Chest Tightness, Heart Fluttering, and Hunger That Makes You Shake and Sweat? — Check Whether It’s “Sinking of the Great Qi”

Opening: a piece of news that makes the heart tighten

These past few days, Doctor Luo Dalun heard something from a friend that made his heart tighten — the friend’s sister had diabetes but had never been seriously ill; then one day she suddenly felt chest tightness, her breathing felt a little stifled, and she passed away quickly — all within about a day. The crucial detail: her heart had always been perfectly fine. She only had diabetes.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Then the friend hurried home to attend the funeral and told me about it. The moment I heard — chest tightness at home, then sudden death — I thought this sounds very much like the da qi xia xian (sinking of the Great Qi) that Doctor Zhang Xichun described.

How could a mere “chest tightness” take a life? Doctor Luo says: if it is caused by the sinking of the Great Qi, then it truly cannot be taken lightly at all.

This spring, a lot of people’s “hunger” doesn’t feel right

Thinking of this spring, many people have shown various signs of “sinking of the Great Qi.” Some friends say: extremely hungry — it seems I’m starving before mealtimes. And what does that hunger feel like? The whole body trembles, hands shake, cold sweat pours out, the face turns pale, the heart races and flutters, and there’s a feeling of fainting at any moment — if you don’t eat, you simply can’t go on.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: The way they describe it is exactly the same as the hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) that diabetic patients experience.

Several friends have already told Doctor Luo about this “hunger so bad it panics you.” The moment he heard it, he judged: this is very likely the sinking of the Great Qi.

Why is low blood sugar so dangerous? — “High blood sugar doesn’t kill; low blood sugar can”

First, let’s talk about low blood sugar. Many people think diabetes simply means “high blood sugar,” but its essence is actually blood sugar dysregulation.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Right after you eat, your blood sugar is quite high. But what happens before a meal? Some people’s blood sugar drops extremely low, because the energy is gone. When that low blood sugar episode comes on, it is especially dangerous. Some people put it this way: high blood sugar won’t kill you, but low blood sugar can — if you don’t replenish sugar right away and there’s nothing to eat where you are, the person can collapse on the spot, fall into a coma, or even die.

That is why so many diabetic patients have pre-meal hypoglycemia — when that wave of “starving panic” comes, with trembling hands, sweating, heart palpitations, and the feeling of fainting, it can genuinely cause real harm.

Chinese medicine calls this “xiao gu shan ji” — but Doctor Luo reads it differently from the ancients

This condition of “always feeling hungry” has a proper name in Chinese medicine: xiao gu shan ji — food digests unusually fast, so the person always wants to eat. And it isn’t only diabetics who have it:

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: People with thyroid disorders can also have this — some thyroid patients are exactly like this. And some people have it purely from spleen-stomach disharmony — no diabetes, no thyroid disease, just their spleen and stomach out of balance.

How did Chinese medicine traditionally explain it? Mostly as heat — stomach fire in the stomach, digestion running fast, so the person always wants to eat. Treatment was built around clearing stomach fire. That was the mainstream view.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: But let me tell you, many of the cases I have actually met are deficiency — spleen-stomach qi deficiency, or sinking of middle qi, or sinking of the Great Qi. When qi is deficient to a certain point, it tends to move downward. That is the principle of how qi moves in Chinese medicine: when qi is so deficient that it can no longer hold itself in place, it can’t stay up there, so it sinks — and then all kinds of symptoms appear.

The same “easy hunger” can be excess (stomach fire) or deficiency (sinking qi) — two completely opposite diagnostic approaches. That is why some people clear fire and clear fire and never get better.

When Doctor Zhang Xichun said “sinking of the Great Qi,” which qi sinks?

The concept of “sinking of the Great Qi” is something Doctor Zhang Xichun described most clearly of all. So what exactly sinks?

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: What does Doctor Zhang Xichun’s sinking of the Great Qi refer to specifically? The qi of the heart and lungs — the Great Qi fixed in the chest sinks downward. He didn’t discuss the spleen-stomach qi and other types much. But on the whole, the discussion of sinking qi movement is universal and applies across the board.

The “Great Qi” fixed in the chest is like the fundamental qi that powers the heart and lungs. The moment it sinks, a person develops chest tightness, shortness of breath, heart fluttering — all the symptoms come flooding in.

Why did this part of the series get the strongest feedback?

Doctor Luo says that in all his years explaining Doctor Zhang Xichun’s case records, the sinking of the Great Qi may be the part where people gained the most — and the feedback was the strongest.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: With other episodes, people comment “well explained, now I understand the principles, that’s enough.” But after the sinking of the Great Qi episodes, many people wrote things like: “I went to hospitals for two years and never got better; then I heard you explain sinking Great Qi, it matched my symptoms, and I took one dose of medicine and felt better.” There are many messages like that. I say this is the content that benefits ordinary people the most.

Why does it benefit them? Because in real life there are far too many people with sinking Great Qi — yet it is constantly mistaken for other diseases.

