Child Keeps Getting Chalazions, Eyes Repeatedly Red and Swollen With Lumps? Doctor Luo Dalun: Mostly Food Stagnation Turning to Heat — Clear the Stagnation First, Then Clear Heat and Resolve Toxins

Opening: learn to read your child’s tongue, and the chalazion is already half saved

Lately, Doctor Luo has been analyzing tongue photographs that parents send in for their children. He says he is deeply grateful for all the letters — on the one hand, the parents’ own questions get answered; on the other, these tongue pictures give his lectures the best teaching material, and other parents who listen understand too. In a way, everyone who sends in a photo is making a contribution to everyone else.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: If everyone masters these child-rearing methods, we won’t make so many mistakes. This child’s situation today is one many parents have met — the eyes keep forming lumps, and even surgery does not cure it.

A 3-year-11-month-old child with chalazions forming again and again

This parent writes: my baby is 3 years and 11 months old, almost 4, and chalazions keep forming repeatedly. On top of that, he will not sleep at night, loves kicking off the blankets, sometimes talks in his sleep, and does not eat properly.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Chalazion is one of the common conditions in children. Many children get red, swollen eyes with a lump inside, sometimes swelling quite badly. An occasional one is one thing — but when it keeps coming back, that is a real problem.

A child who will not sleep at night — what does that tell us? Doctor Luo says it most likely points to the spleen and stomach — in Chinese medicine, “when the stomach is not harmonious, one cannot lie peacefully” (wei bu he ze wo bu an). Kicking off the blankets and tossing and turning all night means the sleep is not peaceful; talking in the sleep is another sign of restless sleep. And eating poorly? With food stagnation still sitting in the stomach, the child naturally cannot eat.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: String these four problems together, and the root of all of them very likely lies in the spleen and stomach. So what does a chalazion have to do with the spleen and stomach? That brings us to a theory many parents have never thought of.

Why do chalazions keep finding children? The Yellow Emperor’s Classic said it long ago: when the nine orifices are not functioning well, the cause lies in the stomach and intestines

Doctor Luo first explains the condition thoroughly. Children who get chalazions are almost always suffering from food stagnation: they eat too much rich, fatty, sweet food and too much milk or food — they are fed too well — so heat builds up in the spleen and stomach and accumulates into damp-heat, the movement of qi is blocked, and the fire goes upward.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine (Huang Di Nei Jing) contains this idea — “when the nine orifices are not functioning well, the cause lies in the stomach and intestines” (jiu qiao bu li, jie chang wei zhi suo sheng). Where are these nine orifices? Mainly the two eyes, the two nostrils and the two ears above — that is six orifices. Then there are three more, which the ancients placed inside the mouth, including tongue sores, mouth ulcers, and the throat and pharynx. Added together, that is nine orifices. When the nine orifices have problems, the Nei Jing teaches that in most cases it is related to your spleen and stomach. This is even more true in children.

Many children are fed too well; when the accumulated heat cannot be resolved, the fire rises upward and easily causes problems at the orifices — especially the eyes.

When it comes to treatment, Doctor Luo sighs: for chalazions, Western medicine today mostly resorts to surgery.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Surgery worries many parents. The biggest problem is that in some children, after the surgery, the lump grows back after a while — why? Because it is still blocked inside, and the heat is still there! Then another surgery, and a few days later it grows again. I hear some parents have gone through several surgeries and were nearly broken by it. Those are such tender little eyes, and they are cutting them open! This is exactly where the Chinese medicine approach turns out to be very effective.

Look at the tongue: thick coating, a hollowed tip, a patch fallen off at the root, and small red dots

How does Chinese medicine treat it? First, look at the child’s tongue coating. Many people never connect the chalazion with the child’s spleen and stomach — but one look at the tongue and everything becomes clear. This child’s tongue shows four features:

First, the coating is extremely thick and greasy. Very, very thick — this tells us the child has stagnation, accumulated inside.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: A thick tongue coating is the classic sign of food stagnation. The stagnation turns to heat, the fire rises upward, and the eye — being an orifice — suffers first.

Second, the tip of the tongue is slightly hollowed.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: The tip of the tongue corresponds to the heart, and a little further in, that region corresponds to the lung. If the front third of the tongue is all red with no coating, the child may well have pneumonia. Here, the hollow means insufficiency of lung qi. Why is the lung qi insufficient? Because the spleen and stomach are weak, so there is no source for generating qi and blood.

Third, a large patch of tongue coating has fallen off at the root — it is gone.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: The root of the tongue corresponds to the kidney. When a large patch of coating falls off, it indicates insufficiency of kidney qi — the qi and blood are not flowing smoothly. The child’s complaint may be small, but the signals of all five viscera and six bowels are laid out on the tongue.

Fourth, there are many small red dots on the tongue.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: What do the small red dots mean? They mean there is heat inside. So this child’s problem is mainly food stagnation, mixed with heat, plus insufficiency of spleen, lung and kidney qi — but the core is still the stagnation in the middle.

When the spleen and stomach are blocked, the whole body’s qi movement cannot turn

Why is food stagnation so important? Doctor Luo explains the theory of ascending and descending qi movement — once parents understand this, they know how much the spleen and stomach matter.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Chinese medicine regards the spleen and stomach as the core of a person’s life. On the left, the spleen qi ascends; on the right, the stomach qi descends. The liver follows the spleen in ascending — the liver qi on the left rises, and the gallbladder qi on the right descends with the stomach qi. Then the heart fire descends, the lung qi descends, and the kidney water rises from below. Where is the whole pivot? In the spleen and stomach in the middle. Once the spleen and stomach turn, the qi movement of the entire body can circulate; once the spleen and stomach are blocked, the body’s qi movement cannot circulate, and all kinds of problems come out.

