High Blood Pressure, Constant Headaches and Dizziness? Doctor Luo Dalun: First Recognize the Four Causes of Hypertension

Search terms people use: high blood pressure / hypertension / headache and head distension / dizziness / what causes high blood pressure / causes of hypertension

Corresponding medical terms: essential hypertension · liver yang rising (gan yang shang kang) · liver wind stirring inside (gan feng nei dong) · kidney essence deficiency (shen jing bu zu) · phlegm-dampness obstruction (tan shi nei zu) · blood stasis blocking the channels (yu xue zu luo)

Opening: a scene from A Chinese Odyssey hides the “tightening band” of high blood pressure

Dear friends, good morning, everyone. Today we are going to talk about a disease — high blood pressure. A great many people have it now, but did you know that in ancient Chinese medicine there was no such disease name as “high blood pressure”?

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Hypertension is a name given by Western medicine after the blood pressure was measured. What are the symptoms of high blood pressure? Headache, sometimes vertigo, dizziness, and so on. So in ancient Chinese medicine, all those conditions — vertigo, headache, and their pattern differentiations — we can classify them under high blood pressure. So what exactly is this disease, and how do we understand it? Today let us first talk about the basis of high blood pressure — this is a big topic, not something we can finish in one day, so we will take it step by step.

Doctor Luo begins with a famous movie scene — from A Chinese Odyssey. The Goddess of Mercy is about to place the tightening band on Sun Wukong’s head, and warns him beforehand: once it goes on, you are no longer an ordinary mortal; you must not touch a single trace of worldly desire. The moment a desire stirs in your heart, the band tightens at once and makes you miserable.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Sun Wukong says, I have thought it through — put it on, and I will escort the Tang monk to fetch the scriptures. Later, when the fairy Zixia is killed by the Bull Demon King, all kinds of emotional turmoil rise in his heart, and the tightening band immediately squeezes — he suffers unbearably. When I thought about high blood pressure, it suddenly struck me that this is exactly like the tightening band — it is a metaphor. Many hypertension patients are just like this: dizzy, head distended, headaches — some hurt so badly it feels like their skull is splitting, truly like the tightening band, rolling on the floor, unable to sleep at night. Why do I say high blood pressure is like the tightening band? Because when your lifestyle changes and you stop living a normal life, you start overloading yourself.

The first cause: bad emotions — constrained liver qi and liver yang rising

The first kind of overload is emotion.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: All kinds of anger, anxiety, tension, brooding, not being able to let things go — emotional tangles — we call this constrained liver qi (gan qi bu shu). Constrained liver qi makes qi and blood stagnate, and at the same time transforms into fire — liver fire flares up, and when liver fire rises we call it liver yang rising (gan yang shang kang). It attacks upward, so the eyes turn red, the mouth becomes dry and bitter, and you get dizziness, head distension and headache. Bad emotions, anxiety, tension and heavy stress can produce either liver yin deficiency or liver yang rising — the two can appear together, or separately. In any case, when the liver channel cannot flow freely and liver fire flares upward, high blood pressure appears. So constrained liver qi and liver yang rising are one important cause of hypertension.

As for the cause, Western medicine cannot quite explain it either.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Western medicine says the whole rise in blood pressure involves genetic factors, various disease factors — it is complicated. But Chinese medicine holds that bad emotion is one important factor, and now Western research has also found it — people who stay in anxiety, depression or anger for a long time are prone to hypertension. You see, whether in Chinese or Western medicine, emotion is acknowledged as an important cause of high blood pressure.

Look at the people around you, and the pattern is very obvious:

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: The more you worry, the more likely you are to get high blood pressure. The elderly who get hypertension are usually the strong-willed, the stubborn, the worrying ones. Those who are peaceful, who don’t overthink, who are easygoing — their blood pressure is fine. And some elderly people, whose health was already not great, suddenly fly into a rage, their blood pressure spikes, and danger follows — stroke in the brain, heart problems, and so on. So for a person, bad emotions, anxiety and tension easily lead to high blood pressure. Modern people happen to face endless troubles — every day there are all sorts of things, easy to brood over and hard to let go. We can learn from monks, from the great masters — if you can let go a little, your blood pressure may be far less dangerous. You see, it is exactly like in the movie: the moment emotions fluctuate, the head splits with pain — that immediate.

