Child Drools While Sleeping, Hair Sticks Up When Rubbed, Thick Coating in the Middle of the Tongue — Doctor Luo Dalun: This Is Spleen Deficiency Plus Food Stagnation, Resolve the Stagnation First, Then Nourish Yin and Clear Heat

Opening: Doctor Luo says that once you learn to read the tongue, you can spot your child’s health problems yourself

For several days in a row, Doctor Luo Dalun has been helping parents analyze photos of their children’s tongues. He says that once a parent learns to read a child’s tongue, the tongue starts talking to you — whatever is wrong inside the child’s body, the tongue will show it to you.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: If you learn to recognize the signals on the tongue, you’ll know which part of your feeding is going wrong, and your child’s health will improve a great deal.

Today’s little patient is a very typical case.

A 6-year-old with bad breath, dry stools, drooling, and sticking-up hair — all at once

This parent wrote in: my child is 6 years old, and often has bad breath — there’s a smell in his mouth.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: If a child often has a smell in his mouth, the first thing you should think of is food stagnation (ji shi). Stomach qi is supposed to move downward — downward is smooth. When it gets blocked and reverses upward, there is a smell in the mouth.

And the list goes on: dry stools, drooling during sleep, hair that sticks up the moment you rub it.

Drooling during sleep — first ask: could this be spleen deficiency?

Why does a child drool while sleeping? Doctor Luo says the cause, more often than not, is spleen deficiency.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: In Chinese medicine, the spleen governs holding and securing. The spleen belongs to qi, and qi can hold the fluids of the body in place. If the spleen is deficient and the qi is weak, with no strength to hold and secure, those fluids easily leak out. So this applies to adults too — if you often drool while sleeping, you should ask yourself: is there some spleen deficiency going on?

So how do we explain the dry stools?

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Dry stools usually mean there is heat. When the spleen is deficient and can’t transform and transport, one possibility is diarrhea; the other possibility is that things move in the direction of dryness. So a child’s bowel problems are often the spleen and stomach sending out an alarm.

Hair that sticks up when rubbed? When the spleen and stomach are unwell, the hair knows first

This parent noticed a telling detail: the hair always sticks up as soon as you rub it. Doctor Luo says this is precisely a signal that the spleen and stomach are having problems.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: The spleen and stomach govern qi, and the lungs also govern qi; the lungs govern the skin and body hair. If a child’s digestion is poor, the skin and hair will have problems. You can see the same thing when you keep a pet: when it is well nourished and eating well, its coat is glossy and smooth; when it is hungry day after day and malnourished, its fur sticks up every which way, all messy.

Looking at the tongue: a coin-sized thick patch in the middle — the classic sign of food stagnation

After hearing the symptoms, Doctor Luo could usually already conclude: there is food stagnation or spleen-stomach weakness, and possibly some heat. Then he looked at the tongue photo — and sure enough, right in the middle of the tongue, the coating is very thick.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: A normal tongue coating should be spread evenly across the middle of the tongue — the middle represents the spleen and stomach — and the tongue body should show around the edges, that is, a ring of flesh at the border. If a child’s spleen and stomach are unwell, the coating over the spleen-stomach zone will react. What is the most typical reaction of food stagnation? A thick coating. The most classic of all is a coin-sized thick patch right in the middle — this situation is extremely common.

Doctor Luo says he looks at tongue photos sent in by parents every single day, and almost 80 to 90 percent of the problems are related to food stagnation.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Honestly, with every photo you send, I want to ask: could you send me one without food stagnation? The seriousness of this problem is something we never imagined before. Ten out of ten photos show signs of food stagnation, and since I talk about it every day, everyone probably feels I’m repeating myself.

The small red dots on the tongue: the stagnation has already started turning to heat

This child’s tongue, besides that coin-sized thick patch in the middle, is covered with many small red dots — very obvious ones.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: What do obvious red dots tell us? On the surface there is food stagnation, but inside it has already turned to heat — there is heat in the body, and that’s also why the stools are dry.

How to treat it? Remember the order: resolve the stagnation first, then nourish yin and clear heat

So how do you treat a child like this? Doctor Luo’s approach is very clear — not a single step can be skipped.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: First of all, don’t think about anything else — resolve the food stagnation. Once the stagnation is slowly dissolved, the heat will show itself; at that point add something to nourish yin, with a little heat-clearing on the side — usually nourishing yin alone is enough. The child will recover very quickly.

A 6-year-old still has one year of spine pinching left

Doctor Luo also gave a special reminder: this child is 6, and still has about one year in which spine pinching (ni ji) works well.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: I suggest parents learn to pinch the child’s spine (ni ji, also called ni ji — pinching the spine to dissolve stagnation). A child this age still has a year of good results left — it works very well.

In the end, this is a feeding problem: don’t let the child eat whatever he wants

Why does a 6-year-old still get food stagnation so often? Doctor Luo put it bluntly — it’s usually because the family loves to feed the child whatever he likes to eat, and simply feeds him too much.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Strictly speaking, changing a 6-year-old’s eating habits is already difficult. But parents must be prepared: if you don’t change things now, and keep giving the child whatever he wants, then by the time he is in his teens you won’t have any room left to change at all. The child will very likely end up weak, with all kinds of problems, and then very overweight — all sorts of issues will appear.

So at the age when a child’s eating habits are being formed, parents need to keep a clear head.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Keep feeding the child a normal, regular diet, and the child will stay healthy. Don’t wait until he is older to change things — by then it will be too late.

The key points from today’s lesson, strung together by Doctor Luo

Finally, Doctor Luo summarized this session into a few small key points that parents can note down and check against:

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: First, a clearly thick patch of coating in the middle of the tongue — that’s food stagnation, very typical. Second, many small red dots on the tongue — there’s a little heat in the body; you should clear the stagnation first, then nourish yin and clear heat. Third, dry stools — because there is heat. Fourth, drooling while sleeping — very likely indicates weak spleen and stomach. Fifth, hair that is always dry and stands up easily when rubbed — you should also suspect weak spleen and stomach. Sixth, bad breath — a signal of food stagnation.

What to take away: In a child, a coin-sized thick coating in the middle of the tongue is the classic sign of food stagnation (ji shi) — the middle of the tongue reflects the spleen and stomach, and when the coating there is thick, the spleen and stomach are struggling. Obvious small red dots on the tongue mean the stagnation has already turned to heat. Bad breath appears when blocked stomach qi reverses upward; dry stools usually mean heat; drooling while sleeping points to spleen deficiency, because a weak spleen and qi can no longer hold the body’s fluids in place; and hair that is dry and sticks up when rubbed is another sign of weak spleen and stomach, since the lungs (which govern the skin and body hair) share their qi with the spleen and stomach. Treatment must follow the order: first resolve the stagnation, then nourish yin with a little heat-clearing (usually nourishing yin is enough). For a 6-year-old, spine pinching (ni ji) still has about a year of good effect — parents should learn it. Above all, this is a feeding problem: stop giving the child whatever he likes and overfeeding him, keep the diet normal and regular, and the child will be healthy. Learning to read the tongue lets parents spot these problems early — and recognizing food stagnation early can resolve the majority of children’s health issues.

Based on a children’s tongue-diagnosis lecture by Doctor Luo Dalun.