What are the typical signals of sinking Great Qi?

Doctor Luo has covered many symptoms of sinking Great Qi before; here he helps everyone re-sort them:

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: For example, sudden profuse sweating — a great flood of sweat out of nowhere. Then there is a change in the voice, and throat complaints — some people’s voices turn hoarse, some people lose their voice entirely and can’t speak, all sorts of variations. And there’s the qi that won’t come up — the qi simply cannot be drawn up, it always feels stuck here, unable to rise.

There is one point that is especially easy to misunderstand — many people say “my chest feels tight”:

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Doctor Zhang Xichun said: when people say qi is stifled, the chest is stifled — it isn’t stifled; the qi simply can’t be drawn up at all. Ordinary people can’t describe it, so they say it’s stuck, it’s chest tightness — but actually it’s a symptom of sinking Great Qi.

And among all the signals, two are the most typical:

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: One is being able to eat a tremendous amount — hungry the moment you stop eating. The other is the heart fluttering — palpitations, agitation, with sweating and similar symptoms.

Note the difference: ordinary xiao gu shan ji is just “hungry, so I eat more” — no serious consequences. Sinking of the Great Qi is different — the moment you don’t eat, you panic and can’t go on; palpitations and agitation all come out. That is why Doctor Luo feels it resembles the syndrome of low blood sugar more than anything.

Case one: mistreated epidemic disease, picking at the bedclothes — one dose of the Sheng Xian Tang approach opened everything up

In Doctor Zhang Xichun’s case records there is a particularly typical example. The patient had an epidemic disease (wen bing). Everyone treated him with heat-clearing herbs, then added some qi-breaking herbs as well — and in the end he fell unconscious.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: What does “picking at the bedclothes” mean? The hand gropes at the edge of the bed, then fumbles at the edge of the clothes — these are signs of a severely critical illness, signs that the mind is failing. His spirit turned upside down, he started talking deliriously, lost consciousness, and trembled all over.

After Doctor Zhang treated him, he improved a little — but then a new problem appeared: he wanted food. In half a day he ate five times and still felt hungry. His caretakers didn’t dare feed him more, yet the moment he got even slightly hungry, he trembled all over and began talking deliriously — his illness threatened to relapse at once.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Doctor Zhang Xichun took one look and knew: this is sinking of the Great Qi. So what did he use? Sheng Xian Tang (Raise the Sinking Decoction) — with that approach, he recovered immediately.

Hunger here was not stomach fire — it was sinking qi. That judgment saved a life.

Case two: a young woman’s appetite soared, and hunger brought heart palpitations

Doctor Zhang Xichun also recorded another case: a young woman suddenly began eating a great deal — her appetite soared, and she had to eat. Whenever she felt hungry and was not given food, she developed zhong chong (heart palpitations) — her heart started racing wildly, and heart symptoms all came out.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: The doctors all treated her as zhong xiao (middle wasting) — as wasting-thirst disorder — assuming there was heat, yet no treatment worked. Doctor Zhang Xichun took one look: it was sinking of the Great Qi. He prescribed the formula, and after a few doses she was cured.

This young woman’s pattern also wasn’t ordinary xiao gu shan ji — ordinary cases just eat more when hungry and have no symptoms otherwise. She developed palpitations and agitation the moment she wasn’t fed.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: This is just like low blood sugar — when you don’t eat, the heart flutters, you sweat, and you feel a vague emptiness inside. It’s the same thing.

The remedy is simple: no need to buy herbs — Bu Zhong Yi Qi Wan will do

So what should an ordinary person do about this? Doctor Luo’s clinical experience: when a patient describes “low blood sugar — when hunger hits, if I don’t eat, my hands shake, my heart flutters, I feel about to faint,” what appears in his mind is not stomach heat, but Doctor Zhang Xichun’s sinking-Great-Qi cases.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: I tell them: getting the herbs prepared would be a hassle, and you may not be able to decoct them anyway. Just take Bu Zhong Yi Qi Wan (Tonify the Middle and Replenish Qi Pill). Why? What did Doctor Zhang Xichun say? He said this is spleen-stomach qi deficiency — when deficiency reaches a certain point, qi moves downward, and the spleen and stomach, trying to save themselves, keep demanding food. So what to do then? Use Sheng Xian Tang — tonify the middle qi and lift the qi back up.

Then why recommend Bu Zhong Yi Qi Wan instead of Sheng Xian Tang? There is a subtlety about the location of the condition:

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Where is the seat of Doctor Zhang Xichun’s sinking of the Great Qi? In the heart and lungs. And where is the seat of Bu Zhong Yi Qi Wan? Exactly in the spleen and stomach — down below. So I say: just take this Bu Zhong Yi Qi Wan, that’s enough.

And the result? As soon as the friends started taking Bu Zhong Yi Qi Wan, they felt much better — symptoms eased immediately, and they no longer even reached that frantic “desperate eating” stage. The results were excellent.