The second cause: deficiency — excess indulgence and staying up late drain the kidney essence dry

The second factor is deficiency and loss.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: First, upright qi (zheng qi) is insufficient. First of all, excessive indulgence — living standards are good now, so many people overindulge. Even those who don’t — look around, erotic imagery is everywhere, every webpage has pretty girls — this also stirs ministerial fire (xiang huo). Ancient Chinese medicine held that once ministerial fire moves, it likewise drains kidney essence. Second is staying up late — staying up late also consumes kidney essence and causes deficiency. When kidney essence is depleted, both yin and yang suffer — either yin deficiency or yang deficiency. This is a very important matter.

What happens to the body when kidney essence is depleted?

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: When kidney essence is depleted, the body’s whole upright qi is insufficient — it is like a tree: if the roots rot, or shrink smaller and smaller, then the whole tree sways. At that point even a small disturbance in the body — a little wind, a little something else — produces an outsized reaction. Moreover, when kidney essence is insufficient, water no longer nourishes wood (shui bu han mu), which leads to liver yang rising — these are all connected.

The third cause: rich, fatty, sweet food — phlegm-dampness blocking the whole body

The third factor: eating too well — rich, fatty, sweet food (fei gan hou wei).

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Our appetite, that greedy desire, cannot be controlled. Now we have basically eaten up all the fish in the sea — fishing boats can’t catch them anymore; the fish we eat are farmed. With such a vigorous appetite, can we digest all this food? Not necessarily. What cannot be digested turns into phlegm-dampness (tan shi) and stays in the body — that’s why many people are overweight, with surplus nutrition inside. This is caused by desire — is there any difference between eating cabbage and eating fish? No. Why is fish delicious and cabbage tasteless? You go for the delicious taste — you see, that is desire at work.

Once phlegm-dampness builds up, a vicious cycle follows.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Modern people with excess phlegm-dampness are extremely common. Less exercise means more phlegm-dampness, and deficient upright qi makes it worse — heavy phlegm-dampness hampers the generation of upright qi, and in turn insufficient upright qi lets phlegm-dampness stay in the body, because you lack the strength to transform and expel it. Many people today are heavy with phlegm-dampness — their tongue coating is thick, the tongue is swollen, the body looks plump, and when they go to the hospital, their blood lipids and other indicators are all disordered. Remember, heavy phlegm-dampness is also an important cause of high blood pressure.

The fourth cause: blood stasis — all three factors above make it accumulate more and more

The fourth factor is blood stasis (yu xue).

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Many of us have blood stasis now. Constrained liver qi causes qi stagnation and blood stasis — bad emotions produce blood stasis. Deficient upright qi, unable to drive qi and blood in normal circulation, also increases blood stasis. Heavy phlegm-dampness blocks the channels, and blood stasis increases too. You see, these factors are all connected, and blood stasis in turn aggravates all the others. So the main causes of high blood pressure are roughly these: liver wind stirring inside (gan feng nei dong) — that is, constrained liver qi and liver yang rising; insufficient upright qi — kidney essence deficiency, which leads to deficiency of kidney yin or kidney yang (there is some distinction here); then heavy phlegm-dampness; and blood stasis.

Where do these causes come from? — most are tied to desire

Having laid out the four factors, Doctor Luo asks a more fundamental question: where do these factors come from?

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: I think most of them are tied to desire — sexual desire, appetite, greed, craving for power, craving for wealth. For the sake of these desires, we toil ceaselessly, never resting, all the way into the night; or we revel every night; or we lie awake thinking how to make money — this is called yin-yang inversion (yin yang ni luan). Then we gorge on delicacies and rich fatty food, which produces heavy phlegm-dampness; we have no time to exercise; and on top of it all, our emotions rise and fall — and these emotions aren’t necessarily grief. Sometimes joy becomes excessive, then suddenly sadness, then tension, then worry. Joy, anger, worry, thought, sorrow, fear and fright take turns tormenting your five organs. Think about it: amid all these desires, can the body stay well? When these problems grow severe enough, liver wind rises, qi and blood stagnate, phlegm-dampness congeals — and at that point high blood pressure occurs.

