late-night roast pork? It was like stuffing another boulder into an already weakened spleen and stomach.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Doctor Luo once shared a fascinating observation from friends in e-commerce: sellers of ordinary goods deal with fairly mild customers, but the customer-service staff for health-and-wellness products have the hardest job — customers are full of rage, cursing at the slightest problem. Doctor Luo said that’s completely normal: many people are unwell at root because their emotions are unwell. Their emotions wreck their health, and only then do they think of health care — but the emotions are never actually adjusted. Even Alibaba’s data experts noticed that swimsuits sell best in Xinjiang — because the people there long to swim at the seaside. That’s big data. And Doctor Zhu Danxi did something similar seven hundred years ago: he linked bad emotions, spleen-stomach weakness, and heavy phlegm-dampness into one complete logical chain.
Treatment: tonify first, then drain the phlegm — with one unusual trick: drink the medicine, then vomit it out
Doctor Zhu Danxi’s method looks very unusual today. Every morning, the patient took Er Chen Tang (Two Aged Decoction) plus ren shen and bai zhu. Er Chen Tang — ban xia (pinellia), chen pi (tangerine peel), fu ling (poria), gan cao (licorice) — is the classic phlegm-resolving base formula that Doctor Zhu Danxi favored above all; the ren shen (ginseng) and bai zhu (atractylodes), in generous doses, tonify upright qi. But here is the special part: after drinking the medicine, a goose feather was used to tickle the throat — provoking the patient to vomit the medicine back up.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: This is Doctor Zhu Danxi’s academic view: phlegm above the diaphragm cannot come out unless it is vomited. But when a person is extremely deficient, they can’t even vomit — there’s no strength for it. So first he used large doses of ren shen and bai zhu to lift the upright qi, then Er Chen Tang to dissolve the phlegm, and finally the provoked vomiting to expel the phlegm — along with the undigested late-night roast pork — all at once. Why not use a purgative to push it downward? Because this patient’s spleen and stomach were too deficient; pushing downward might not move it at all. Better to send it out the nearest exit. This is what the classics call “expelling tangible pathogens from the nearest route.”
Morning San He Tang, evening Shen You Wan — three sets of moves in one day
After the vomiting, once the morning hours had passed (chen shi, 7–9 a.m.), she took San He Tang (Three Harmonies Decoction) — with the bai zhu tripled — for two doses. This formula drains dampness and promotes urination: chen pi resolves dampness, zi su (perilla leaf) moves qi and drains dampness, hou po (magnolia bark) transforms dampness, bing lang (areca seed) dries dampness and moves qi (in the damp south, people chew betel nut partly for this very purpose), bai zhu strengthens the spleen, hai jin sha (spora lygodii) drains water-dampness, mu tong (akebia) drains water-dampness, and gan cao harmonizes and tonifies the spleen. It works in every direction at once, and it specializes in the various swellings of spleen deficiency with heavy dampness — especially facial swelling after illness and swelling below the waist, where the effect is excellent.
Then at night, she took Shen You Wan (Spirit Assistance Pill) — in this case with qian niu zi (morning glory seed) removed — a formula that attacks and expels water-dampness, resolving phlegm and draining fluids out from below.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Why San He Tang in the morning and Shen You Wan at night? Because this patient’s illness broke out at night — the anger at night, the roast pork at night. At night the body’s functions decline, and the phlegm-fluid manifestations become especially obvious. So Doctor Zhu Danxi had her take medicine at night, to dissolve the night-time phlegm-fluid. This is the principle: treat the illness at the hour it manifests. And the pills were only the size of small beans — seven pills at a time, an extremely light dose — yet they moved like a lever lifting a thousand pounds.
One month later: the face was back to normal
So it went: every morning Er Chen Tang with provoked vomiting, San He Tang after the morning hours, Shen You Wan at night. One month of this, and the illness was cured — the facial swelling subsided, the appetite returned, the fatigue disappeared.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Luo Tianyi (罗天益) — a disciple of Doctor Li Dongyuan and an inheritor of the same school of thought — summarized that with water-dampness illnesses like this, if the tip of the nose begins to sweat, the illness is about to get better — the pathogen is coming out, the dampness is dissolving. The real highlight of this case is not that the formulas were mysterious, but the precision of timing: three medicines a day, at three different hours, with three different strategies — tonifying, transforming, expelling — each doing its own job. This is master-level skill; ordinary doctors wouldn’t think of it, and wouldn’t have the patience for it.
Doctor Luo’s takeaway: eating in a rage is the worst thing for the spleen and stomach
What ordinary people should remember most from this case is the second lesson: never binge-eat when you are angry.
💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Doctor Luo says he has seen many people whose spleen-stomach problems began exactly like this — getting angry, then eating, and the root of the disease was planted from that moment on. From then on, whenever their emotions went off, they’d get stomach pain or digestive trouble immediately. Why? Because during rage, the spleen and stomach function is suppressed by the liver qi. If you force food in at that moment — qi stagnation, blood stasis, and food stagnation all arrive at once, and the spleen and stomach collapse on the spot. This case also reminds us: 70–80 percent of your illnesses are tied to emotions. Liver qi stagnation, spleen-stomach weakness, heavy phlegm-dampness — it’s one chain, cause and effect. If you can’t figure out why you’re phlegmy and weak, first look at your emotions — have they really been adjusted in a long time?
What to take away
- Rage attacks the spleen and stomach. By fifty, upright qi is already declining; a night of fury leaves the liver qi running sideways and the spleen and stomach injured. The emotion comes first, the organ damage follows.
- Never eat to vent anger. Food forced in while the spleen and stomach are suppressed by liver qi turns into stagnation — qi stasis, blood stasis, food stagnation — and the face swells by morning. A late-night feast is not comfort; it is a landmine.
- When phlegm sits above the diaphragm, it must come out upward. Doctor Zhu Danxi tonified upright qi with ren shen and bai zhu first, dissolved the phlegm with Er Chen Tang, then provoked vomiting to expel it — tangible pathogens leave by the nearest route.
- Time the medicine to the illness. The disease broke out at night, so he treated at night; the day’s three formulas — tonifying, transforming, expelling — each had its own hour. Gentle, tiny doses (seven bean-sized pills) can still move mountains when aimed correctly.
- Check your emotions before your body. Bad emotions, weak spleen and stomach, heavy phlegm-dampness — one chain, cause and effect. Adjust the emotions, and the body has a chance to heal.
That is today’s story of Doctor Zhu Danxi at the bedside. Tomorrow we continue.
Compiled from Doctor Luo Dalun’s commentary on Doctor Zhu Danxi’s case records.