What if Bu Zhong Yi Qi Wan makes you feel “heat”? — match morning and evening

Some people ask: every time I take Bu Zhong Yi Qi Wan I feel a little heat — what should I do?

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Then take Bu Zhong Yi Qi in the morning, and in the evening you can take a little Liu Wei Di Huang Wan (Six-Ingredient Rehmannia Pill) — letting the two balance each other out works fine.

Why is there so much sinking of the Great Qi this spring?

With so many people developing these symptoms lately, Doctor Luo analyzed the reasons specifically — the qi movement this year really is different from other years, especially after the pandemic.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: During the whole pandemic, everyone’s emotions were quite depressed — not as cheerful as in other years. Every day we watched the numbers and worried about how the pandemic was changing. As a result, the generative (upward-rising) qi was insufficient. When spring arrived, that insufficient generative qi meant your qi movement couldn’t rise — so many people’s qi movement sank and stagnated. People who were already qi-deficient began to have qi moving downward, which is why there are quite a few cases of sinking Great Qi.

And in modern society, very few people truly have abundant upright qi — many people are qi-deficient. On top of that, this year’s five movements and six qi (the classical Chinese medical calendar of climate) is unusual to begin with, so the signs of sinking Great Qi have become even more obvious.

Why the ancients celebrated the New Year: firecrackers and joyful gatherings were for “lifting” the qi movement

At this point, Doctor Luo shared a particularly interesting angle — why do Chinese people celebrate the Spring Festival?

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: You may never have thought about it: why did the Chinese choose to celebrate the New Year at this time? To celebrate, to set off firecrackers, to gather and be joyful — actually it’s about slowly lifting the qi movement of winter, so that when spring arrives, the qi can rise normally. So all these folk customs of the ancient Chinese have their reasons.

But this year? No gatherings, no firecrackers for the New Year — everyone stayed home watching television, anxiously following the pandemic news. This New Year was different.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Being shut indoors for so long, with emotions far less joyful than other years, caused many people’s qi movement to sink and stagnate. So people who already had a tendency toward sinking Great Qi became more visibly affected.

The most painful lesson: chest-relaxing, qi-breaking herbs are forbidden for sinking Great Qi

After all these remedies, Doctor Luo stressed one especially bloody lesson — what are people with sinking Great Qi most afraid of? Qi-breaking herbs.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Doctor Zhang Xichun recorded such a case — a person at home felt stifled and stuffy in the chest, so someone prescribed some chest-relaxing, qi-breaking herbs. After one dose he said he wouldn’t take any more, he couldn’t speak, and by evening he was gone. The woman’s brother actually worked in medicine — he ran a pharmacy — and when he met Doctor Zhang Xichun he asked: I have a question — why did my sister die? She seemed to have no other illness; she just felt a stuffiness in her throat, so someone prescribed chest-relaxing, qi-breaking, qi-regulating herbs, and she died the same evening she took them.

What was the brother’s reaction after Doctor Zhang explained the principle of sinking Great Qi?

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: After hearing it, he wept and sighed long and hard: “Not understanding medicine is truly dangerous. Sometimes the danger is right beside me, and I never noticed it.”

When qi has already sunk, pushing it further down with qi-breaking herbs — that final thread of qi simply can’t hold anymore. This is why “chest tightness” must never be treated uniformly as qi stagnation.

A reminder to yourself: if these symptoms match, adjust early

Finally, Doctor Luo weighed the meaning of this matter heavily: if you have any of these symptoms, check yourself against them promptly.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Chest stuffiness, breathing that always feels slightly labored, changes in the voice (a changed tone, loss of voice), feeling hungry, and a sinking sensation (for example, a persistent ache down in the lower abdomen) — I have talked about many of these sinking-Great-Qi symptoms in earlier audios. If they match, then you should adjust yourself. It’s actually very simple: Sheng Xian Tang is simple, and Bu Zhong Yi Qi Wan is simple too.

Why take it so seriously? Because when the qi movement keeps running downward, real danger is possible.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: You all know life is extremely precious. If you don’t understand this principle and the qi keeps moving downward, sometimes real danger occurs — with low blood sugar, for example, there have been many dangerous incidents.

And the more you understand, the more you can help the people around you:

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: I suggest that when you get the chance, review the sinking-Great-Qi cases and knowledge again. Learning a little more never hurts — it’s absolutely good for you; and if you come across these symptoms in someone around you, helping analyze them is an act of immeasurable merit. This is exactly why I explain these case records — so that everyone knows how many diseases exist and knows the logic of treatment, and won’t be caught flustered at the critical moment.

Now that the pandemic is over, life really has changed in some ways: some illnesses have increased, others remain well controlled (for instance, flu is far rarer now than before). The reason Doctor Luo recorded this episode was that he encountered several especially typical, representative cases — a reminder that this season, this kind of condition may be on the rise. And the homework he left was simple: go back and review the sinking-Great-Qi cases — learning is always rewarding.

What to take away

Compiled from Doctor Luo Dalun’s commentary on Doctor Zhang Xichun’s case records.