How does Chinese medicine see high blood pressure itself? — blocked channels, organs “straining hard against the pressure”

So from the Chinese medicine perspective, what exactly is high blood pressure?

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: It is the blockage of the channels (jing luo). The organs have no strength; they try to restore their original normal operating speed, but it is very hard, so they strain with all their might — and this straining produces discomfort in local areas. When you test at that moment, you find that the pressure inside the vessels has already risen. So from the Chinese medicine view, high blood pressure is not a good thing either. From the Western medicine view, high blood pressure leads to stroke, heart disease and kidney failure — it is a very important destructive factor behind these internal-organ diseases.

Why are Western antihypertensive drugs only a “temporary relief”?

How does Western medicine treat high blood pressure?

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: One is the diuretic — if you have heavy phlegm-dampness, if there’s too much water, you drain the water, so one kind of antihypertensive drug is a diuretic. Another is a vasodilator — dilating the blood vessels to increase the capacity inside. These are all attempts to escape the pain of the tightening band — they are meant to temporarily relieve the problem. But to truly get rid of the tightening band, what should you do? You should get people back onto their original track.

Doctor Luo’s view: the tightening band is a warning from the body — learn to do subtraction

Here Doctor Luo offers his core view.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Actually, for Sun Wukong the tightening band was a method of protecting his spiritual practice — the moment a stray thought moves, it hurts immediately. For us human beings, it is a signal that we have left the track of life, that life has spun out of control. My view is this: every person is born with a tightening band — it is a warning. Once it appears, it means your body has seriously derailed, seriously strayed from the track — you can no longer bear the load. The pressure you put on yourself is too great; the desires you give yourself are too many.

So what should be done?

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Do subtraction in time: calm your mind down, eat more plainly, increase exercise, maintain proper sleep — sleep at night, move during the day: this is called yin-yang harmony (yin yang xie tiao). Gradually let go of emotions; don’t be swayed by external changes. If you can return to this state, rest assured, the tightening band will slowly become invisible. Hypertension patients, especially those with essential hypertension, must reflect on whether their life needs adjustment, whether they should return to their former track. High blood pressure is only a reaction, a signal — this kind of life may bring you many more problems, you just haven’t seen them yet. If you can reflect, can let go, can understand that we don’t need that much, that health is what matters most — then, with a little adjustment of medicine, the body will slowly recover.

Two kinds of high blood pressure must be distinguished: secondary hypertension — treat the primary disease first

There is one more situation in high blood pressure that needs special attention:

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Secondary hypertension — for example, when chronic nephritis causes high blood pressure. This is hypertension caused by another disease, by overall body imbalance. In this case you must promptly treat the primary disease — treat the nephritis. What method do I use for nephritis? Invigorate blood and cool the blood (huo xue liang xue) — open up the kidney essence, and the whole pressure comes down. Otherwise, with a local blockage, the body keeps increasing pressure to push through that spot, and the whole body’s blood pressure rises. So this kind of hypertension, caused by nephritis, requires getting the nephritis properly treated.

Closing: first lecture of the hypertension series — the biggest lesson is to reflect on your life

At the end, Doctor Luo says this is a preface to the hypertension topic.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: I have never talked about high blood pressure before; now we will introduce it step by step. Because too many people have it, we medical workers must invest serious effort in researching it and relieving people’s suffering. Today we first introduced the basis of high blood pressure — how Chinese medicine sees it. I think the biggest lesson is this: we must reflect on our lives. A considerable proportion of hypertension patients get sick because life has become unbearable, consumption has been excessive, and the body rebounds. So this is something we need to adjust. Later, when we have time, we will talk more about how to actually regulate high blood pressure — for instance, how to regulate liver wind, how to regulate yin deficiency and yang deficiency. Chinese medicine has methods, and very many of them. That’s all for today. Thank you, everyone — see you next time.

Based on Doctor Luo Dalun’s Chinese medicine lecture series, this piece explains the basis of high blood pressure — the four factors of constrained liver qi with liver yang rising, kidney essence deficiency, phlegm-dampness and blood stasis all stem from desire and an unbalanced life. High blood pressure is the body’s “tightening band” warning; doing subtraction in time and returning to a normal life track is the real cure.