How to treat it? Remember the order: clear the food stagnation first, then clear the heat, and tonify the kidney a little if its qi is insufficient

At this point, the approach is clear. Doctor Luo says that for a child like this, the first consideration is to clear the food stagnation; after the stagnation is cleared, continue with the adjustment. While clearing the stagnation, you also need something to clear the heat; and since the kidney qi is insufficient, you should tonify the kidney a little as well.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: For clearing food stagnation, I recommend a ready-made Chinese patent medicine — Bao He Wan (Harmony-Preserving Pill). Bao He Wan is a bit stronger than the Three Charred Immortals (jiao san xian: charred hawthorn, charred medicated leaven and charred barley sprout), and it also moves qi. When the stagnation is obvious after overeating, use it to dissolve the food stagnation downward. Adults can also take Bao He Wan when they have eaten too much and the spleen and stomach cannot cope.

Clearing the food stagnation alone is not enough — you also need herbs that clear heat and resolve toxins.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Pair it with some Chinese herbs that clear heat, resolve toxins and disperse lumps — you can ask a nearby practitioner of Chinese medicine to write a simple prescription. Simple choices: lian qiao (Forsythia), da qing ye (Isatis leaf) and jin yin hua (honeysuckle) can all be used — lian qiao in particular has a lump-dispersing action — and sometimes a little xia ku cao (Prunella spike) is added. The prescription should be a very simple one.

A helpful method on the side: wu zhu yu plaster on the Yongquan point, leading the fire downward

Besides the medicine, Doctor Luo also offers a small external application that many parents say works remarkably well.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Use wu zhu yu (Evodia fruit) — completely different from shan yu rou (dogwood fruit, Cornus officinalis); wu zhu yu is warming. You can buy it at a pharmacy, grind it into an extremely fine powder, and every evening mix it with a little rice vinegar into a paste, spread it on a piece of gauze, and stick it on the child’s Yongquan point KI1 (in the hollow of the sole of the foot). Leave it on overnight, take it off in the morning, and put on a fresh one in the evening. What is this method for? It is called “leading the fire downward” (yin huo xia xing) — letting the fire go down instead of up.

Speaking of wu zhu yu, Doctor Luo tells an interesting piece of history.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Before the Chinese had Sichuan pepper, wu zhu yu was their main seasoning — Sichuan pepper only appeared later. In ancient times, the Chinese did not have chili pepper in their cooking at all; chili only came into China from abroad in modern times. So China’s very earliest seasonings were basically wu zhu yu and Sichuan pepper — and wu zhu yu came even earlier than Sichuan pepper. It has a pungent, spicy taste.

Don’t forget the details of daily life: dust mites can also cause trouble — change and sun the pillowcases and pillows often

Finally, Doctor Luo reminds us that food stagnation is not the only trigger for chalazions.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: There can be other triggers too — for example, too many dust mites. So for a child like this, change the pillowcases frequently, change the pillows frequently, and sun them often. But food stagnation is an important cause.

Adjust the internal state, and the chalazion will not come back

In the end, Chinese medicine treats chalazion very well and very effectively — usually once the body’s internal state is adjusted, the chalazion stops recurring.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Otherwise, this kind of repeated recurrence truly drives parents to despair. Today everyone has learned a key point: what problem is the chalazion related to? It is related to heat. Where does the heat come from? Very likely from food stagnation. So don’t just stare at the eye and reach for the scalpel — first take a look at the child’s spleen and stomach, and at the tongue.

What to take away

Chalazions in children are mostly caused by food stagnation. Too much rich, fatty, sweet food and too much feeding → heat accumulates in the spleen and stomach into damp-heat → qi movement is blocked → the fire rises and the orifices — especially the eyes — malfunction.
“When the nine orifices are not functioning well, the cause lies in the stomach and intestines” (from the Yellow Emperor’s Classic): two eyes, two nostrils, two ears, plus the mouth, throat and pharynx — most orifice problems trace back to the spleen and stomach.
Tongue reading, four signals: ① very thick, greasy coating = food stagnation; ② hollowed tongue tip = insufficiency of lung qi (the tip maps to the heart, just beyond it the lung — the weak lung qi comes from a weak spleen and stomach with no source of qi and blood); ③ a large patch of coating fallen off at the root = insufficiency of kidney qi; ④ many small red dots = heat inside. Core issue: the stagnation in the middle.
Treatment order: clear the food stagnation first — Bao He Wan (stronger than the Three Charred Immortals, moves qi, and works for adults who have overeaten too) — then clear heat, resolve toxins and disperse lumps with herbs such as lian qiao, da qing ye, jin yin hua and xia ku cao (have a local practitioner write the prescription). Tonify the kidney qi a little if it is insufficient.
Helper method: wu zhu yu (Evodia) plaster on the Yongquan point KI1 — fine powder mixed with rice vinegar into a paste on gauze, applied to the sole of the foot overnight — “leading the fire downward.”
Why surgery keeps failing: the blockage and the heat are still inside, so the lump is cut away and grows back. Adjust the internal state and it stops recurring.
Lifestyle detail: dust mites are a possible trigger — change and sun the pillowcases and pillows frequently.
Don’t just stare at the eye and operate — first check the child’s spleen and stomach and the tongue.

Compiled from Doctor Luo Dalun’s children’s tongue diagnosis lecture series.