Dark Spots or Black Patches on Your Child’s Tongue? Doctor Luo Dalun: Watch Out for Blood Stasis in Children — One Look at the Veins Under the Tongue Tells You

Opening: the first lesson of the new year — back to children’s tongues

For the first lesson of the new year, Doctor Luo Dalun is back at the same blackboard: analyzing photos of children’s tongues sent in by parents.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Dear parents, happy new year to you all! Today I’m talking with you again — this is the first lesson of the new year, and we continue analyzing children’s tongue photos. I hope you’ll keep learning the knowledge of children’s tongue signs. Once you’ve learned it, I’m confident that in the new year your child’s health will only get better and better.

Today’s photo is one that worried a parent for many years.

A black patch on the tip of the tongue — five or six years and it never faded

The parent asked about their 12-year-old child: back in kindergarten, they noticed what looked like two black spots on the front of the child’s tongue. Nobody knew what had caused them, and at the time they didn’t pay much attention. Five or six years flashed by — and the black spots still hadn’t gone away.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Later the parent heard me talk about tongue diagnosis — I’d said that if there are black spots on the edges or the tip of the tongue, they are bruise-like spots, petechiae, and they may point to blood stasis. So they sent me the photo. I looked at this child’s tongue, and sure enough, there was a black patch right at the tip.

So what does blood stasis actually look like on the tongue? Doctor Luo broke the identification method down piece by piece.

Blood-stasis tongue sign number one: black bruise spots on the edges and tip

To check for blood stasis, first look at the front of the tongue.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: First — black bruise-like spots and petechiae on the edges and tip of the tongue. There’s a dark area right on the edge or tip. That black spot was originally a red spot, and later it turned black — this may be blood stasis.

Looking at the front alone isn’t enough. The second key spot is underneath the tongue.

Sign number two: sublingual veins that are thick, dark, and branching

Blood stasis has a second tell-tale sign — and it needs one more photo from the parent.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Second, look at the sublingual veins. This parent didn’t take the second photo — you need to have the child curl the tongue up, gently touching the upper lip, and look at the veins under the tongue. Normally they should be two faint, barely visible blue lines — you can hardly make them out. If the sublingual veins are thick and dark, and they branch out in all directions, then that is blood stasis.

At this point many parents ask: can a child’s tongue really look like that? Doctor Luo’s answer was blunt: yes, it can.

Children get blood stasis too — falls and knocks are the main cause

Blood stasis is not an adult-only problem. So where does a child’s blood stasis come from?

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: How does blood stasis form? In adults, there are many causes — eating too much cold-natured food, qi deficiency, anger, all kinds of reasons. But in children the cause is usually simpler — during play, they get bumped and bruised far more often. Take me as an example: when I was little I ran wild, and while running I’d lose my balance — bang, down I’d go, both knees scraped, blood streaming. I remember this happening all the time, so I could bandage and medicate myself without help — I knew exactly what to do, because I fell so often.

Apart from bumps and falls, there’s another situation parents overlook even more easily:

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: And when they’re even younger — if a baby rolls off something, say a bed — the child may look perfectly fine, but blood stasis may have formed without you knowing it. So blood stasis is also a cause of ill health in children — not common, but it genuinely exists, and sometimes it triggers strange illnesses, very strange ones.

What kind of strange illness? Doctor Luo told a case he personally treated.

A real case: the eye-blinking child who got worse after two years of Chinese medicine

There was a child with Tourette-like syndrome, whose symptom was constant eye-blinking.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: The family said they had given the child Chinese medicine for two years and consulted doctors everywhere. Over those two years the condition only grew worse — instead of being cured, it got more severe. Then they came to me. I analyzed the case and asked to look at the child’s tongue. Usually you look at the front of the tongue — after I did, I had him curl it up and look underneath. The two sublingual veins were very black and very thick. At that moment I thought: this child definitely has blood stasis in his body.

But Doctor Luo emphasized something important: don’t jump to the conclusion that every case of “tics” is caused by blood stasis.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Please don’t think Tourette-like tics are always caused by blood stasis. They aren’t. There are many possible causes — pressure at home, external infections, spleen-stomach disharmony, constrained liver qi. But in this child, a blood stasis factor was definitely present. I thought: leave the other factors aside for now, and resolve them one by one — since I saw blood stasis, remove the stasis first.

So Doctor Luo prescribed a blood-invigorating formula for the child to soak the feet in.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Originally I told them to soak once every evening. But the family brewed two batches a day — once in the morning, once at night — using 60 doses in a single month. A month later, the parents reported back: the child’s eye-blinking had stopped. Oh my — I was truly surprised. Why? Because it showed that blood stasis was the main cause in this child, and the rest may have been only triggers. Of course this condition has many other causes, and dissolving one patch of blood stasis doesn’t solve everything — but for this particular child, once the stasis was dissolved, the problem resolved itself.

How to handle it: Tao Hong Si Wu Tang, 6 g of each herb, simmered into a foot bath

Back to that 12-year-old: a black patch on the tip of the tongue — and if the sublingual veins are also confirmed thick and dark, you can basically confirm blood stasis. What to do about it? Doctor Luo gave a very gentle approach.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: When there’s blood stasis, you must invigorate blood and dissolve stasis. The child may have been injured before without you knowing it. So what to do? Use some blood-invigorating herbs — tao ren (peach kernel), hong hua (safflower), and the like. I usually use a classic formula called Tao Hong Si Wu Tang (Peach Kernel and Safflower Four Substances Decoction), 6 grams of every single herb, simmered into a foot bath. Soak day after day, and the child’s blood stasis will slowly dissolve away.

Closing: a child’s tongue is the most honest instruction manual the body has

After today’s unusual case, Doctor Luo reminded parents once more: blood stasis really does occur in children — don’t ignore it.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: What I showed you today is a very special situation — a reminder that children can develop blood stasis too. If blood stasis appears, it can cause the body to fall out of balance; if we detect it and help dissolve it, it’s beneficial to the child’s healthy growth. So please learn to recognize what blood stasis looks like on a child’s tongue. Keep it in mind — when you encounter it, you’ll know what to do.

Let’s string today’s knowledge points together once more: first, black bruise-like spots and petechiae on the edges and tip of the tongue are a signal of blood stasis; second, sublingual veins that are thick, dark and branching in all directions are even stronger evidence; third, children’s falls and knocks, and a baby’s tumble off a bed, can all leave hidden blood stasis that parents often don’t know about; fourth, once blood stasis is confirmed, simmer Tao Hong Si Wu Tang at 6 g per herb into a foot bath to dissolve it slowly. A child’s tongue is the most honest instruction manual the body has.

Compiled from Doctor Luo Dalun’s series of lectures on children’s tongue diagnosis.